Mark 2:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ read their hearts without them uttering a word. These men have not even mentioned their misgivings out loud. As God he knows all things. As the God Man, although his human nature was not divine but truly human and therefore limited in knowledge, he could choose at any point that his human nature should know what his divine nature knew. He saw the hostility and the seething hatred within them. Christ who has seen the beauty of the contrite heart of the paralytic, has also seen the ugliness of the thoughts of these men. What sights are open to the eyes of the Son of God as he looks around men’s hearts! Far greater are the heights and depths there, than anything to be seen in the natural world. Who that ever understood the human heart and man’s great need of forgiveness would not rejoice to hear that a man had been forgiven? Of course there was a question about whether any man had the authority to pronounce forgiveness, but in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ they should have known the answer. The disciples and the crowd heard this with joy, but the cynical scribes immediately found fault. It was obvious that was claiming to forgive all the sins that this man had committed against God. He was claiming to be able to remove guilt. What they do is to reason in their minds that Christ is in fact a charlatan and a liar. ‘Anyone can say that’, they think. ‘Anyone can claim to forgive sin, because there is no way of testing it. It is an invisible act. Furthermore, it is blasphemy to even make such a claim.’ It is questionable whether they went a step further and said, ‘It would be a different matter if he was to try to heal this paralytic, for we would all then see his failure.’ More likely it was Christ who made the connection between the two things, and suggested that the ability to do the one proves the ability to do the other.‘Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?’ Man’s thoughts can be wholly evil. Even before we utter a word, God who sees our reasoning processes can condemn us simply for what we are thinking. In what way were these scribes thinking evil thoughts? In that they failed to see the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophets in the ministry of Christ; they failed to believe John’s testimony about Christ; they denied the testimony of the miracles and denied the person of Christ, though he had given them more than sufficient evidence. They rejected Christ’s authority to forgive sin; they denied their own sinfulness and their need of forgiveness; they were ready to deprive this paralytic of the blessing of forgiveness; they hated the Lord Jesus because he threatened their self-righteousness.