Day 12: Luke 5:17-26

Jesus didn’t come just to heal the physical needs. More importantly he came to heal spiritual needs. This man’s friends worked so hard to get him to Jesus so that he could get the healing that he needed more than anything else, and that is exactly what he got, but it wasn’t the healing they thought. He became spiritually whole that day!

Sometimes we come to God with what we think is the most important thing that needs to be addressed, but God flips the script on us and addresses the thing that is vital. I love how the first thing he says to this man who has been lowered down in front of him through the roof, who is very obviously paralyzed, is, “Your sins are forgiven.” What?! Who does that? Everyone in that building knew why that guy had been placed there in front of Jesus. Everyone who saw what was happening was thinking, “Is Jesus going to be able to heal this guy?” And he completely throws everyone for a loop by addressing the man’s spiritual condition before his physical condition.

Jesus knew that what was really important was the health of our souls. Bodies are temporary. Your body is going to fail at some point. As we get older we lose some of the vitality of our youth. Our vision gets worse, our hearing goes, our ability to get up off the couch without grunting becomes a thing of the past. Eventually, our soul is going to leave the confines of our physical body. What happens then is what is most important. The Bible tells us that God wants to heal our physical maladies, but more importantly, he wants to bring wholeness and peace to our spirit-man.