I have no doubt that you are a good person and you would do all that you could to help others. But would you still help them if, by helping them, their disabilities or troubles would become yours? For example, you see a blind man struggling to cross the street. If you knew, by helping that man, you would become blind yourself, would you still help? would you help a homeless person if you would become homeless yourself? Would you support children oversees if you would change places with them?

I have to think that that is what Jesus thought about every time He helped a person. In Mark 2, Jesus heals a paralytic man brought by his four friends. But before He heals him, He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” How can He say that? Only God can say that since only God can forgiven. But even for God, He can’t just nullify sins and act like nothing happened. That would make Him unjust and He would cease to be God. Something or someone has to pay for the sins! And Jesus knew that it was His role to pay for the sins of the world. So, every time He healed a disease, but pronounced forgiveness, He was in essence saying, “I absorb your paralysis, blindness, leprosy, bleeding, anger, fornication, murder and death into my body. I absorb all your sins into my body!”

There are actually some people whose blindness I would take, whose debt I would pay, whose death I would substitute if I could – my children’s… That’s because I love them. More than I love myself.

Jesus loves you more than life. He loves you more than any parent could love his/her child.

PH