Total Deliverance

Luke 5:20-26 (ESV)

20 And when he saw their faith, he said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." 21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 22 When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, "Why do you question in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, "Your sins are forgiven you," or to say, "Rise and walk?" 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins - he said to the man who was paralyzed - "I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home." 25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. 26 And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen extraordinary things today."

In the last section it was seen that the Pharisees wilfully blinded from reaching the right conclusion about what the manifest works of God in Christ actually evidenced. Persistence in this unbelief eventually led to the most chilling thing, I think, that the Lord ever said; it was about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Persistent refusal to acknowledge the True Power in Christ as, evidenced by the works He did, brings not only eternal judgment (which all unbelievers receive) but the temporal inability to repent. God will not grant repentance to those who persistently harden their own hearts in the glow of so great a light. Pharaoh is the OT example of this. One might even go so far as to believe the implications of Romans Chapter 9 that, like Pharaoh, the intransigent Pharisees were raised up for this very purpose - that God would be glorified through their damnation. Tough stuff. Only remember that their damnation is on account of their own, unforced, willing unbelief.

But I want to move on to the matter of the forgiveness of the paralytic's sins. It has already been seen that the vicarious faith of the paralytic's friends was God's means of bringing him to Christ. Now we see that Christ forgives his sins absent any action on the man's part. One has to be careful not to go beyond what the whole counsel of God says - that it is through repentance and faith in Christ's finished work (or the Christ by whom the work would be finished) that we are justified. This analogy falls short of that. But it does illustrate the entirely sovereign nature of God's forgiveness. (Jonah 2:9) There are those whom God has sovereignly purposed to forgive - and He has ordained the means by which this will be brought to pass.

Not only that, but the communication of the forgiveness of God brings with it two things - the ability to walk and the desire to glorify God for His grace and mercy. Both of these are evidenced in this incident. Let me repeat that God's forgiveness communicated to a person brings with it all that is necessary for life and godliness; it brings Christ Himself. "To as many as received Him, to them gave He the power (Greek: "power" = exousia - meaning "the right", which is the sort of power deriving from position or authority - His authority) to become the children of God." (John 1:12-13)

Right at this point is where my own ire is kindled by ministries that peddle deliverance. There is no shortage of them. They falsely bamboozle people into thinking that Christians can be still under so-called generational curses, or that they can be possessed by demons. By this they participate in the Nicolaitan heresy of exercising power over the people falsely, and supposedly in the name of Christ. The Jesus Christ that I know is sufficient for all things. When He comes in He brings the power of Almighty God with Him; deliverance arrives with the Deliverer - in the Person of the Deliverer. The problem is not residual demons or generational curses - it is the problem of not believing Christ for salvation. And those who do not believe in His finished work actually blaspheme His Name and have never truly belonged to Him.

Again, it is the finished work of Christ that we abide in and this we do solely by faith. It is not Christ plus something else. It is not that Christ did something and we have to undertake some additional procedure, some rite, some ceremony, some human mumbo jumbo in order to complete our deliverance from the powers of darkness and the corruptions of our own nature. Many unbelievers are kept in a permanent state of slavery by deliverance ministries, because the Lord Jesus Christ is not held forth as the only and sufficient Saviour from all things, to be received and manifested through faith alone. The ministry (or its practitioners and main gurus) interpose themselves between Christ and the people. And many of their followers are not saved to begin with, because they have not trusted the Lord Jesus Christ for everything.

These wolves make it complicated so that they can feel important and useful and be seen as pious, helpful, humble, devoted contributors. In fact they are gnostoic corrupters of the gospel, pointing people away from Christ and His glory.

Look into this account of the paralytic in Luke and see the acted parable. Believe that Jesus delivers His people to the uttermost. Yes, they walk through doubts and tribulations and oppression, depression, illness, contrary circumstance, persecutions and a whole list of obstacles - but their deliverance from these is solely and completely through sovereign power of Christ, Who finished His work on the cross. And true shepherds will always - I don't mean mostly - they will always point people to the Christ of the cross and the cross of Christ as the sole answer for everything. It's too simple for the false teachers because it leaves glory only for Christ. They can't believe it. Some refuse to believe it because it leaves no room for human intervention, addition or manipulation. But I say that any putative shepherd who points anybody anywhere but to the cross of Christ is accursed. Not should be accursed. Is now and actually accursed.

There is such a thing as deliverance from demons. It happens every day all across the world. It happens when people are saved by the power of God and Christ comes into them. There are also other deliverances. These are the deliverances "staged" by the demonic powers themselves to keep the focus of people on demonic power, so that they will never look to the Deliverer Himself. Satan is perfectly content to play these games if it will hinder the gospel.

What demons do among pagans as a sideshow is no business of the church, unless it interferes with the propagation of the true gospel of liberation. Paul demonstrated this by his dealings with the divining slave girl in Philippi, in Acts Chapter 16. How could we miss the fact that the whole world already lies in the power of the evil one? He works in the sons of disobedience constantly. Sometimes this manifests as classic "possession" - but that is merely the window dressing of the underlying universal reality. The only hope is Christ, and the only gospel is Him crucified. Be gone from me all you perverters of the simplicity that is in Him. He is the Truth! And His true people know it and will trust Him to the end.

And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen extraordinary things today."