OUR LORD WHO WAS FALSELY ACCUSED OF BLASPHEMY

What perplexed the people of the time of Jesus about Him was that He would speak like He attributed the power of God to himself.  In doing so, the religious authorities quickly pointed out that He was blaspheming against God.

The sad irony was that these religious authorities should have been the ones to discern  that Jesus was the long-awaited Messaiah but instead, they were so misguided that they accused Jesus of blasphemy whenever He signalled that He was indeed the Messaiah.

Even if the religious authorities were suspicious of Him, they should have taken into account the attesting miracles that followed Jesus wherever He went. 

A few sholars, like Nichodemus, famously came to meet Jesus one night because He and His secretive enclave of thinkers had correctly reasoned that the kinds of miracles that Jesus was performing warranted an interview to get His thoughts on religious matters.

Even though Jesus expressly demonstrated the power of God whenever He took on the authority that only God would have ( like forgive sin ), most of the religious authorities of the day were willing to overlook the good works Jesus did in order to accuse Him. This story in Mathew 9 verse 3 - 8  illustrates this dynamic at work.

Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 

But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” 

Then the man got up and went home.

Jesus showed the teachers of the law several supernatural things at that event.

He demonstrated that He could read their minds. He demonstrated that He could heal paralysis and He demonstrated that He could indeed forgive sins because His power to heal the paralytic called on the power of God  and if He could call on the power of God to heal, He could call on the authority of God to forgive sin. 

Forgiving sin is not a visible process and whether a person's sins were truly torgiven or not was up for speculation. However, healing a paralytic would require the paralytic to visibly stand and walk and so if Jesus could heal visibly, it could be reasonably inferred that he could  indeed forgive sins because it is easier to do.

The Lord was doing the things that He, as the Messiah, had the authority to do but instead of seeing Him as the Messiah, they saw Him as a blasphemer and this grievance they had against Jesus was one of the main reasons they agitated to get Jesus crucified which turned out to be the basis of our salvation.

Let us bless our Lord for our salvation for which He suffered so greatly to gain for us.

 Amen.