Which is Easier?

For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? 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. And he arose, and departed to his house.
Matthew 9:5-7

I woke up this morning thinking about medical diagnoses and how many are given to us at times.  A particular friend was on my heart, who has a listing of so many diagnoses that she could make alphabet soup.  At that same moment I was pondering the list of disorders, I heard the Word of the Lord repeat the scripture of Matthew 9  in my mind, "Which is easier..." 

It got me wondering, why is it easier for us to believe the magnitude of our sins are forgiven, or that we have eternal peace with God and a new home in Heaven when we die, but we get stuck at believing in Jesus' redemptive work of healing for our physical bodies here on Earth?

Which is easier to believe?  

Probably it's easier to believe our sins are forgiven, because we often do not emotionally or physically feel the weight of all those sins in our body the same way that we feel pain or disease.  It's easy to feel the difference between your healthy body and an unhealthy body, or know when an illness or injury affects you.  With the physical body, we can measurably experience the difference between our good health and a negative health.  With sin, people don't immediately feel disease impacting their souls.  The eternal effects of sin are more intangible than say a broken leg, diabetes, or a stroke.  Because humanity is more experienced with the physical realm via our senses (touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell), our spiritual plane of existence is more easily theorized than practically experienced.

Yet, if scripture is to be understood as true, than the healing Jesus offers to all who come to Him in Isaiah 53 is a package deal with the forgiveness of our sins.  The fullness of Isaiah 53 is explained just one chapter earlier in Matthew (8:16-17), where it states all of Jesus' ability to heal disease and broken bodies and offer deliverance from demons was accomplished as fulfillment of Isaiah 53, by Jesus' stripes we were healed.  Healing and salvation are two parts of the same coin.  Isaiah 53 intertwines Jesus' ability to physically heal people with His ability to be the vessel for our forgiveness of sins. 

Which is easier to believe?

If only we could see and experience spiritually the way we understand and relate to our physical world; it would transform our minds.  Many of the roadblocks to healing for our bodies would fall away.  Our willingness to embrace disease would be eradicated, and our ability to believe the Word of the Lord would grow and overcome the world. 

Scripture states forgiveness of sins is just as easy as the healing of a paralytic body, and Jesus has the power to offer you both!

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Interested in learning more about scriptural healing? Check out
Dr. Lilian B. Yeomans' books.

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