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Read Mark 2:1-12.
Can you imagine the scene? A tiny, first century stone house with a flat roof made of mud and straw... A crowd of people so large that it spilled out of the doorway and overflowed into the street… A mob so impenetrable that even a paralyzed man carried by his friends couldn’t get in. So, they take the outside stairs, climb onto the roof, and start digging. They lower their friend into the house and Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
It seems like Jesus is missing something, the man is paralyzed. I can imagine the man saying, “Oh, that’s not why I am here, I am here because I can’t walk.”
This is the way we all come to Jesus—with a pressing visible need. But Jesus knows something that the man doesn’t know. Jesus understands the man’s deepest need, which goes far beyond his immediate desire.
This man has a much bigger problem than his physical condition.
Jesus is saying to him, “I understand your problems, I see your suffering and it matters—because you matter. But please realize that the main problem in your life—the main problem in every person’s life is never their suffering; but always their sin.”
And by sin, the Bible means our fundamental separation from God—every bad thing proceeds from our fundamental separation from God—Bible scholars refer to this as “The Fall.” We live in a fallen world. A world that is broken. A world that is fractured. A world that is divided and paralyzed.
As a result of the Fall, many people live their lives without reference to God. They know the brokenness of the world, the fallenness of the world and they try to fix it—their own way—by relying on something else besides the Creator. They may believe, “If I had enough money, health, family, relationships, approval then everything would be alright.”