“THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN THEE”
R. H. Brown
This occasion of which we have read would be similar to the occasion we are having this afternoon—a meeting in a house. The word rapidly travelled round that the Lord Jesus was at this house or, as the note says, ‘at home’. The Spirit tells us that the house was packed, “no longer any room, not even at the door”. And there was a needy person outside who wanted the help that Jesus alone could give to him, and he could not get near to Him.
The old hymn says, ‘I wish I had been with Him then’, when He took the little children in His arms and laid His hands upon them. I think we can understand the sentiments expressed in that hymn,
that it would have been a unique experience to be with Jesus when He was here on earth; but you would have been subject to the difficulties that this poor man had. You might have found it very difficult to get near to Him. Now that He is in the glory He cannot be seen with our natural eyes as we could have seen Him if we had lived when He was here, but it is possible to get near to Jesus. There is no need to go to the lengths that these men had to go to. It is possible to get near to Jesus this afternoon, and the gospel is preached to that end, that you might come to know Him, come to receive a touch from Him if you have never received one before. And even if you have received one before, it is intended that you should receive a fresh touch from Him.
It is possible to get near to Him because He Himself has drawn near to us. In coming into manhood, in coming down from His seat on high, from that exalted position, He has come into the circumstances in which we are, that He might draw near to us. It is wonderful grace that He being who He is should be prepared to draw near to us. Persons who lived with Him were amazed at the company that He kept; they were amazed that sinners and tax gatherers came to Him and that He ate with them. He was criticized because He was seen in the company of needy persons and, beloved, He is still presented in the gospel as available and willing to help needy persons. If we had read the end of the previous chapter we would have read about a leper who said, “If thou wilt thou canst cleanse me”. We need to be assured that Jesus is willing to help. There was no doubt with these persons that brought the paralytic that He was not only willing but that He had the resource to help, and that if this man was to get blessing, if he was to be healed, it could only be by a touch from Jesus.
It is still the same this afternoon. If you are to receive the blessing of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit these things can only be had by a personal transaction with Jesus. You might come, to the gospel preaching, and it is good that you do, you might feel refreshment of spirit sitting and listening to the word, but blessing for your soul can only be received by having to do with Jesus for yourself. The preacher of the gospel cannot give you faith, still less can he forgive your sins. Your mother and father may themselves have received the blessing of the gospel, and they may long and pray that you should receive it, but they could never forgive your sins, nor could they pass on to you the faith that they themselves have received. These things are only received by a personal transaction with Jesus. It is a very wonderful thing to be under the sound of the word as this great company of persons was. It says that He spoke the word to them. The word of God in the gospel is a signpost. It directs you to the place where blessing can be received, and blessing can be received alone in Jesus.
If you think of salvation, there is no other “name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, Acts 4: 12. If we think of redemption, it is “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”, Romans 3: 24. If you go through the Scriptures and think of all the blessings that God so richly gives, you will discover that they are all connected with the Person of Jesus. Nothing for God has been secured outside of that blessed Man, and no blessing for man can be received without Him, no blessing at all. If you are without God, if you are without Christ, then you are without God and without hope. What a terrible predicament to be in in a dispensation of grace when God is so richly and so freely blessing men in Christ. So the gospel is preached that you
might come to Him. The word ‘come’ is a gospel word, it is an evangelical word, a word uttered by the Lord Jesus Himself; He said, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened”, Matthew 11: 28.
The woman in John 4 had to do with Him for herself and then she went away and bore testimony as to what she had found; she gave evidence that she had met One who had told her all things that she had ever done and she says to the men of the city, “Is not he the Christ?”.
Because of her word “They went out of the city and came to him”. But they very quickly came back and said to the woman, “It is no longer on account of thy saying that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world”.
So the testimony goes out that He is the Christ; God has made Him both Lord and Christ.
God has installed Him in a place of power and dominion, and the invitation in the gospel is that we each should have to do with Him for ourselves.
It is very wonderful that these persons were concerned to bring this man to Jesus. He would never have got there if he had been left to his own devices. He was a paralytic, unable to move, unable to help himself, and that is our condition if we are still in our sins, unable to help ourselves, no sign of life towards God, paralytic. And yet there were persons there who were concerned for his soul. It is a wonderful thing if there are persons concerned for our souls, concerned that we might be brought to Jesus—persons who themselves cannot impart the blessing to us but are concerned that we should have it for ourselves. Mother and father may be those who would bring us to Jesus from an early age. They would teach us about Jesus, what He has done and where He is. And brethren who love us and know us would be those who would bring us to
Jesus, who would desire that we should have this inward secret transaction with Himself.
