The Divine Power to forgive sins

Matthew 9:1-8 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5 For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.

As mentioned earlier, the healings of Jesus, apart from being acts of mercy were meant also to help fortify the faiths of those who had these miracles performed on them and also those who witnessed these miracles. It was also meant to bring people to Him because in following up these stories of miracles, they would come upon the saving Word.

It is inconceivable that anyone or any ordinary person could have performed these miracles and the people knew it. Such works had never been done before. The raising of the dead, the healing of paralytics and so on and He was now forgiving sins. This was unheard of. The forgiving of sins by Jesus has been taken over by the church as proof that they could also do the same since they considered themselves to be envoys of God or of Jesus. They, however, err as they are neither envoys of Jesus or of God.

Envoys of God are those with the same inner Nature as God. This from the outset rules out any human beings. The fact that they claim to be envoys does not in reality make them so. All we have are their claims. If Jesus can forgive sins, the questions we should ask is how. It is not, however, difficult if one realises that Jesus was the Son of God and as such had the power to see into the souls of the petitioner and to determine the exact state of that soul in relation to its threads of fate.

He was able to judge whether indeed this soul had become so good and so penitent that he had indeed reached a point where he had redeemed all his guilt. Jesus was able to see this and as such He could say that their sins were forgiven. Remember, He did not say this to every Tom, Dick and Harry. He said this to certain people. Some churches, however, took this as a letter of safe conduct and went about forgiving sins. They could not even see into the souls of these people thus having not the foggiest idea what they were doing.

They could not tell whether the individual was truly penitent or whether the person had reached a stage in his maturity that he had truly redeemed his guilt. Jesus did not act arbitrarily. He did not forgive sins that had not already been forgiven through the actions of the inflexible Laws of God. He had seen ethereally that the threads of fate attached to these individuals had already been cut off or were about to be cut off by the elemental beings. He was using those words as an earthly anchor to inform those concerned that they could now start a new life and that their former trespasses had fallen off. He was only conveying what He saw ethereally to those concerned.

All this the church knew nothing about. They simply went about forgiving sins and leading the masses to believe that their sins indeed had been forgiven. These masses were forgiven nothing. It was all an utter deception and delusion which has led many millions to waste valuable time. Instead of working on themselves so that their sins are truly forgiven through the inflexible Laws, they simply went to sleep and even added more in the assurance that all they had to do was to pay some money and that prayer for the forgiveness of sins will be said on their behalf and that the church father in any case had the power to forgive sins since he was an envoy of God.

Matthew 9:10-13 “And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. (11) And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (12) But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. (13) Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The exclusive nature of the religion of Israel was brought into sharp focus here. Those who thought themselves better than the others felt that it was in God’s Law not to mix with these. Those whom society had regarded as sinners were not to be mixed with. They were to be ostracized, ignored and looked down upon. They were even to be pitied. How was anything healthy to blossom in such circumstances. It was scandalous. These were people who claimed that they knew the Laws of God. They claimed that they knew about the Love of God yet they never practiced it. They appointed themselves guardians of the Laws of Moses yet they showed by their actions that they had not the faintest idea of his message.

The cold calculating intellect with which these people worked exposed them the more to the searching gaze. They were not called ones; they could not be called ones as they did not possess that quality of spirit which is a characteristic of those who had been chosen by God: love. These were self appointed teachers, who basked in their own glory and the respect paid to them by the people. They regarded others as unclean and would never suffer themselves to sit with them, much less talk to them. How then were they meant to guide the people to the right path?

They wanted Jesus to use the same yardstick, to apply the rule of exclusion. They decided who was and who was not a sinner. Jesus rebuffed them by saying that He had not come for the self-righteous. He had not come to save those who already thought themselves to be saved. Those who thought that they had a right to demand an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.

He had come among the people of Israel to save those who wanted to be saved, those who knew that they were sinners, those who were humble enough to know that they were sinners and were prepared to make the efforts to change themselves.

Matthew 9:14-1714 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?
15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.
16 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.
17 Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

For the first time Jesus alluded to the fact that He might not be around on earth for much longer. This is one of the verses that people quote to back their assertions that Jesus came to die and that the real purpose of His Mission was this death. Foreknowledge that He was going to die is not proof that He came primarily to die.

In fact Isaiah 53 is devoted to this. His death was definitely predicted, but this is not to say that it was in the Will of God or that Jesus was happy with it. There are verses that we shall come to presently which point to the fact that Jesus did not come for the sole purpose of dying and carrying our sins on His shoulders. All that He had said so far points to the contrary. He knew the controversy that His Teaching brought with the religious authorities, it was only a question of time before they would think of ways of getting rid of Him and that also it would only be a question of time before they would be able to convince someone to betray Him.

It was all a question of a race for time whereby Jesus would complete as much of His Mission as possible before the people who had presented themselves as Lucifer’s servants would use the earthly authority that they had against Him to thwart His Mission. The prevailing evil almost made this outcome inevitable. The fact that it was predicted had nothing to do with it.

A prophecy is always to be regarded as a warning of impending events. They are given so that those concerned may take heed and change their ways. If the prophecy is an unfavourable one like in the case of Jesus, then those concerned were meant to take this to heart and change their ways. Isaiah saw what could happen to the Son of God if the prevailing evil still reigned in Israel by the time He had to come. It was seen that if mankind did not change their ways then their hatred for anything from the Light would prompt them to offer themselves to Lucifer as executioners of the Divine Word. It was given as a warning to the people of Israel that they would be murderers of the Word of God if they continued in their evil ways. The prophecy would come to be fulfilled if they did not change their ways.

The people of Israel should have taken a harder look at this prophecy and should have examined themselves. If they had changed for the better then definitely this prophecy would never have been fulfilled. No prophecy is inevitably fulfilled. They depend entirely on the conditions of the souls of those involved. If the souls change then the fulfilment of the prophecy also changes as a matter of course.

There can be no subterfuge. These people did not heed the warnings sent to them centuries before and still in spite of these warnings allowed themselves to be used by the hate-filled darkness. To even assert that in was in God’s Will that He had to die makes us guilty of a double murder, of an indolence which prevents us from thinking matters through for ourselves. The consequences will be terrible.