Satan, because he knows his time is short, is waging war against Christ and his Church on two fronts. The first is made up of those outside the Church—unbelievers who hate Christ, as did these scribes, and therefore attack all who embrace Christ in faith. “If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, the world hates you,” Jesus warned his disciples.

The other front on which Satan is waging war against Christ and his Church these days is far more deceptive, which makes it even more dangerous. It consists of those who attack Christ and his Church from within. Among them are those who teach falsely about the mission of his Church. Frightened by the decline in church attendance these days, they erroneously believe that the mission of Church is to grow the Church, or as a synodical official once put it, “The mission of the church is missions.” So they direct all their resources to selling their congregation to the public, as if it were nothing more than a business, which, as do businesses, all too often means telling people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. But that’s not what St. Paul told the Christians in Corinth about their church. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase,” he wrote, and again, “No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

It is the Holy Spirit’s work to grow the Church, and this he does not by trying to appeal to sinful flesh, but through the preaching of his Word, which is in fact offensive to sinful flesh. Yet it alone has the power to lead sinners to Christ in true repentance. Those that try to sell their church by appealing to sinful flesh are not only guilty of blasphemously trying to play God, but end up accomplishing the same thing as those who attack the Church from the outside. They deny sinners Christ, and therefore the one thing needful for salvation and life.

And that brings us to today’s Gospel. It’s not about Jesus’ ability to heal paralytics. If that were the case, then Jesus would have healed all the paralytics in his day. Instead, our Lord did what he did to show what the mission of his Church on earth really is. As he was preaching the Word to this crowd of people that had filled the house where he was, a paralytic was brought to him by his friends, through a hole they had made in the roof of that house. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.’”

There you have it in plain and simple words. The mission of the Church is to bring the sinner to Christ for the forgiveness of his sins. But before the sinner could be brought to Christ, Christ had to come to the sinner, and he did. The Word, who was with God in the beginning, because he is God, became flesh and dwelt among us. And this he did not just to relieve people of their diseases and infirmities, though, as you see here, he did so at times during his earthly ministry. Instead, “The reason the Son of God was manifested was to destroy the devil’s work.”

He who showed mercy by healing this paralytic showed even greater mercy, not only by taking on the weakness of human flesh, but also, and even more so, by taking upon himself the burden of sin—every sin that has or ever will be committed till the end of time. And having become sin for us, he suffered the wrath of God over all those sins even to death on a cross. In so doing, Christ Jesus redeemed us from the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels by obtaining for us—and not just for us, but for all men—God’s full and free forgiveness of all our sins.

Earlier you heard how the Lord God proclaimed this very same Gospel to a guilt-ridden Jacob, not by a miracle, but this time in a dream. The ladder he saw in this dream that reached all the way up to heaven, and upon which his holy angels were ascending and descending, is Jesus—the one who through the forgiveness of his sins reconnects sinful man to his holy God and thus opens up heaven before him. But this cannot come to pass unless the forgiveness Jesus won for all men by the shedding of his holy, precious Blood is given to the sinner and made his own. Therefore, the mission of the Church is as I said: to bring the sinner to Christ for the forgiveness of his sins. And this she does through those very means Christ instituted while on earth to accomplish that very thing; which brings us back to today’s Gospel.

Consider how very much Jesus’ healing of this paralytic is like Holy Baptism. He was carried to Jesus on a bed; even so, infants are carried to him at the Font. There Jesus gave him the forgiveness he would win for all men on the cross. He does the same through Holy Baptism, as St. Peter stated so clearly when he told those on Pentecost who were cut to the heart for crucifying their Messiah, “Repent… and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.”

Consider also how very much Jesus’ words to this paralytic resemble the Absolution he spoke to you after you confessed your sins to him earlier in this Service. He who told the paralytic, “Be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you,” said to you, albeit through the mouth of his ordained, “I forgive you all your sins in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

And he who once poured his forgiveness over you and today spoke his forgiveness into you will after this sermon feed you his forgiveness, when he by the hand of his ordained places his Body onto your tongue for you to eat and pours his Blood over your lips for you to drink. From this you can see that in Christ’s Church there is nothing but sheer forgiveness poured, preached, and placed into your mouth by that man to whom Christ has given such power—or even better, authority—to do so.

And with that in mind, we return once last time to our Gospel. As this man, after Jesus forgave him his sins and healed him of his paralysis, arose from his bed and went to his earthly home, so we whose sins are forgiven will on the Last Day rise from our grave, with a body that’s been set free from every evil, and go to our eternal home.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.