15 However, athe report went around concerning Him all the more; and bgreat multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by Him of their infirmities.
16aSo He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and bprayed.
Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralytic
17 Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present1 to heal them.
18aThen behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him.
19 And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst abefore Jesus.
20 When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
21aAnd the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? bWho can forgive sins but God alone?”
22 But when Jesus aperceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts?
23Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’?
24But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the man who was paralyzed, a“I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”
25 Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, aglorifying God.
26 And they were all amazed, and they aglorified God and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things today!”
Matthew the Tax Collector
27aAfter these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, b“Follow Me.”
In the healing of the paralytic (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26), the physician Luke uses a medical term, "palsied" (KJV), the technical Greek word used to describe paralysis from disease in some part of the nervous system. Because his disease was so debilitating, the man needed comfort and healing. Jesus thus refers to him as "son," or more literally, "child," showing His fatherly compassion.
Paralysis represents sin's crippling power and the sinner's sheer helplessness to do anything to relieve his own suffering. The apostle Paul speaks of our initial lack of spiritual strength in Romans 5:6, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." With this miracle, Jesus forgave the penalty that the man had incurred through sin and raised him from his miserable state.
