Father Stephen De Young: We’ll be picking up in Luke, chapter five, verse one, but a couple of things before that. The first thing I just wanted to address briefly. Because again, I watch things on YouTube and History Channel. Going back to the end of Luke 2. Yeah, the end of Luke 2, there’s that little note in versus 51 and 52. I talked about 51 a little, I didn’t talk a lot about 52. But verse 52 is “and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men”. This has become, unfortunately for certain people, a verse that they take out of context. And either try to use this to say, “Well, look, if Jesus increased in wisdom, that means he must not have had wisdom before, right?” Stature is pretty obvious. He got taller. That’s a gimme.

Interlocutor: It also says he increased in favor with God and men.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, but those aren’t as big of a problem. I don’t think any of it is a problem, but people don’t jump on that as quickly as they jump on the wisdom part and try to use this to argue that somehow Jesus was lacking in something and then grew into it and then use that as an argument that he wasn’t God. Or alternatively, they’ll use this to defend a kind of incorrect Christology where they’ll use it to try to argue for the idea that there’s sort of this human being, Jesus, who’s sort of separate from the second person of the Trinity, who’s separate from the Son of God. Like they’re sort of connected to each other. Which historically was called Nestorianism. But sort of a version of that.

And they’ll use this as an excuse to try to sort of get into Jesus’s quote unquote “human psychology” as a general principle. If you hear someone talking about Jesus and they start talking about His psychology, they start talking about, “Well, how did Jesus feel when this happened?” Or, “What was Jesus thinking?” That’s a person to be watched very closely because in general, that’s not going to go good places. Because of course not just as Orthodox Christians, as Christians, we believe that, of course, Christ pre-existed before He was born. He existed already. Jesus is a divine person. He’s one of the three persons of the Trinity. And He then becomes incarnate by taking upon Himself human nature. But He doesn’t attach Himself to a human being, but He Himself, that Divine Person takes upon Himself our human nature. And that divine person is born from the Virgin Mary.

That’s why we refer to the Virgin Mary as the Theotpkos, the one who gives birth to God, because Jesus is God. So vis-‡-vis this verse, which is then used for backup, for some of those arguments. This is actually a reference to about three times in the Book of Proverbs. And I should have written down the exact references, but I could get back to you next time on those. But three times in the Book of Proverbs, it says, “The wise man will grow in wisdom and stature before the Lord.”

The reason that St. Luke uses this wording here about Christ is that he’s trying to say about Jesus as He grows up that He is that wise man from Proverbs. Because if you remember when we talked about Proverbs about two and a half years ago now, when we were going through Proverbs, most of Proverbs was set in the framework of a father telling his son, educating and teaching his son wisdom. So what St. Luke is doing here is he’s showing us that Jesus sort of is that perfect son, right? As He’s subject to his parents, as it says in verse 51, He makes himself subject to His parents in humility, but then He has this sort of perfect human childhood and life.

And the reason that’s important isn’t just St. Luke doing something neat and giving us a call back to the Old Testament. The reason this is important, and you’ll find this in a lot of the Church Fathers. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century, St. Cyril of Alexandria at the beginning of the fifth century, talk about the fact that Christ, as He lived through these parts of human life that we all live through from birth to growing up to adulthood and then death, that by God, living through these parts of our human life, He sanctified, He made holy, He redeemed those parts of life by doing them perfectly.

So, when St. Paul later, who we’re going to get into eventually, when St. Paul talks about “In Christ us having a new nature”, or “those of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death” or what, he talks about, “If we have died with Him, how much more will we be saved by his life?” That’s the idea that St. Paul is alluding to, that Christ gives us His life, not just in a general sense like life force or something, but He gives us His life in place of our life, that that’s part of what we receive in Christ, that he sanctifies each part. And this is why it’s so important that we have in the Gospels not just Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Some of our Christian brothers and sisters, when they talk about Christ, they talk a lot about the crucifixion, they talk some about His resurrection, talk a little bit about his birth, and you’ll get some of his teaching. But his actual life, the fact that he lived a human life for 30+ years on this earth, that kind of gets ignored.

