We sometimes imagine that the people of Jesus’ day must have been very slow or blind, since they didn’t recognize Jesus more quickly for who he was. But we forget that Jesus didn’t go around with a sign on his chest describing who he was. He appeared as a human being among human beings. The title “Son of Man” points, in part, to exactly this fact (in Ezekiel, we see the phrase used as God’s preferred term of address to the prophet). And because he was a human being, people responded to him in different ways, with some coming closer to the mark than others.
When Jesus, the Son of Man, was approached by a group of men bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing, he looked at the man and pronounced that his sins were forgiven. In this action, we see that Jesus the true human being understands the complexities of being human. Like a doctor who suggests that your physical symptoms are caused by stress, Jesus looks beneath the surface symptoms and finds the problem at the root of all human suffering: the problem of sin. And he claims that he is able to deal with this problem. The religious leaders are offended and believe he is blaspheming, because forgiving sins is something only God can do. Jesus demonstrates his authority to forgive sins by performing the miracle of restoring the man’s mobility.
The Son of Man’s authority to forgive sins rests on two things.
1) First, it rests on who he is: “the Son of Man” as Jesus uses it is not just another way of saying “I’m like everyone else” but is a reference to Daniel 7, in which “one like a Son of Man” comes as both a representative of God’s suffering people and as one who comes with the authority of God himself. When Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, he seems to have this figure in mind.
2) Second, it rests on what he does. As he says in Matthew 20, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus’ forgiveness always rests on his action on the cross, even before that work takes place. He came as the one who would take away the sins of the world through his life and death and resurrection.
Jesus’ decision to identify with human beings by becoming one of us means that we can meet him and serve him in all of our interactions with other human beings. In Matthew 25, Jesus told a parable about the Son of Man appearing as a king and rewarding or condemning people for serving or failing to serve him in every day life as they met the poor and needy, the marginalized and oppressed. As the biblical scholar Kavin Rowe has written, this parable teaches us that “the human—from kings to beggars—is in the form of Christ… The low and the high were bound together in their humanity precisely because their humanity was and is constituted in Christ” (C. Kavin Rowe, Christianity’s Surprise, p. 44).
The Son of Man came to give his life for us, to heal our deepest underlying problem, and we are not only called to trust him but to meet him in the presence of those who are in need around us.
Discussion Questions
1. Read Matthew 9:1-8 and identify the different ways people respond to Jesus in this passage. Name some of the ways people think of Jesus in our day, either from personal experience or otherwise. Why do you think people respond to Jesus in such different ways?
2. When Jesus sees the paralytic, he doesn’t deal with his physical challenges right away but instead pronounces forgiveness of his sins. How does this passage and the rest of the Bible suggest that sin and sickness are linked? Have you encountered different ways of thinking about the connection between sin and sickness?
3. Jesus’ healing of the man is offered as proof of his authority to forgive sins. What light do you think this casts on how we should think of the other miracles Jesus performed in his life?
4. Going deeper: the meaning of “Son of Man”: In Daniel 7, Daniel has a dream in which several beasts represent the various oppressive nations that will overpower the Jewish people in the coming centuries. But at the end of the dream, God (called “the Ancient of Days” in the dream) takes his seat in a courtroom, listens to the claims of one of the rulers of these nations (called “a horn” in verse 8), and then “one like a son of man” comes to lead the people of God into a good future. Read Daniel 7:9-14. How do you these verses describe things you know to be true about Jesus?
5. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that we can serve him (the Son of Man) by serving people who are in various forms of distress or disadvantage. Read Matthew 25:34-40. What are some practical ways that you can get involved in serving Jesus this way? How might our church become better at doing so?
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