The Authority to Forgive

steelflames's picture
Submitted by steelflames on Tue, 2008-01-29 19:06

A thought occurred to me last year during a scripture meditation that I could not answer for myself. It is this:

If Jesus, the Son of Man, had the authority to forgive the sins of the paralytic in Matthew, then why did Jesus have to die on a cross to forgive all our sins?

It seems if there needed to be a symbol to mankind, that God giving his own Son to die is about as big as it gets. But if Jesus forgave this paralytic man, could he not have forgiven Adam right from the beginning, rather than allowing millenia of sinful people that inherited Adam's original sin?

Overall, it just seems awkward to me that the New Testament story is largely about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ so that by his blood we may all be saved. But here He is forgiving a man before He is crucified, and the man doesn't even ask for it.

‹ Loving your Enemies Oneness and Trinity ›
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