But there’s a substantial amount of the Gospels talking about His life, not just what He taught, not just miracles, but His life. And so, St. Luke is making the point to tell us about Him growing up, to give us that element that Jesus as God experienced what we experience, as we are children, we grow to adulthood, like I said this morning, eventually I might. But as we go to maturity in adulthood in Christ, God experienced that as well, and He sanctified it and He made it holy. And so it’s possible for a child, for a three year old to become Christlike, because Christ was three years old. It’s possible for a seven-year-old to become Christlike because Christ was seven years old.

Interlocutor: Teenagers are questionable.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, that’s even trickier. But apparently Christ was 15 years old. [Laughter]I was not Christlike when I was 15, but He was 15, right? So, this also helps fight our tendency as modern Western people to sort of intellectualize and rationalize the Christian life. We think being a good Christian consists of knowing certain things, or checking the true/false, “I believe this and I believe that”. And if someone doesn’t understand that, well, then they’re some kind of second-class Christian or sometimes we would worry about their salvation, “Well, he didn’t know XYZ, he couldn’t…”

But the point is, seven years old, Christ was Christlike, obviously. And so, a seven-year-old with their seven-year-old faculties can be Christlike. It’s not a question of purely intellectual knowledge or intellectual agreement with a series of rational arguments. That’s not the core of what our faith is and what the Christian life is.

So, I wanted to make that note since I hadn’t really commented on it that much, as we went, I commented more on verse 51 and not on verse 52, but verse 52 comes up.

So now, by way of quasi-non-introduction, again, the previous Luke Bible studies are on the church website, so if you listen to the first one, you can hear my long, long introduction. I was reminded of how long they are by my sister this week because she decided Christmas was coming up, she said, “I’ll listen to my brother’s Bible studies on the beginning of Luke”. And she said, “I’m about 45 minutes into the first one. And you haven’t gotten to Luke 1:1 yet.” [Laughter]

That’s why I don’t repeat them each Luke class. You can go back and get that, but just to kind of catch us up a little bit, we’re only four chapters in, but we’ve seen the birth of St. John the Baptist, St. John the Forerunner. We’ve seen the birth, or not the birth, but the announcement of Christ’s birth to His mother and then the birth of St. John and of Christ. And we saw one episode from Christ’s childhood and then the passage we just talked about that He grew to adulthood. Last time we talked about the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry, after He was tempted in the wilderness, He came and began preaching, first in the synagogues and in the synagogue in his hometown, things didn’t go so well. They tried to kill him. So that’s kind of the definition of things going bad.

And so, we saw him now, he’s continued to travel through Galilee and at the very end of the last chapter he came to Capernaum, which was the biggest city in that part of Galilee on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. And at the very end we were told he was in Simon, who will later become Simon Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law. So I can make another mother-in-law joke like “See, God loves everyone, even mothers-in-law” or whatever we want to say. But so Christ healed his mother-in-law and that’s basically where we left off.

Interlocutor: Can you redefine for me Jesus’s title when they say Son of David, Son of God, and He’s not Son of David?

Fr. Stephen: Well, he’s both. He’s both the Son of David and the Son of God. But Son of David in particular is a messianic title, meaning when we talk about the Messiah, Christ is just the Greek word for Messiah. Christos for mashiach in Hebrew, literally means “the anointed one”. But the prophecy was that there would be a king descended from David who is sort of theologically the ideal king. And as a fun Bible trivia fact, David is the person most mentioned in the Bible more than any other individual character. Assuming God is not a character, if you take God out of the picture, then David is the next most mentioned. So he’s going to be descended from David and that’s sort of his credential, right? That he’s the Messiah, he’s the real king. The real king is the one descended from David.

Interlocutor: Descended from David, in what capacity?

Fr. Stephen: Well, literally the fact that Mary was a descendant of David from the tribe of Judah. So there’s the literal aspect. And then also in the sense that David is sort of the pattern. Again, David was seen as being the sort of ideal king, and so the promises, they had a long run remember when we were going through First and Second Kings, they had a long run of not very good kings, both Israel and Judah. And so the promise was no, we’re going to have one like David again. So in both of those senses that David is sort of the paradigm and that linearly, he is a descendant.

And so, Son of God is a two-fold title because on the one hand that title was used as we saw in the Old Testament sometimes just to refer to the king, to the Davidic king who was seen as sort of the adopted son of God once he was coronated. And sometimes in the Old Testament it’ll talk about sons of God and what it’s referring to is kings and of course the pagan kings’ claim to literally a lot of times be the sons of various pagan gods. So there’s that element.

