It's been a long week. Work has been very busy and tiring and is the reason for the lack of articles on the blog. But manual labor is a blessing from the Lord. I get to dwell on Him and reflect on His Word. This week Mark 2:5 has been on my mind because I have read the Emergent take on it- distorted and completely wrong. I have moved past the point of wondering if they care about context because it has become obvious that it is irrelevant to them. But for those that are exposed to their teaching I feel it necessary to deal with their proof-texts.
According to the Emergent types Mark 2:5 is supposed to teach that God can forgive anyone apart from any recognition of sinfulness in the sinner. That one need not even believe in the deity of Christ. God can even forgive people on the basis of someone else's faith and that all one needs to do to be forgiven is to come to Jesus for any need (some Emergent types may disagree within themselves). Believe that He can help or deliver you from whatever your problem is: emotional suffering, depression, a physical need e.t.c. and "follow" Him and you will be forgiven and have a "better way of living." According to them Mark 15:2 is clear proof. Allegedly the paryletic was forgiven of his sins without acknowledging that he was a sinner in need of forgiveness and without even looking for it; he received it on the basis of his friends faith.
The problem the Emergent folks come against is context. The immediate context as well as the whole Word of God. So let's take a look at the context of Mark 2:5. It is not as if the idea of sin and man's need to recognize his own sinfulness, before a Holy God, is absent from Mark. He starts his gospel account off with that very idea! Mark 1:4-5- "John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins." Here Mark records for us that John the Baptist, the forerunner to the King, is preparing the way for Christ with the proclamation of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Note how it is also written that the people were confessing their sins. Then we find the Lord also proclaiming repentance and faith in Him- "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14–15). This has to be accounted for when dealing with Mark 2:5. It's all there- sin, faith, repentance and forgiveness.
With that in mind, we now come to Mark 2. What exactly is drawing such a loud crowd to the Lord? It was the miracles He performed accompanied by His message- "And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee" (Mk 1:26–28). This is precisely what we find the Lord doing in Mark 2. He is "preaching the word" to a large crowd (Mark 2:2). When Mark says that Christ was preaching the Word to them, there is no doubt that the Lord is preaching about Himself (the same message He arrived with (Mk. 1:14-15). This message would include sin, repentance, faith and forgiveness of sins with forgiveness made only possible through His law keeping life, substitutionary death in place of sinners and victorious resurrection - "And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Lk. 24:25-27). This is the "word" Christ was preaching to the crowd.
Then we find the faith and actions of the paralyzed man's friends that resulted in the Lord forgiving the man on account of "their" faith. Now, it is not probable that his friends took him against his will, thus, it is most likely that "their" faith included the man's as well. But the emphasis is not on the healing but Christ's authority to forgive sins. The healing only comes after Jesus forgives the man and that to validate His deity. But why does He forgive the man's sins when Mark seems to only record that he was brought forth to be healed? To answer that I will defer to New Testament Scholar R.T. France from his commentary on Mark (NIGTC):
"Mark clearly believed that Jesus dealt with the condition of the paralytic by focusing first on his sins, and that in some way the forgiveness of sin and physical healing were interrelated (vv. 9–11). Nor would this have been so surprising to his original readers as it may be to us, since a link between illness and sin runs through much of biblical literature, as well as being widespread in the ancient world. In many OT texts healing and forgiveness are so closely related that it is hard to tell whether the language of healing is meant to be understood of physical illness or metaphorically for restored spiritual health (e.g., Pss. 41:4; 103:3; Is 53:4–6), but sometimes physical healing is clearly related to forgiveness of sin (2 Ch. 7:13–14; Is. 38:16–17) just as physical suffering can be attributed to the sin of the sufferer (Nu. 12:9–15; 2 Ch. 26:16–21) or indeed to sin in the community (2 Sa. 24:10–15). That suffering is the result of sin in the general sense that the world’s evils are traced to the Fall would have been generally agreed, but the Book of Job testifies to a strong reaction against the view that the suffering of an individual must necessarily be the result of his or her own sin. A similar balance is maintained in the NT, with some suffering and death being attributed to the specific sin of those concerned (Jn. 5:14; Acts 5:1–11; 1 Cor. 11:30; 1 Jn. 5:16), while in other places such a direct connection is denied (Lk. 13:1–5; Jn. 9:2–3; 2 Cor. 12:7; Gal. 4:13–14).To put it simply- the man and his friends understood to correlation between sin and illness- whether he understood his own illness to be a result of his own personal sin(s) is not clear but the association between sin and suffering is clear. The man wanted to be forgiven of his sins and healed. Though it is not explicitly stated the man wanted forgiveness of sins, the context demands this understanding. Are we to assume that the man did not think He was a sinner in need of grace and mercy?
The link between healing and forgiveness in this case is clear, but the nature of the connection is more obscure. The explicit link in v. 10 is that the physical healing proves the authority of the Son of Man to forgive; otherwise healing and forgiveness are mentioned side by side without explicitly making the one dependent on the other. Even the comparison in v. 9 of the relative ‘easiness’ of the declaration of forgiveness and the healing command is left in the form of a question. Since Jesus did not normally preface a healing with a declaration of forgiveness, there must be some special reason for introducing the issue in this case. Three seem worth considering: (1) that Jesus was aware that this man’s illness, unlike others, was directly attributable to his sin; (2) that the patient so understood it (whether rightly or wrongly), and so was looking for more than physical relief; (3) that Jesus, intent on raising the issue of his authority with the scribes, took this opportunity to do so, even though it was not strictly necessary to the case. Of these, (3) sounds improbably artificial, especially in view of the lack of any indication hitherto that Jesus intended to invite confrontation; his withdrawal from public notice in 1:35–38, 45 rather suggests the opposite. Both (1) and (2) depend on access to the minds of the actors which the narrative does not allow us; either is plausible, but each must be speculative."
We can put the icing on the cake if we just follow the flow of context when we continue to read further in the chapter and we come to this statement from the Lord: "And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mk 2:16–17). Please note the language of "physician," "sick" and "sinners." This should sound familiar because He just demonstrated it in Mark 2:5-12!
If the Emergent crowd spent more time studying the context and less time listening to what their leaders say about these passages, they would suffer less embarrassment when caught in their manipulation of the Holy Writ. But, then again, this is all contingent on a desire for the truth of God's Word and not an agenda to re-define Christianity. Sure there is an awful lot of talk about the "good news," "sin," "grace," "repentance," "faith," and "salvation" but they have their own definitions. Make no mistake about that.
"“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mk 2:17). Soli Deo Gloria!
For His Glory,
Fernando
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