1. Matthew 9:4–6 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Is it easier to miraculously heal paralysis than to forgive sins?

Matthew 9:4–6 (ESV)

4 But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?

In short

There are two views of whether it is easier to miraculously heal paralysis than to forgive sins:

  1. No, not in the views of the scribes, to which Jesus is responding, since there is no way to verify whether someone has been truly forgiven. Jesus’ miraculous healing reveals, in a visible way, his divine power and authority to do the (humanly speaking) invisible: forgiving sins.

  2. Yes, Jesus shows, in Matthew 9:5–6, that it is easier to command a paralytic to rise and walk than to proclaim that his sins are forgiven. Because Jesus is the second Adam, he has power and authority to remove the cause of all illness—Adam’s sin, and the curse on it—and thus end both illness and death.

Interpretation 1:

No, in Matthew 9:5 Jesus is not teaching that one action is more difficult for him than the other, and both the forgiveness of sins and the miraculous healing are acts that can only be done by the power of God.1 What Jesus is doing here is responding to the evil thoughts of the scribes by noting that their judgment concerning him based upon his forgiveness of sins is foolish, given that it reveals their refusal to wait for the revelation of his divine power. As such he then proceeds to reveal that power by healing the paralytic, showing that he indeed also has the divine right to forgive sins.2 Jesus here rhetorically poses this question to his opponents, who were of the opinion that proclaiming the forgiveness of sins were easier than healing paralysis, especially given that there was no way to verify the former like there is with the latter.3

Interpretation 2:

Yes, in Jesus’s elucidation in Matthew 9:5–6, he indeed shows that it is easier to command a paralytic to rise and walk than to proclaim that his sins are forgiven. Yet the Son of Adam, the Son of Man, has power and authority to forgive sins on earth. Sin entered the word through the first man, Adam. The promised Son may and can now forgive those sins and as such is also able to take away their paralysis and death.4