There’s also however, especially in St. Luke’s Gospel as we’re going to see some more tonight as we get into this where St. Luke’s Gospel, and then it’s going to be very clear in St. John’s Gospel, that they mean that Jesus is literally the Son of God. He’s the Son of God in the sense that he was begotten by God the Father, the pre-existing Son. So that title sort of has both resonances. When we saw it used in Matthew, St. Matthew usually used it to refer more to the idea of him being the Davidic king. But St. Luke, it’s going to sort of verge over to the other. And then, as I said, once we get into St. John’s Gospel, he’s going to be very clear he’s talking about the fact that Jesus is literally God’s Son. So yeah, both of those are in play.

And one last note on David, since it’s been a while since we talked about this, I was just saying David was the pattern for the ideal king. And some of you may have been wondering, “David did a lot of bad stuff like murder and adultery, etc. How is he the ideal king?” This is interesting because Jewish readers go about this a very different way than Christian readers typically do. But you see right away if you remember back when we got into First Kings, after Solomon, remember, the Kingdom of Israel got split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. And Solomon’s son Rehoboam became the king of Judah and the first king of Israel, the northern kingdom was a guy named Jeroboam who had been one of Solomon’s court officials who basically sort of staged a coup and took ten of the tribes with him. But at the beginning of his reign as king, God sends a prophet to him and says to him, “If you walk in all my ways and keep all my laws the way David did.” So put a star there, the way David did, “Then I will make a covenant with you the same way I did with David. And one of your descendants will always sit upon the throne of the northern king.”

Of course, we know Jeroboam did do that. He became the paradigm of a bad king, he set up the golden calves at Bethel and Dan and everything else, right? So he started the ball rolling in the bad direction. But already there, we’re just two generations away and God is saying about David, “he kept all my commandments and walked in all my ways.” Flip back a couple of pages, it’s the same author. The way we as Christians have typically read that is David repented, and a good chunk of the latter part of Second Samuel was about David’s repentance and he had to pay a big price even though he repented.

Remember, he lost children. His son Absalom staged a revolt against him. There was all kinds of chaos in his family, in his household. He had all kinds of consequences he had to live through, but he repented, he wrote Psalm 50, or 51 in the King James numbering, about his repentance. And so, after his repentance and after God restores him, it’s as if those sins are gone, they’re forgiven. God doesn’t remember them anymore.

Now, as I said, interestingly, that’s not the way most Jewish interpreters read it. Most Jewish interpreters go back and try and justify everything David did, which to me raises the question, well, then why was he repenting of it? If it was somehow okay that he killed Uriah, I don’t know how you get that, but if that was somehow okay, then why is he in sackcloth and ashes? But that’s the approach that also is going to be important in terms of the way forgiveness of sins works, that God has already been presented to us in the Old Testament as a God who keeps no records of wrongs. Once someone has repented, legitimately, heals and restores that person and those sins are gone, they’re not just sort of like, “Well, okay, I guess I’ll give you a pass on that. But I remember, don’t you do it again.” That’s not how it works.

So, unless there are any other questions, let’s get started here in Luke chapter five.

So†it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to†hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing†their†nets.

Lake of Gennesaret is the Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Kinnareth or the Sea of Tiberias. That word that is translated, “washing” is really more like mending or fixing, because of course, they’re using these nets to catch fish. There was not a Walmart to go to buy a new net; they were not disposable. So, at the end of a day of fishing, you had to go and clean it out, get everything out of it, you had to fix the holes and the tears and mend it to get ready for the next day. So there’s this huge crowd coming around Jesus, crowding in on him. He’s standing by the lake. He sees these two boats there. The fishermen are off busy with their nets that have left the boats.

Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simonís, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He†sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat.

So as St. Luke presents it, he already knows Simon, who’s going to be Simon Peter, remember he was just at his house in the last chapter, met his mother-in-law. So he already knows Simon. And so, one of these boats is Simon’s. He asked him, “Let me put out to shore, I’ll keep the crowd back a little bit and I could preach from there”.

