More from the story of the parapalegic.

Let's look for a few minutes at the crowd and the Teachers of the Law who were in the house where Jesus was teaching.

The Crowd

First they are being taught, and then they are being covered with mud and hay falling from the roof. Then they are amazed at what transpires.

The word Mark uses, translated as “crowd”, is one first used by Mark in the NT. It is a word, which signifies a confused majority of poor people, soldiers, not officers, or non-combat people who work for, and follow an army around. They are differentiated from the ruling class…they were definitely not in charge. In Mark, they are always around where Jesus is and are identified as social outcasts and sinners. Still they are accepted as part of Jesus ministry and are seen as alienated from the Jewish leadership. These are they with whom a good Jew would not travel not eat, though Jesus did this every day.

The Teachers of the Law

JESUS, as we have seen, had already attracted the crowds. Because of that, he had attracted the notice of the official leaders of the Jews. The Sanhedrin was their supreme court. One of its great functions was to be the guardian of orthodoxy. For instance, it was the Sanhedrin’s duty to deal with any man who was a false prophet. It seems that it had sent out a kind of scouting party to check up on Jesus; and they were there in Capernaum. No doubt they had secured an honorable place in the front of the crowd and were sitting there critically watching everything that was going on.
When they heard Jesus say to the man that his sins were forgiven it came as a shattering shock. It was an essential of the Jewish faith that only God could forgive sins. For any man to claim to do so was to insult God; that was blasphemy and the penalty for blasphemy was death by stoning (Leviticus 24:16). At the moment they were not ready to launch their attack in public, but it was not difficult for Jesus to see how their minds were working. So he determined to fling down a challenge and to meet them on their own ground.