Luke 5:17-35

21..."Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 22Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'?

Which is easier to say? To help put things into context, during that period, it was believed that a person's physical condition was a result of his or her sins. We read in John 9:2 that even Jesus' own disciples believed this: "His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'" This demonstrates how pervasive this attitude towards people with disabilities were at this time. So to forgive a person of his or her sin was, in a way, to claim to be able to heal them of their physical condition.

Also, as was mentioned, God alone had the power to forgive sins. For Jesus to claim the power to forgive sins was to essentially proclaim his divinity.

I think the message here is that it is harder to say "Your sins are forgiven" because it a) implies that Jesus is God, and b) it will heal the man. Jesus was showing that he was healing the man from what caused his condition and not the condition itself. Imagine your car leaking oil on your driveway. Instead of just cleaning the oil in the driveway, you'd want to fix the leak in the car so it stops leaking. This is what Jesus did by healing the man through forgiving him rather than commanding him to walk.

Jesus doesn't get rid of the the symptoms (death), he gets rid of the disease (sin).

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