When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon,†ìLaunch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.î But Simon answered and said to Him, ìMaster, we have toiled all night and caught†nothing; nevertheless†at Your word I will let down the net.î And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signaled to†their†partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.†When Simon Peter saw†it,†he fell down at Jesusí knees, saying,†ìDepart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!î

The way fishing works, Simon is presented to us as a little more well-to-do than Jesus and his family, at least. Simon owns a boat, which is something, right? But we talked before about how most of the people in Galilee were peasants, didn’t own the land that they were working, and they were farmers. Most of the fishermen would not own their own boat. They worked their whole lives, maybe to try and be able to get their own boat, but they did not own their own boat. So Simon has his own boat. He’s got other people working with him out on the lake. He’s got enough money to own a house in a city, Bethsaida, we talked about how Nazareth was sort of a village that moved around a little bit because they were mostly laborers who were farm laborers. So they’d have to move from place to place as the harvest went. Whereas Bethsaida is an actual city that’s a fixed place. It has fixed homes, of which Simon owns one. So he’s a little more well to do.

He’s still a peasant, he’s still not a Roman citizen. And so, realistically, at any time, the Romans could have come and taken his house, taken his boat, taken his debts, done whatever they wanted to him. But the reason they didn’t do that is he was in the class of people who they could tax heavily. You’re not going to get a lot of taxes out of a village like Nazareth because nobody has anything. But it was in the Romans’ best interest to keep this kind of upper lower class going among the peasants so they’d have someone to extract taxes from on the land. And they certainly weren’t going to go out and do the fishing. So they have two fold, they have laborers and they have a tax base.

So they’ve been out all night, they haven’t caught anything. And remember, we take for granted that, “Oh, well, they had a bad night fishing.” These are subsistence fishermen, you have too many nights where you don’t catch anything, you’ve got nothing to eat, you’ve got nothing to give the tax man when he comes around. This is beyond paycheck to paycheck because they don’t have anybody writing a paycheck. This is, you catch fish or you’re in trouble, you’re destitute pretty quickly.

So what Jesus does here in giving them this huge catch of fish is bigger than just like “Oh, hey, wow. This guy can do neat magic tricks, He can make a whole bunch of fish appear.” This is essentially a huge windfall. This is a huge windfall for them. This is a huge miracle for them and their families.

Additionally, you look at the way Simon reacts, right? He doesn’t just say, “Oh, wow, thanks.” Or, “Gee, how do you know where the good fishing spot was? I’ve been doing this my whole life. You got some good radar.” He says, “depart from me for I’m a sinful man, Lord.” This is a kind of extreme reaction. But you have to take into account exactly what happened here.

We’ve seen a lot already, and Luke calls us back to Genesis a lot. Remember what happened on the fifth day of creation, God created the birds of the sea and the fish of the waters. And what does it specifically say? He says, “Let them be filled and then they teemed”. The waters just teemed with life. The sky just teemed with life. So when Jesus says this over water, that as far as Simon has been able to tell, all night, is empty, right? He’s not catching anything. This is just empty, dead water. But Jesus says this, and now all of a sudden, the boats are sinking, the nets are tearing, there’s fish everywhere. This is what he picks up on. This isn’t just a magic trick. This wasn’t just he had some neat trick for being able to find fish. Jesus has just done something that the only other time he’s heard about God did it. So St. Luke is setting us up here. He’s already shown us in the last chapter, Jesus commanding demons, and they obey Him. Jesus commanding a fever, and it obeyed Him. Now he’s commanding the creation. He’s commanding nature and it’s obeying him.

Again, while some of our more liberal or atheist friends will say, “Oh, Jesus never says he’s God in Luke”. That’s right, Jesus never just walks out and says, “Hi, I’m God”, right? But St. Luke is telling us again with example after example after example, not so subtly, right? Jesus does the things that God does. He’s the Son of God, and he does the things that God does. So we need to keep that in mind as we continue. So that’s why this miracle has special significance. Special significance not just to Peter personally getting this windfall, but also what it connotes, beyond just this catch of fish.

For he and all who were with him were†astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also†were†James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon,†ìDo not be afraid.†From now on you will catch men.î†So when they had brought their boats to land,†they†forsook all and followed Him.

The reason I went through all that with the way the local economy worked was for this, you find out James and John the sons Zebedee are his partners with the other boat. So Zebedee presumably owned the other boat and sent his sons out on it to fish.

