Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye

I live in slight pain due to a broken bone in my ankle suffered a few weeks ago. While I wish the pain would ease, the injury brings me to reflect on Jesus and the paralytic (Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:18-26) and a point a theologian once made.

The backdrop of the story is this: There's no longer any room in the home where Jesus is teaching, so four men bring a paralytic through the roof. This is a form of intercessory prayer, similar to when I ask a person here on earth or in heaven to pray, “intercede”, for me or when parents serve as intercessors by bringing their baby to be baptized. Jesus can look at the intercessors’ faith and respond.

Here Jesus does just that:

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Child your sins are forgiven.’” Jesus responds to the faith of the four men, who are acting as intercessors. The people ask, “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?”

People claimed Jesus cannot forgive sins, only the invisible God can. In modern times, people say a priest cannot forgive sins, only God can. Although Matthew 9:7 states, “...God who had given such authority to human beings” and John 20:23 shows Jesus passing on this authority to the apostles. Thus, men have been given authority by God to forgive sins.

Then Jesus asks a peculiar question:  Which is easier to say “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say “Rise and walk?”

He continues, "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” and the He heals the man.

Jesus performs two miracles here: He forgives the paralytic’s sins. He physically heals the man. Why? The second miracle, a visible one, was performed so that people may believe in the first, an invisible one.

So as I lie here with a broken ankle bone, I ask which miracle is greater?

The forgiveness of sins or the physical healing?

One is invisible, the other visible. One relating to the eternal, the other relating to the temporal.

So which is greater?

Wincing at the pain in my ankle, I would like to have the visible temporal miracle occur right now, but with deeper introspection through the eyes of faith, I realize if given a choice, I’d like the invisible miracle.

The one relating to eternity. 

Some miracles are more than meets the eye.