This man had friends, four of them, who were prepared to go to great lengths to bring him to Jesus, and it says of Jesus that He saw their faith. Later on, as to the scribes, it says that He knew their reasonings. You see, He hears and He sees; He takes account of things that may not be apparent to others, and the reason is that He looks into our hearts.
This afternoon as we sit listening to the gospel preaching He looks into our hearts and He sees what effect the word is having there, whether there is a spirit of disbelief that refuses the word, or whether there is a listening in faith. It says of some persons that the word preached to them did not profit them, “not being mixed with faith in those who heard”, Hebrews 4: 2.
He looked at these four persons and saw their faith. It would be a wonderful thing if He could look into our hearts this afternoon, each one of us in this room, and see active faith there.
Faith is God’s gift. Of course, it is man’s responsibility to believe the gospel, but then man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty go along together. If God enjoins all men everywhere to repent, as He does, He also grants repentance, it is His gift. He grants softening of heart towards Himself and repentance. If the gospel is preached for the obedience of faith, as it is, that too is God’s gift. Scripture tells us that we are “saved by grace, through faith; and this not of yourselves; it is God’s gift”, Ephesians 2: 8.
So God expects me to believe what He tells me in the gospel because it is God who says it, but He gives me faith to receive the word. What wondrous grace that is! If we find it difficult to believe the gospel, if we find it difficult to put confidence
and trust in Jesus, we can ask God for faith. God is waiting to be asked for the greatest gifts; they are given to people who ask for them. Children are often taught at home that they are not to ask for things, but divine things are there for persons who ask for them, who ask for faith, who ask for the Holy Spirit, another of God’s gifts, described in the Scriptures as God’s unspeakable free gift (2 Corinthians 9: 15).
So these men had faith—and the Lord Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins. I suppose what this man was primarily hoping for was relief from his paralysis, but the Lord Jesus forgave his sins. If we are going to have to do with Jesus for ourselves, then He would have to do with us first about our sins. I wonder if every one of us in this room has had to do with Him about our sins? Let us not be in any doubt that there are some upon our conscience, but then we can have to do with Jesus and have them all righteously forgiven. We can have a conscience that is freed of guilt, so that we are no longer bowed down by a sense of inadequacy, or by the fear of death and of judgment to come. A conscience freed of guilt is what the believer is to have and the gospel is preached to that end, that the blessing that this man received should be received by each of us. “Thy sins”, He says, “are forgiven thee”. There were persons there who were critical; they did not believe that the One who forgave sins had the right to forgive them and they said—and what they said is quite right—that the only Person who can forgive sins is God Himself. I wonder if we believe that.
You might do something against me, and I might be prepared to forgive you, but the forgiveness of the sin rests with God alone. Every sin is an affront to Him, an affront to His majesty. It is
the operation of a will that is contrary to His, therefore it is lawlessness (1 John 3: 4).
Therefore it is with God that we have to do about our sins, and every man, woman, and child that has ever lived will have to do with God some time about their sins. God in the gospel is inviting us to have to do with Him about them this afternoon. He says, “Now is the well-accepted time; behold, now the day of salvation”, Hebrews 6: 2. Through the prophet Isaiah He says, “Come now, let us reason together, saith Jehovah—though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow”, Isaiah 1: 18. God is giving an invitation to guilty sinners in the gospel to have to do with Him about their sins because He has a righteous basis on which to justify them. The man who went up into the temple to pray was so overcome by the burden of his guilt and need that he did not even lift up his eyes to heaven, such was his guilt, but he smote upon his breast and said, “O God, have compassion on me, the sinner”, Luke 18: 13.
Oh how wonderful it is to experience divine mercy! That is all the sinner can ask, you know; he cannot claim forgiveness of sins as a right, he rests entirely upon the sovereignty of divine mercy, mercy which is freely bestowed because God is rich in it. God is rich in mercy, and He delights in justifying the repenting sinner. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”, 1 John 1: 9. How unqualified that statement is! The guilty sinner can go out of the presence of God without a stain upon him. Justification means that the sinner is set up as if he has never sinned at all.
