King’s Cross 3

Tim Keller’s newest book, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, examines big questions through the Gospel of Mark.

What is the connection of healing in this story to the forgiveness of sins? Is the healing the external reality of the inner healing (forgiveness)? Or does forgiveness connect to healing in that healing is a form of forgiveness? Does the former lead to the latter? Does the latter lead to the former? Or are they the same?

Mark 2 opens with a most amazing story with a most amazing connection. Keller exploits the connection to pierce into the heart of human nature and the gospel. (The text is found after the jump.)

Here’s the point: while speaking in a home someone who wants to get to Jesus but who can’t finds a way. They lower a body through the roof into the very presence of Jesus. This creates a scene and a conversation: Jesus heals the paralyzed man; says his sins are forgiven (that’s the connection); religious leaders think Jesus has blasphemed in thinking he can forgive sins; Jesus heals the man to prove that the one who heals can also forgive. A robust christology — Jesus is the divine King and Savior — breaks through this text.

Keller exploits — in a good sense — the desire of the paralyzed man who, above, all wanted his deepest wish to come true — to be healed. But Jesus shows that his wish was not deep enough. His real wish was to be forgiven and to find the Savior who could really bring his deepest wishes true.

Keller uses two illustrations: one from Cynthia Heimel who showed the many celebrities got their wishes and it made them unhappier and that God’s biggest joke on us is to give us our wishes. Then he tells the marvelous story of Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader who had to peel off his dragon skin but who learned it was only the Lion who could claw it off completely. Good stories.

The chp is masterfully done. One point I’d make is the biblical and Jewish connection of sin to suffering and of healing to forgiveness/salvation. The organic unity of the Jewish sense of who we are — body, mind, spirit, etc — comes into play in this text and prevents us from seeing a hierarchy of body vs. soul or outer vs. inner.

¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

⁶ Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ⁷ “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

⁸ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? ⁹ Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰ But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, ¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”