When he tells them to come follow him, to become his disciples and they leave those boats and they leave those nets and walk away. That’s not just, “Oh, hey, well, let me lock up and we’ll go…” They are giving up not just their greatest possessions, they’re giving up their livelihood. This is how they fed themselves and their families. Now, we know that Simon Peter at least had a family because it’s his mother-in-law, that means he’s got a wife, right? This is how they provide for themselves. This is how they provide for their families. This is how they eat. This is how they put clothes on their back. This is how they put a roof over their heads. They’re walking away from all of that to follow Jesus. And it’s not like Jesus is driving around in a Rolls Royce with a big wad of cash either, right? Like, “Oh, well, he’ll pay for stuff.” Jesus is even poorer than they are, right? He literally only owns the clothes on his back. So they’re taking a leap into the unknown. They’re taking a leap into the unknown as they go to follow him. They’re pretty much committing everything. If this doesn’t work out, there’s no plan B. They come back in a week and boats aren’t still going to be there. Somebody else is going to have taken them, the nets aren’t still going to be there.

And it happened when He was in a certain city, that behold, a man who was full of†leprosy saw Jesus; and he fell on†his†face and implored Him, saying, ìLord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.î

So we’ve talked a little bit, it’s been a while, though, about leprosy. What’s called “leprosy” here in the New Testament in terms of first century Palestine is actually most likely, we’re not 100% sure, but we’re probably 98% sure was what’s now called Hansen’s disease, which is a skin condition that basically causes human skin to become necrotic. It dies. So your flesh in your tissue just starts dying. It starts at the extremities and then spreads.

So, we now have some treatments and that kind of thing. We can’t really cure it, but we have treatments and that kind of thing that can control it and control the spread. And this time they had nothing. So people would… it would start in their fingers. They’d start losing their fingers. They didn’t even really have a way to do amputations. So we’re talking about rotting and falling off, get gangrenous and fall off their fingers, toes, ears, nose, that’s where it would start, it would basically spread until the person couldn’t take care of themselves and they died.

And because they didn’t know how it was passed along in the first century, anyone who had it, who was found to have it was thrown out of the cities. They had to live in sort of camps, in caves and that kind of thing outside the cities. And they were required by law if they came near anyone, to announce the fact that they were unclean while the people were still off at a distance so that no one would get near them, accidentally, accidentally touch them. So they were completely, totally ostracized from society, weren’t allowed to reenter.

So just this person approaching Jesus, we’re told by St. Luke, not just this is a person who has leprosy, but he’s full of leprosy, meaning he’s got an advanced case. He is dying, slowly and painfully, this man is dying. And so he approaches Jesus, which technically was illegal, although he’s sort of at the “what has he got to lose” point. I mean, they can execute him, that’s about it. Comes up to Jesus, but even more importantly than having the boldness to go up to him, he says, “If you want to, if you will, if you desire it, you can make me clean.” Meaning you can cure this. You can cure this; you could restore me to health.

Since they had no way to cure this, right? It’s not that there was a cure. It’s not that, “Well, I heard there’s a treatment somewhere. I heard there’s a trick and you can cure this and gosh, Jesus, I bet you could figure out how to do it.” This is unheard of. No one’s cured of leprosy. No one. The only time anybody has heard of anybody being cured of leprosy is maybe Naaman in the leper who Elijah cured in the Old Testament, but that’s about it. That’s once. And that was by one of the greatest prophets who ever lived. So by doing this, he’s not only showing boldness in approaching Jesus, but he’s also by saying that he believes Jesus could do it, he’s at least minimally saying that he believes Jesus is this great prophet, if not the Messiah, he believes he can do this.

But keeping in mind how this disease works and what the regulations are, that’s why it’s important that St. Luke says:

Then He put out†His†hand and touched him, saying,†ìI am willing; be cleansed.î†Immediately the leprosy left him. And He charged him to tell no one,†ìBut go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as a testimony to them,†just as Moses commanded.î

So Jesus doesn’t just, as he could have, remember every other healing we’ve seen Jesus do, He’s just spoken, remember He rebuked the fever, right? So the pattern we’ve seen so far again, going back to Genesis, God spoke and things happen as Jesus speaks and things happen. But with this man who is full of leprosy, Jesus touches him, right? Touches him not because he has to, not because curing leprosy works different, but he reaches out and touches. This man, because this is a man who hasn’t been touched by anybody, presumably, for years. He’s had to stay 20, 30 yards off from all their human beings for years. He was filthy and unclean. But Jesus touches him.

