Chapter 2 is another chapter filled with action. It is really a continuation of chapter 1, beginning with that marvelous connective “and” that Mark uses so often. It’s the little word that is the cement that holds this gospel together. It always joins what has gone before with what is to follow.
2:1 – We see that He entered into Capernaum after some days. As we have said before, He had moved His headquarters from His hometown of Nazareth down to Capernaum.
2:2 – The ministry of our Lord was to preach the Word of God, and that is the emphasis that we feel should be made today.
2:3-4 – Our attention is directed to this little group of five and this is how they look. One man is sick with the palsy, poor fellow. He couldn’t even have made it there because he’s in that stretcher. The other four make a kind of quartet, one at each corner of the stretcher. And here they come. They can’t get in because of the crowd which actually fills the doors and windows.
Anyway, they decided to let him down through the roof, and so these men tackle the job of taking off the roof.
2:5 – Whose faith? It was the faith of these men. It seemed to me that it was the faith of these men that was responsible for his being saved. “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” But as I studied it, I realized that it was not their faith that saved him.
It’s wonderful to have a godly mother, but you are not going to heaven tied to your mamma’s apron strings. It’s wonderful to have a godly father, but your godly father won’t save you. You will have to exert faith yourself. You must be the believing one.
On closer examination we see that it is not the faith of these four men that saved this man. It was the faith of these men that brought him to the place where he could hear the Lord Jesus deal with him individually and personally. “When Jesus saw their faith” means their faith to bring the palsied man to Him. When He saw this, then He dealt personally with the man and said, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”
What we need in the church today is stretcher-bearers—men and women with that kind of faith to go out and bring in the unsaved so they can hear the gospel. There are many people today who are paralyzed with a palsy of sin, a plays of indifference, or a palsy of prejudice. A great many people are not going to come into church where the gospel is preached unless you take a corner of the stretcher and bring them in.
That’s what these men did. They had the faith to bring this poor man to hear the Lord Jesus deal with him personally and say, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”
2:6-7 – Here’s the enemy and they don’t speak out but just think their thoughts. In their thinking, they are wrong on the first question, but they are right in the second question. This Man was not speaking blasphemies. But it is true that only God can forgive sin.
No judge has any right to let a criminal off. His business is to enforce the law. God is the moral ruler of this universe, and He must defend His own laws. God cannot be lawless. He can’t be, because He is righteous. Having made the laws, He obeys those laws, and His laws are inexorable. They are not changed at all, and by them you and I are guilty before God. We need forgiveness of sins and He does forgive. Let us never make the mistake of thinking He forgives because He is big-hearted. He forgives us because Christ paid the penalty for our sins! The Lord Jesus was not speaking blasphemies—He is God. And He could forgive sins because He came to this earth to provide a salvation for you and me and for the man with the palsy.
2:8 – These men didn’t speak out, you see, but they thought this in their hearts. He tries to draw them out, but these men had had a run-in with Him before and they had always come away with a bloody nose. So they decided the best thing to do here was to keep quiet, and they did. So our Lord said to them,
2:9 – Only God can do either. That answer is right and that is why the Lord Jesus told the man to take up his bed and walk.
2:10-11 – When our Lord healed, He did a good job of it.
2:12 – You see, this is a gospel of action and here is one of the miracles of action.