Your Sins Are Forgiven
1 He entered into a boat and crossed over, and came into his own city. 2 Behold, they brought to him a man who was paralyzed, lying on a bed. Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Son, cheer up! Your sins are forgiven you.” 3 Behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man blasphemes.” 4 Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? 5 For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven;’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’? 6 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—” (then he said to the paralytic), “Get up, and take up your mat, and go to your house.” 7 He arose and departed to his house. 8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
The healing is Mark's; what Matthew's telling leaves out and what it adds at the end both point the same way.
Behold, they brought to him a man who was paralyzed, lying on a bed. Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Son, cheer up! Your sins are forgiven you.”
The account is told at length in the earlier Gospel Mark 2:1–12, which supplies the crowded house, the four friends, and the roof opened above his head. Matthew keeps none of it — no roof, no crowd, no carriers named — and the compression puts the whole weight on the exchange with the scribes.
What survives from the setting is the phrase seeing their faith. Even stripped of the roof, the man is healed on the strength of what other people believed on his behalf, which is worth noticing in a Gospel that will spend so much time on personal responsibility.
For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven;’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’?
The question is not which is harder to do but which is easier to say. Forgiveness is unverifiable, so claiming it costs nothing and can never be disproved; a man told to walk either walks or does not. So the visible act is offered as evidence for the invisible claim — that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins Matthew 9:6.
The scribes' objection is theologically correct, which is what makes it dangerous. Only God forgives sins, and a man who forgives what was done against someone else is either usurping or is something other than they assume.
But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
The closing line is Matthew's own and it is unexpected. The earlier account has the crowd amazed at something never seen before; here they glorify God for authority given to men — plural. That phrasing looks forward in this Gospel to the authority to bind and loose handed to Peter and then to the congregation Matthew 16:19 Matthew 18:18. Matthew is the Gospel that expects an ongoing community, and he hears in this crowd's reaction the beginning of something that will be entrusted to it.
settled What this mark means