God is able to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But persons who will not have to do with God
about their sins in this dispensation of blessing will have to do with Him about them in a time of judgment. I do not go into that, but Scripture is very plain, it says that “each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God” (Romans 14: 12)—each of us. None will be exempt from that, and God will want an account for every sin. Scripture speaks of that terrible scene of judgment, of the dead being summoned before the great white throne. It says that they were judged out of the things written in the books (Revelation 20: 12). That can only spell for them condemnation. The things written in the books will be their life histories, a record of every sin committed, and if God judges sinners by those things it will only be for condemnation. But God is offering to us a righteousness that is by faith of Jesus Christ, so that we can appear in His presence as righteous as Jesus is. A full acceptance before Him can be mine, knowing that God will no longer impute my sins. “Blessed is he”, says David,
“whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!”, Psalm 32: 1. Blessed indeed is this gift of forgiveness of sins! Let us not underestimate it, let us not regard it as an elementary part of the gospel; it is a great blessing indeed to be freed from one’s sins and to be set up righteously in the divine presence.
Jesus knew that the scribes reasoned thus and He asks a question—“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy couch and walk?”. I suppose the persons there looking down at this poor man lying on his couch would have thought that it was a lot easier to say, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, than to say, ‘Get up and walk’ to a man so immobile that he had to be carried by four.
If the man was to be free from his paralysis, if
he was to be cured and set up again, all it required was a word of divine power from the One who brought everything into being. One word of divine power and millions of stars sprang into existence, and that was all—and I say all carefully—that was required if this man was to be freed from his paralysis. But if his sins were to be forgiven much more than that was required. Oh how much was required!
It looked so simple to say it, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”; it looks so blessedly simple this afternoon—God offering the forgiveness of sins. But do you realise, dear friend, how much lies behind it? No word of power could ever forgive this man’s sins. It necessitated that Jesus should come here as a lowly Man; that He should come into the world, as the scripture says, to save sinners; that He should give His life an offering once for all; that He should bear those sins now so freely forgiven, bear them in His body on the tree; that His soul should be made an offering for sin; that He should experience not only the humiliation and hatred and malice of men, but that He should know what it was to be forsaken of God. None of us will ever understand fully what it meant to Jesus to be forsaken of God. His holy soul gave some expression to it prophetically in the psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Psalm 22: 1.
I thought of it this morning, that on that night, as the apostle says, when the Lord Jesus was betrayed He instituted the Supper; the night when those that loved Him deserted Him; one who was His familiar friend betraying Him, another whom He loved denying Him with oaths and curses, and the rest of them forsaking Him and fleeing. Think of what that meant to the Saviour, but it was small in comparison with what it meant to Him to be forsaken of God.
He could say to the Father, “I knew that thou always hearest me”, John 11: 42. He rejoiced in spirit as a Man here in His link with the Father, in all that He drew from the Father. What it meant to Him that that link, that communion, so blessed, should be interrupted, we shall never fully understand. God in the gospel is now shining out in benign blessing upon the world, the world that has crucified His beloved Son. But Jesus was forsaken of God and His feelings as to it are given expression to that we might apprehend something of the immense cost that lies behind the great gift of the forgiveness of sins.
He went into death; He died for our sins, and He was buried, and He rose the third day. What testimony there is in the gospel to the One who has been into death and broken its power that He might set free “all those who through fear of death through the whole of their life were subject to bondage”, Hebrews 2: 15. How many persons there are who are in fear of death, who go from day to day in fear of it; for to them it means the end and after it the judgment.
Some choose to speculate about what is after death. The believer knows that these things have been removed from the sphere of speculation. God has stated in the Scripture quite plainly that after death is the judgment (Hebrews 9: 27). Persons who have chosen to ignore the great blessing which is presented at such immense cost will have to account to God for it.
“How shall we escape if we have been negligent of so great salvation?”, Hebrews 2: 3. You might choose, you see, to be negligent of it. You might listen to the gospel even this afternoon and not outrightly disbelieve it or refuse it; but you might choose to put it off to another time. You might think that such things will come your way again. The apostle says,
“How shall we escape if we have been negligent of so great salvation?”.
Well, the blessing is there, the blessing of forgiveness of sins, but, more than that, the gift of the Holy Spirit. This man, having received the blessing of the forgiveness of sins, was made to rise up and take up his couch and walk. No longer was he to be borne about by others, .he was to stand on his own feet in the testimony, he was to take up his own responsibilities in his house. How are we able to do that apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s unspeakable free gift? All that we receive by faith depends for its present enjoyment on the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. May God’s word promote exercise of soul and desire with us for these precious things, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Frinton-on-Sea
28 August 1977