Why would faith in Jesus’ ability to heal illness result in forgiveness of sins? And what about the man’s friends — they are all included in “Jesus saw their faith,” but apparently only one was forgiven. If the faith is so important, shouldn’t they all have had their sins forgiven? Finally, note that this man’s sins weren’t forgiven by Jesus dying on the cross - obviously Jesus’ death was not, at least at this point in time, a prerequisite for the forgiveness of sins.
What did “forgiveness of sins” means in this case? That’s the same question we asked back in chapter 1 when we read about John the Baptist presuming the authority to forgive sins. Had the man died a few minutes later, would he have gone straight to heaven, even without believing in the divinity of Jesus? What if he died a couple of decades later without ever believing anything about Jesus except that he had the ability to heal — would he have gone to heaven, or dropped straight into hell for his obstinate adherence to Judaism?
None of this, except perhaps for Jesus playing a central role, is consistent with the contemporary Christian understanding of the forgiveness of sins or of salvation. At no point does Jesus ask the man to believe in him, to accept him as his savior, or to try and have a personal relationship with him — just the things evangelical Christians focus on. Unlike evangelicals today, this man could have actually have a personal relationship with Jesus, becoming one of his disciples, but as far as we know he didn’t. The gospels don’t say that any of those personally healed by Jesus started to follow him.
Jesus didn’t ask the man to have a personal relationship with him. This act of forgiveness and healing were the “free gifts” that evangelicals today say that people can have, but then turn around and insist really do come with a price tag after all: belief in the basic doctrines and dogmas of evangelical Christianity. That’s not free, but in this passage Jesus shows what a free gift of forgiveness really is.
The reason why this story of forgiveness looks so little like the doctrine of forgiveness today is that these early passages simply don’t have much to say when it comes to the theology of sin, forgiveness, and salvation. What we understand about these topics is the product of hundreds of years of theological and philosophical development. Even the “fundamentalists” who insist on getting back to the original Biblical texts frequently go well beyond what the words themselves say.
Of course, not everyone around apparently believed that Jesus should have been forgiving sins in the first place...
