The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Forgiveness is a Change in…Who?:  Mt.9:1 – 13

^9:6 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ – then he said to the paralytic, ‘Get up, pick up your bed and go home.’ ⁷ And he got up and went home. ⁸ But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men...

In human terms, forgiveness is usually a change in the mind of the one doing the forgiving. If I owe you money, and if you change your mind and release me from the debt, then I am forgiven. 

This human understanding is often projected into the divine.  Every year during the month of Ramadan, Muslims stay awake all night for one night, praying that the sins written down on the scroll of their actions would be wiped clean.  Every year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, observant Jews pray that God would forgive their sins.  An offended ‘god’ may be appeased by a sacrifice and grant forgiveness.  Or, the ‘god’ may simply respond to a desperate plea for forgiveness by arbitrarily changing his/her mind. 

However, in Jesus’ terms, forgiveness involves changing the person who needs to be forgiven.  This is a different way to go about forgiveness.  It’s like this:  If you graduate with lots of student loan debt, there are two ways you can be forgiven of that debt.  The first option is if someone else comes along and pays your debt for you.  You would be forgiven in that sense.  And sometimes Scripture uses idioms like debt-payment (e.g. Mt.18:19 – 34; Lk.7:36 – 50), but in a very fictitious sense to make it clear that that’s not actually what’s going on.  The second option is if you participate in a criminal investigation into your alma mater, which was a lot more sinister than you realized.  To protect you, the government changes your identity in a witness protection program.  So the old [fill in your name here] wouldn’t exist anymore.  You would be given a new identity.  The debts you racked up in your old identity wouldn’t even be valid anymore because the old [your name here] wouldn’t exist!  That is what Scripture is talking about when we come ‘into Christ’ to receive forgiveness (e.g. Eph.1:1 – 14; Col.1:13 – 14).  We participate in God’s changing of our identity in Jesus as we join Jesus’ side and tell the truth about what regime we were under before.

How do we see that here?  We see it in the fact that Jesus changes the paralytic’s state. 

I’m not saying the man’s paralysis meant he was more sinful than other people.  But I am saying that Jesus used this man’s paralysis as a metaphor for sin – the sin infecting all of us. 

At this point in his ministry, Jesus is progressively showing how he would bring God’s forgiveness to sinners.  He hasn’t said everything about it, but he is disclosing more and more.  Behind this single healing lies the deeper healing taking place:  The Son of God took on the same human nature that you and I have, to bend it back into conformity with the love of the Father.  He is submitting that cancer to the judgment and wrath of God, to kill the cancer infecting human nature through his death, to raise his human nature healed and fresh through his resurrection.  He did this to fully reconcile his human nature with God’s divine nature of holy love, and then to share that new humanity with others by his Spirit.  Jesus brought God’s forgiveness into his very own humanity.  Forgiveness isn’t just an idea in the mind of God, but a physical reality contained in the human flesh of Jesus.  ‘The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ (Mt.9:6) because the Son of Man has the only human flesh that is fully judged and fully forgiven.

God calls us to share in that forgiveness of sins which he has embodied personally in Jesus.  That is why there is forgiveness in no other name but Jesus’ name.  God does not and cannot simply ‘change His mind’ about us.  Because of His holy love, He must oppose, judge, and destroy the sin that is in us, and thus forgive us as persons.  Anything less would diminish and betray His true character.  So it’s not His mind that needs changing; it’s our nature!  God reestablishes a full relationship with us only in and through the human person of Jesus.  So forgiveness is not a change in God.  It’s a change in us.  Paul said, ‘For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.’  (Rom.6:5 – 7)

You could say that the paralyzed flesh of this man in Matthew 9 symbolized all human flesh.  The Son of God took to himself that same flesh.  In his body, he forced it to move again the way God had always intended.  And ultimately, he fully healed it, for us.  That’s why Jesus ties the miracle of healing to the deeper miracle of forgiveness.  He fought this man’s disease in order to demonstrate how he was fighting humanity’s disease in himself, and offering his forgiven new humanity to everyone else.

So when we ask for God to forgive us, He does – all the time, because of what He has already done in Jesus.  ‘The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin…If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ (1 Jn.1:7 – 9)  He cleanses us afresh by the Spirit of Jesus.  Who are we?  We are not merely ‘sinners who are pardoned,’ but ‘saints who are being healed.’

          ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’ (Mt.6:12) and speak of the forgiveness that is in Jesus to those who haven’t received it.