2
“Son, Your Sins Are Forgiven”
1 When Jesus+ returned to Capernaum a few days later, the word got out+ that he was back home.
2 So many people gathered that there was no longer any room, not even near the door. Jesus+ was speaking the message+ to them
3 when some people+ arrived trying to bring to him a paralyzed man being carried by four men.
4 When they were unable to bring the man to him because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above the place where Jesus+ was. After digging out the opening, they lowered down the mat on which the paralyzed man was lying.
5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Well, some of the Torah-experts were sitting there and wondering in their hearts,
7 “How dare+ this man say such a thing! He is speaking blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!+”
8 Knowing without being told+ that this was what they were thinking to themselves, Jesus said to them, “Why is it ᵖyou are thinking these things in your hearts?
9 Which is easier: To say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your mat and walk’?
10 Well, in order that ᵖyou may understand+ that the Son of Man has authority over the earth+ to forgive sins….” He said to the paralyzed man,
11 “To you I say: Get up, pick up your mat and go home.”
12 At that, the man+ got up and picked up his mat and went out in front of everyone! All the people were in awe and began to glorify God. “Never have we seen anything like this!” they exclaimed.
“It Is Not the Healthy Who Need a Physician, but Those Who Are Sick”
13 Then Jesus went out again to the lakeshore.+ Coming to him was the whole crowd, and he was teaching them.
14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Come along with me as my disciple,”+ Jesus+ said to him. So Levi+ got up and began to accompany him.
15 Later Jesus was reclining at the table for a meal in Levi’s+ house, when these people began to recline at the table to eat with Jesus and his disciples: A large number of tax collectors and sinners. (There were many of them among Jesus’ followers,+ you see.)
16 Some Torah-experts who belonged to the Pharisee party,+ when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, began saying to his disciples, “Tax collectors and sinners? Why is he eating with such people?”
17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I’m here+ to call+ not the righteous, but sinners.”
“New Wine Is Put into New Wineskins”
18 John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people+ came and said to Jesus,+ “John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast regularly. Your own disciples, however, don’t fast. Why is this?”
19 “Surely the wedding guests can’t fast, can they, while the bridegroom is with them?” Jesus said to them. “Of course not. As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
20 The time+ will come, however, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast—at that time.+
21 No one sews onto an old garment a patch of unshrunk cloth. If someone were to do that,+ the patch would pull away from it—the new from the old—and an even worse tear is sure to occur.
22 Likewise, no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If a person were to do that,+ the wine would cause the wineskins to burst apart, and the wine would be lost, as would the wineskins. No, new wine is put into new wineskins.”
“The Son of Man Is Lord Even of the Sabbath”
23 Jesus+ was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and his disciples, as they walked along,+ began picking the heads of wheat. The Pharisees began saying to him,
24 “Look! Why are they doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”
25 “Have ᵖyou never read what David did when he was hungry and in need—he and those with him, too?” Jesus said to them.
26 “When he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest,+ what was it that he ate? The very Bread of the Presence,+ which is forbidden to be eaten by anyone except+ the priests.+ And he gave some to those who were with him, too.”
27 Then he said to them, “In regard to the Sabbath, it was for the benefit of mankind+ that it was made, and not mankind for the benefit of the Sabbath.
28 So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”