Interlocutor: What about the woman that touched Jesus?

Fr. Stephen: We’ll get there later. But the reason, of course, in addition to worrying about contagion is if you touch someone who is unclean, you would become unclean. But part of what St. Luke is showing us is that with Jesus, it works in the reverse way. Jesus touches him, Jesus doesn’t become unclean, Jesus touches him and he becomes clean. He becomes clean. It works the other way.

And so he tells them to go and follow essentially the civil regulations, tells him, “Don’t go around telling people I’m the Messiah.” And we’ve talked before about why he did that, because claiming to be the Messiah is a sure way to get yourself killed. And for Jesus, it’s not time for that yet. That time will come. We’ll see that later on. But it’s not that time yet. But he does tell him to go to the priest and go through the motion, but he says, present yourself to the priests in order for someone who had been a leper, and this was mostly theoretical because it didn’t happen a lot, but if someone had been declared a leper, sometimes this isn’t scientific, sometimes they were wrong, somebody had some other skin condition and they recovered from it turned out it wasn’t leprosy, what they had to do is come to the priest and essentially strip naked and let the priest inspect them, their skin, to make sure there was no sign of it anymore. So this man goes from being full of leprosy to not having a speck on him. Not having a speck on him. And so then the priest could sort of certify, “All right, there’s no leprosy on this person. They can come back into society.”

And as usual, as we’ve seen, when Jesus tells people not to say anything:

However,†the report went around concerning Him all the more; and†great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by Him of their infirmities. So He Himself†often†withdrew into the wilderness and†prayed.

Now, again, I’ll just make a quick note on this. We see here get an example of Jesus praying. This is also something that some people point out, especially our Muslim friends, will point out and say, “Well, Jesus prayed, so he can’t be God”. And as I said last time I brought this up, if God becomes a man and walks this earth, do you think he’s going to be an atheist? You think he’s not going to be religious? That sort of doesn’t make any sense. So it is normal for Jesus as God the Son, to commune and spend time with God the Father.

Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was†present†to heal them.†Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with†his†bed through the tiling into the midst†before Jesus. When He saw their faith, He said to him,†ìMan, your sins are forgiven you.î And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, ìWho is this who speaks blasphemies?†Who can forgive sins but God alone?î

But when Jesus†perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them,†ìWhy are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ëYour sins are forgiven you,í or to say, ëRise up and walkí? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sinsîóHe said to the man who was paralyzed,†ìI say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.î †

Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house,†glorifying God†And they were all amazed, and they†glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, ìWe have seen strange things today!î

So notice, St. Luke presents things a little different than St. Mark did. Remember in St. Mark anytime we saw Pharisees and scribes show up, they were all rotten. They were all rotten all the time, right? They were all just showing up to cause trouble for Jesus. And remember, he always said when Jesus was in Galilee, he’d always say scribes and Pharisees came up from Jerusalem, right? They took a trip just to come and come after Jesus. Whereas St. Luke here says that some of them were included in the people who are coming to hear Jesus. Now, as we hear the rest of the story, things didn’t necessarily progress well, but at least at first, at first some of them were on board and at least interested.

And we’re going to see, St. John’s Gospel is going to have sort of even a more nuanced picture of this because he’s going to show us examples of both kinds, those who oppose Jesus, that people like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who become followers of Jesus, so that there was sort of a mixture even among the scribes and Pharisees.

But notice, as I said, it does go bad, but initially, things seem to be going well. Now the word that the Orthodox Study Bible translates as “tiling”, it was probably not actually tiles on the roof, because this wouldn’t have been in a city in Galilee, this wouldn’t have been like a Roman villa with sort of tiles on the roof. More likely this was thatch, they had a thatch roof and so by sort of pulling aside the thatch you could open a hole, right?

