The CROSSroads: Personal Lessons from Mark's Gospel by Rev. Mitch Schultz

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:14utc

Lesson Eleven: THE TALK OF ETERNITY (Mark 2:1-12)

"Son, your sins are forgiven." (vs.6)

The best thing that Jesus can ever do for us is not heal us, nor bless us materially, nor promise us a full and healthy life. These are nice perks for the Christian to enjoy as God's blessings, but they are not God's ultimate for us. Here then is the best Jesus has for us. He wants to forgive us and by doing so offer us the healthiest life possible.

While in this home crowded to the brim with people, four men disrupt Jesus' sermon by bringing into the middle of the room their sick friend. Their persistence and expectation is so great that they went to the extent of tearing the roof off so as to insure Jesus would not overlook their need. Now, in their minds eyes there was really only one thing Jesus could do that would leave them satisfied – and that was to physically restore their friend. Give him back his legs! Help him to walk again! Restore the quality of his life! Help him to know the joy of running again! Within moments, all those in the room must have been sharing these expectations. The people wanted and expected a miracle, a physical healing, but Jesus did not view this to be the man's greatest need. Neither was it going to be his first response. The man needed spiritual healing and this is where Jesus would begin. So what does Jesus do? Before mending the man's legs, he mends his heart. He forgives him and by so doing restores the man to God. Then, to show he had the authority to forgive the man (and to shut the mouths of the skeptics in the crowd) he also restores the man physically.

Lets put this story into some eternal perspective for just a moment, for by so doing we will value much more the real healing that took place that day. If we had the opportunity 2000 years later to ask this man what really changed his life that day, he would tell us it was the declaration of forgiveness by Christ, not the command to rise up and walk. The miracle that would last for eternity was spiritual not physical. When the people filed out from that house the talk of the streets was no doubt about a lame man who now walked. The talk of eternity however is that here a man, separated from God by his sins, is now restored to God.

I write this at a moment in my life when the desire for healing is intense. In fact these meditations on Mark offer me a path to scatter many of my deep feelings on the matter. Only last week, and only four months after my wife came through a life-threatening operation to remove a brain tumour, my eleven year old son has been diagnosed as having an in-operable brain tumour. My longing that God would completely heal my wife who is currently undergoing intensive speech therapy, now embraces the hope that God would heal my son. Let's put all this into some spiritual perspective though. In 100 years from now whether God has healed my wife and son will be secondary to the spiritual work he has already done in their lives. They both love the Lord deeply and have been declared forgiven by the Lord Jesus. That is the talk of eternity. Yes, I cry out for God to physically heal. I too would tear the roof off any building if it made any difference. But I have to accept that the healing that ultimately determines our place with God is initially not as evident or dramatic. It is the declaration by Christ that we are forgiven.

How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in his heart. For him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. -A.W. Tozer (1897–1963)