Paralysis Reversed
The second healing Jesus accomplished was the reversal of paralysis that, in the King James translation, is called palsy. As Jesus entered the city of Capernaum, a centurion (an officer in the Roman legion) approached him and told him his servant lay sick at home with paralysis. When Jesus offered to go to the officer's home to heal the afflicted man, “the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” To this, the gospel says, Jesus, “marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” Read the whole account in Matthew 8:5–13.
discussion question
What do the churches make of Jesus' unqualified acceptance of the centurion?
The preponderance of church teaching has interpreted Jesus' not questioning or judging the centurion's military occupation, as part of the oppressing Roman army, as evidence that Jesus was not advocating pacifism. The personal and interpersonal peace he advocated and offered was qualitatively different from peace among factions and nation-states.
The centurion, a Roman military officer who commanded over a hundred men, was a gentile, the first since the Wise Men to recognize Jesus for who he was. Galilee is said to have been home to many such non-Jewish seekers after God, but Jesus is prophesying when he says this gentile is prefiguring multitudes of others who will eventually follow him, while most of the Jewish multitudes (“children of the kingdom”) will turn aside. His saying that “I have not found so great faith in Israel” refers to the centurion's humility by opening with “I am not worthy.”
A Second Paralytic Healed
A second account of a paralytic being healed also takes place in Capernaum, the city that Jesus chose as his headquarters while ministering in Galilee (see Matthew 9:1–8). This time, it was the crowd that marveled at Jesus' words, because instead of telling the man to rise and walk, he said, “your sins are forgiven.” And scribes (scholars in the Old Testament teachings) who were there murmured that he had blasphemed by presuming to forgive sins, which power belongs to God only.
symbolism
As mentioned previously, healings in prophetic ministries like Jesus' were symbolic of godliness on the part of the healer. To accusers who said Jesus healed through satanic powers or black arts, he retorted that Satan cannot cast out Satan; the tree is known by its fruits. He used healings of human afflictions to demonstrate his power to heal the sickness we all suffer unto death, sin.
In the accounts in Mark's and Luke's Gospels, this event is even more dramatic; it's added that because of the crowds, the paralytic's friends lowered him down through an opening they made in the roof of the house to get to Jesus. The presence of scribes on the scene of his healings suggests that Jesus' fame had become so significant that the scribes felt they had to check up on him by lurking around the fringes to get whatever goods they could get on him.
Sins Forgiven
Knowing what the public's reaction would be, Jesus reveals that he used the phrase, “your sins are forgiven” intentionally to get his mission noticed, to inaugurate the kind of controversy that was bound to follow, and to get people wondering, what manner of man, prophet, or messiah is this? And Jesus lets the people know that he can read the thoughts of their hearts even though they had not uttered them.
