WHICH IS EASIER? 

Man has an inclination to lean toward the easier, but Jesus constantly defied the norm by embracing the more difficult. We pick up a story from the Bible where Jesus confronts his detractors with an intriguing question- ‘which is easier?’

——–When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?  Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?  But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Jesus’ question leads us to first examine how hard it is for sins to be forgiven. Try forgiving someone who has wronged you and the enormous difficulty of practicing forgiveness comes up. For anything in life, what you can give away is what you have as your own. You can give away money only if you have it, you cannot give love if you haven’t found any love in your life; and at the other end of the spectrum, when a child grows up with abuse and internalizes it, he ends up as an adult abusing others more often than those around him. With forgiveness, it is no different. A person cannot forgive if he hasn’t found any forgiveness in his own life. A man can try wishing away sin, forgetting sin and ignoring sin, but unless he faces sin head on and finds forgiveness from God, he will remain empty.

And Jesus makes it clear in this passage, that this forgiveness comes from Him, and elsewhere in the Bible from Him alone, as only He went to the cross to die on our behalf- an appropriate propitiation for our sins. And so while it is easy for one to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’, it is incredibly hard to truly find forgiveness, which Jesus freely offers to all who believe.

The paralyzed man in this encounter had two needs- forgiveness of sins and finding healing for his paralysis. If Jesus had just stopped by saying, “your sins are forgiven”, very few would have been amazed. And that is because most people have little understanding of the spiritual reality, of the enormity of man’s sins and the need for forgiveness above all else in life. And it is this forgiveness that opens the way for man to enter into eternal life, in communion with God. Without a doubt it is the forgiveness of sins that is more important and also the more difficult task to achieve. But for the sake of the expectant crowd that gathered, the One who alone could forgive sins, embarks to also physically heal- a lesser task for Jesus, albeit a more impressive one for those who had no touch with the spiritual reality.

“Which is easier?” or “which is more important?” are questions that man needs to ask all his life. It is truly easy to set eyes on the worldly pursuits and also to accomplish them; it is hard to allow one’s eyes to be opened to the invisible spiritual reality we are immersed in and make spiritual goals a priority.

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