23: Healing of the Paralytic (Second Take)
Before moving on to the calling of Matthew, let’s take a look at an alternate view of the healing of the paralytic described in Luke 5:17ff.
The alternate view described here does not replace, or negate, the view presented in the previous post, but rather augments it, or fills out the picture by considering a second group that was present—the “teachers of the law.”
On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. Luke 5:17
We can think of the “teachers of the law” as the other half of the Sanhedrin, or the second major group of religious leaders in Israel during the Second Temple. These leaders cared deeply about the Temple. Why?
Because the Temple held the keys to the sacrificial system. While modern Christians tend to reduce the Mosaic sacrificial system to a single dimension—the forgiveness of sins—it had many layered dimensions. These sacrifices can be broken down into two large classes:
The sacrifices prescribed by the Mosaic law are included under two classes: those offered for the sake of communion with Jehovah; and those offered in communion, and may be tabulated as follows: (1) For communion, or propitiatory, including sin offerings and trespass offerings. (2) In communion (a) burnt offerings; (b) peace offerings, including thank offerings, votive offerings, and freewill offerings; (c) grain and drink offerings.[1]
Beyond these two classes of sacrifices, the Temple system anchored the Feasts of Israel, unifying God’s people culturally across time. The Temple system also anchored Jerusalem’s importance, making it the hub of commerce, as everyone had to be there several times a year for the various feasts, and the hub of wealth, as everyone had to spend money there attending feasts and making sacrifices.
For the Temple leadership, then, the Temple was the root and heart of Israel. Without the Temple, there would be no Israel, there would be no forgiveness of sins, and there would be no fellowship with God.
With this background in mind, let’s take another look at the interaction between Jesus and the “teachers of the law” in Luke 5:20–21.
And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Are the leaders condemning Jesus for forgiving sin, or for forgiving sin outside the Temple system? The belief that they are condemning Jesus for forgiving sin at all lends itself to the modern view that the Pharisees and Temple leadership were legalistic; that they were concerned with following the Law more than they were with forgiveness and mercy.
That does not seem to be the point the Pharisees and “teachers of the law” are making, however. According to James D.G. Dunn:
Not that a forgiveness was being offered which might otherwise have been denied the man; he could, after all, have taken his offering to the Temple and/or benefited from the Day of Atonement like other Jews. Nor that Jesus was claiming a special status for himself by saying these words (which any priest could say). The answer seems to be rather that he pronounced the man’s sins forgiven outside the cult and without any reference (even by implication) to the cult. It was not so much that he usurped the role of God in announcing sins forgiven. It was rather that he usurped the role of God which God had assigned to priest and cult. God could forgive sins no doubt when and as he chose. But man could only promise and pronounce the forgiveness of sins when he operated within the terms and structures provided by God—the Temple, priesthood and sacrifice. In that sense, as usurping a prerogative of God in disregard for the terms laid down by God, what Jesus said and did could be counted a kind of blasphemy.[2]
We can see echoes of this very accusation at Jesus trial. For instance, in Mark 14:58, Jesus’ accusers say: ““We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’ ” Of course, Jesus is never recorded as saying these things, but we might take this as an accurate description of how the Temple leadership heard what Jesus did say.
This accusation is echoed in Acts 6:12–14 against Stephen:
And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.”
This accusation against Jesus and the early Christians is the second arm of the pincer movement against Jesus later in his ministry. The Pharisees saw Jesus as opposed to their concern with the purity that kept Israel in existence in the Land as a nation. The Temple leadership saw Jesus as opposed to the very existence of the Temple and its sacrificial system, hence against the forgiveness of sins as directed by God in the Mosaic Law, and, again, threatening the very centrality of Jerusalem to Israel.
Just as the threat from the Pharisees grew throughout Jesus’ ministry, the threat from the Temple leadership does, as well. At the very end of his ministry, Jesus—perfectly in control of the situation—is going to inflame these two groups until neither believes they have any choice but to eliminate him.
Do not, of course, make the mistake of thinking either of these two groups represent every Israelite, or even most Jews at the time of Jesus’ ministry. These two groups are a small slice of the whole Jewish world even if they did control the two major institutions of Jewish life, the synagogues and the Temple. Neither of these two groups were a unified front against the teachings of Christ; the Scriptures record both Pharisees and Priests who followed Christ.
This one encounter over the healing of the paralytic, however, sets the stage for much of what follows in Jesus’ ministry.
[1] Merrill Frederick Unger et al., The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, in The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, Rev. and updated ed. (Moody Press, 1988).
[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity, Second Edition (SCM Press, 2006), 61.