The healing of this paralytic is a picture of the healing of the soul. Lifeless limbs, new life surges through them. The soul is asleep; the conscience is anaesthetised, but at the word of Christ we become complete people. We know we have been changed. Our life is so drastically altered.
They were astounded because such a hopeless case was wonderfully healed. We have the idea that salvation is for people who are pretty well already there. They do good and live quite a good life. God hasn’t got much more to do with them. If someone is very ill you say, go to the doctor. But a human wreck is a hopeless case. And yet Christ has the power to do this. Christianity is not a matter of God healing those who are 95% Christian already. No, before conversion, there are none any closer than others. Some may be better in some aspects, but self-centredness and pride still dominate. God is saving people who are as bad as they can possibly be. He starts from scratch and rebuilds our lives completely. The Christian church is full of the worst of sinners. You can be healed from the lowest degradation.
No one comes into the kingdom of heaven against their will; no one can be made a Christian by force. All who belong to the kingdom of heaven have entered the kingdom willingly, voluntarily. Yes, our wills are implacably opposed to God before we are converted, and it is the Holy Spirit who must make us willing to come, but all who belong to Christ have been made willing. These enemies of the gospel were not going to believe under the pressure of seeing a miracle. The most that could happen is that they were left amazed at what they saw.
This is one of those few places in the gospel where people said to be amazed. Strange things had occurred before their eyes. That is like conversion. Do you need forgiveness? Your wife may say, ‘I love my husband, but he is pretty mean. I don’t want to speak behind his back but I have to say that he is not honest, and he is pretty cruel.’ But at conversion our nature is changed. The cruel becomes kind. The deceitful get integrity restored.
To the unbelieving mind, the Christian gospel contains paradoxes. The Bible says, this is a doomed world. It will end in judgment; it will finally at the end get worse. In spite of all wonders given by God for man to discover, and all the technology he can explore and utilise, and all the gadgets that advance life and comfort, morally at the end of time, things will get worse and worse, and there will be a great apostasy. Oh, you say, I thought Christianity was supposed to make the world a better place. Surprise number one: No, says the Bible; it's a world under judgment, and God is at work saving out of the world and bringing to a personal knowledge of himself individual men, women, and children.
Here’s another big surprise in the Christian gospel. Forgiveness and new life are given as a free gift by grace from God. Oh, I thought you had to earn it. I thought you had to be a better person. I thought you had to deserve it. That's not in the Bible anywhere. We cannot earn it, says the Scripture. We are corrupt and depraved. We are capable of good, but even the good in us is ruined by the bad, and we need forgiveness and free salvation and Christ has to earn it and deserve it for us.
It had tiles on the roof, which few houses had. Some think it was not tiles but baked clay and that they broke up the roof, but Luke uses precise terms – ‘tiles’ – and archaeology shows he is invariably right.