Messiah Jesus crossed back into familiar territory, the land to which He was called. His foray into Gentile lands was a foretaste of the gospel spreading to the ultimate parts of the world (Acts 1:8), but that was not His primary goal at hand. He needed to focus on preaching the Word first to the Jews, and it would be through them that the world would be reached. The promise to Abraham in Gen 12:1-3 is that his descendants would be great and that they would be a blessing to the world. This is the grand theme of God in the Bible – to reach the lost world through the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, the Father of Faith (see Gal 3:6-9).

“His own city” refers to Capernaum, the home base for His ministry (Matt 4:13), not Nazareth where He grew up, nor Bethlehem His birth place.  Some men brought a paralyzed individual to Him, possibly the same incident referred to in Mark’s and Luke’s parallel accounts where a man was let down on a stretcher through the roof where Jesus was teaching to a standing-room only crowd.  Matthew’s abbreviated rendition focuses our attention on four succinct things. First, Jesus saw their faith. The one thing that highly impressed Him was not their good works, nor their doctrinal beliefs – as important as those things are. Rather, what caught His attention and favor was faith. God always responds to faith.  Hebrews puts it this way, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (11:6). It follows then that faith is what God is looking for. It is what pleases Him.

Second, Jesus challenges the  man to “take courage.”  We are reminded of David, who “…encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (1 Sam 30:6 KJV). Other translations put it this way: David “…drew strength from the LORD his God.” The idea is that like David, this paralyzed man who had faith, now needed the courage to act in spiritual strength. This is the sum and substance of what it means to “en-courage.” And Jesus urges the man to do just that.

Third, Jesus refers to him as “son” or literally “child,” intimating a tender relationship (a truth that is further developed in the NT, in passages like 1 John 3:1. Finally, Jesus proclaims forgiveness to the man, to the consternation of the scribes, scholars in the Mosaic law (Matt 9:3).