What a dramatic story Mark tells here! (Compare Matthew which is dull in comparison.) First, there is the faith and confidence of the paralyzed man and his friends in their extraordinary efforts to get him to Jesus. There is the surprise as Jesus tells the man that his sins are forgiven. That was not what he had in mind when he came. There is the stubborn blindness of the scribes who dogmatise that only God can forgive sin. (Right on! But they don't draw the obvious conclusion.) So Jesus proceeds to cure the man of his paralysis. As everyone there believed the affliction was the result of sin, its sudden disappearance meant the sin had disappeared also. No wonder people said, 'We have never seen anything like this!' Let us consider today how our sinfulness has a paralysing effect on our service of God, how we lack real freedom to carry out God's will in our lives.