And sometimes we have this image, at least I do, maybe it’s from bad Sunday school material, I don’t know, but this idea that this was sort of this big room like this, right? They cut a hole in the roof and they sort of lower this guy down with ropes, let him down. Most likely we’re talking about maybe an eight foot ceiling, right? So it says they lowered him down. They basically opened a hole and this guy’s on a pallet, they just kind of half lowered, half dropped him. This wasn’t a huge, vaulted ceiling or anything, but the idea is they can’t get in the door because there’s this crowd, but they’re so certain that Jesus can help their friend who’s paralyzed, which, again, this isn’t something that happens regularly. This isn’t something we even see in the prophets. They’re so certain that Jesus could help them that they go to the sort of extraordinary means of climbing around on the roof and breaking through and letting him down to get him healed.

And so, the way St. Luke then presents it is Jesus is sort of giving them an object lesson, right? He knows full well why they brought him here, that they brought him here. They didn’t ask Him to forgive his sins. They were there to have him healed. He’s been healing other people. But so in order to make this object lesson, he says to them, “Your sins are forgiven” first. Well, this sets off the Pharisees of the scribes, because this is definitely something you never see anyone else do.

In the Old Testament, there’s nobody forgiving sins except God himself, right? The priests go and offer sacrifices for their sins and the sins of the people, but they don’t come out afterwards and say, “Okay, your sins are forgiven”, because they don’t have that authority. They pray and ask God to forgive sins. We see lots of repentance, but we don’t see anybody forgiving sins. So the point that the scribes and the Pharisees make isn’t wrong and St. Luke isn’t saying it’s wrong. It is true, according to the Old Testament scriptures, only God can forgive sins. So, if Jesus forgives sins, he must be God, right?

The point of this story is not, “Oh, yeah, God can forgive sins, but yes, so can Jesus” That’s not the point. The point is “Only God could forgive sins, yes. And so if Jesus does it, he’s God.” This is another example of Jesus doing things that God does.

But notice, and the way we know this is an object lesson, it’s two things. First of all, it doesn’t say they start yelling this. It says they’re thinking this. And Jesus says to them, “Why are you thinking…?” So, number one, he knows their thoughts to boot, right? He knows what they’re thinking. And then he says, “But so that you will know that I have the power to forgive sins,” and then he heals them. So the purpose of the healing is for Jesus to show to these people who He is. That’s why He does the object lesson, because he’s not like the prophets who did miracles in the Old Testament or Moses who did signs and wonders of the Old Testament. So he uses this object lesson to make it clear “I’m just not another prophet doing some miracles and healing people. These healings that I’m doing are a testimony to something else. All these healings, I’ve been doing the casting out demons, I’ve been doing the fish, all that, this is all pointing to something,” and that’s his identity.

But notice at the same time here, we talked about how previously we were talking about Jesus’s birth, how St. Luke strikes this balance. At the same time that Jesus is making the point to the scribes and Pharisees that he’s God, He refers to himself as the Son of Man. We’ve talked before because Son of Man is a title that’s used at least three different ways in the Bible, just in the Old Testament, it’s used to mean Son of Adam, because remember, Adam’s name, Adamah in Hebrew, means man. It’s the same word you say Son of Adam. Sometimes it means Son of Adam, meaning connecting the person to Adam, send it from Adam. Sometimes it’s used to just refer to a human being, the sons of Adam, daughters of Eve, human being.

And then we talked about the special case in Daniel, remember, when Daniel and one of his visions saw the one like the Son of Man who came before the Ancient of Days. And so the Son of Man to Jewish people at the time was this sort of apocalyptic figure, sometimes connected to the Messiah, sometimes not, sometimes just seen as a figure who’s going to come at the end of time to judge the world. And so Jesus, as we’ve seen going through the Gospels, uses it in different ways at different times.

For example, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, when he says the Son of Man is going to come on the clouds of heaven and judge, he’s referring to that figure in Daniel. Here, I would say he’s probably referring to Son of Adam and the idea of a human being. So that St. Luke is sort of balancing these two, right at the same time that he’s saying Jesus is God, he’s also affirming that Jesus is a man.

And, as a footnote to this, there’s another bad way of speaking, I was talking about another one earlier, but sometimes you will hear people talk about the doctrines of the Church. And the way they’ll talk about them is they’ll talk about them developing or they’ll put a date on them like they’ll say, “Well, the doctrine of the Trinity was defined at the First Ecumenical Council in 325”, as if before that, nobody believed in the Trinity, as if they hadn’t figured it out before that.

And the same thing with Christ, they’ll say, well, they figured out that Jesus was one person with two natures at Council Chalcedon in 451, as if before that, nobody believed that Jesus was both God and man.

That’s the wrong way to look at the doctrines of the Church. What the doctrines of the Church are, is when we’re talking about Christology or the Trinity, theology, what these are our ways of explaining and making clear what the apostles taught us. So, for example, and I’ll talk about this a lot more when we get into St. Paul’s epistles, the doctrine of the Trinity is a way of understanding the way St. Paul speaks about God, because St. Paul makes it very clear that Jesus is God. He makes it very clear that the Father is God. He makes it very clear that the Holy Spirit is God. And he also makes it very clear that the Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Father, the Son is not the Spirit, the Father is not the Spirit. And so for us to understand what Paul is saying, since he says all that, we have the concept of the Holy Trinity to make sense of what St. Paul’s telling us, meaning the doctrine of the Trinity is implied in the way St. Paul speaks.

That’s what we believe about Christology, too. This isn’t something the Church fathers came up with later. This isn’t something that developed. This isn’t something that came out of a series of debates. But the Scriptures are very clear to us, well, we’ll just talk about St. Luke so far, we’re only halfway through chapter five, but St. Luke has already been very clear that Jesus is God, right? He’s shown him time and again doing things that only God can do. He’s also been very clear that he was born as a baby. He came out of Mary’s womb, right? He got laid in a manger in a food trough for animals in a cave, and he grew up and he obeyed his parents. So he’s been very clear that Jesus is a man. Well, how do we understand that? In order to understand that and speak about it coherently, we’ve come up with terminology. And that’s what the doctrine of Christology is. It’s terminology to help us talk about that. But it’s nothing new. It’s what’s latent right here in the text.

So I wanted to make that point again. I’ll make that again when we get into the Trinity in St. Paul. But the quote unquote “definition of Chalcedon”, that Christ is one person with two natures isn’t something that gets made up. It’s just terminology that gets coined to explain this, to explain how Jesus could refer to Himself as the Son of Man and then forgive sins, which only God can do. This means he’s both God and a man, right? And the two aren’t mixed together. He’s not half and half. That’s not how St Luke presents it.

It’s not that half and half, we don’t like it, or we argue that’s not how St. Luke is presenting it. So these are explanations of Scripture, not something added to what the apostles have passed down to us. It’s part and parcel.

And so, again, the man immediately jumps up. He doesn’t just jump up, he picks up his bed that he was laying on, that he was stuck in and carries it off with him. Which thus demonstrates to the Pharisees and the scribes, well, because as Jesus said, “Which is it easier to say your sins are forgiven or to tell a paralyzed person to get up and walk?” Well, he just told a paralyzed person to get up and walk, so he must be able to forgive sins, too. So, they glorify God and notice they’re filled with fear. And again, we see that fear reaction from Simon. \

And we’ve made got a little warm and fuzzy in our modern, contemporary American culture. It’s true, God loves us, right? And we sort of have this idea like we just run up and give Jesus a big hug. But that’s not the response we actually see from human beings who meet God in the Bible. Remember Isaiah tore his clothes and fell on his face. And it’s usually translated, “I am undone”. As I commented when we were going through the Hebrew there, you can’t really translate it because it’d probably be cussing if you translate it accurately. He’s just sort of “aaah!” Because suddenly he realized just how unholy he was compared to God. And Simon’s reaction here. And now this reaction that people are in fear. And in the Book of Revelation that we talked about a little bit at the retreat a few weeks ago, St. John is the one who was sitting there reclining on Jesus’s chest while they ate at the Last Supper. But when he sees Jesus in all his glory, he was flat on his face, scared to death, right?

So we need to keep that in mind. If we really encounter Christ, if we really encounter God, then our encounter with His holiness and His purity and His goodness is also going to cause us to realize that our holiness and goodness and purity is somewhat lacking. It brings about repentance.

And then of course, that sort of underselling comment, “We’ve seen strange things today.”

“It’s a little odd. You don’t see that every day, right? Paralyzed person walk, person forgiving sins…”