Correlation Between Healing and Forgiveness In Jesus’ Time Compared to Now

Question

Gramps,

What was the correlation between healing and forgiveness in Jesus’s time and what is the connection in our time between a person being healed and that person being forgiven of sins?

David

Answer

David,

Thank you for taking a moment to ask a question covering the juxtaposition of healing and forgiveness during Christ’s time versus healing and forgiveness during our time. Let’s first begin with these verses of scripture:

1. Mormon 9:9, “For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?

2. Matthew 9:6, “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

These two scriptures highlight the following that God doesn’t change, and that the Son of man is the only person who can forgive sins. If God is an unchanging being then the correlation between Christ’s time and our time are the same, with one exception — Christ being a living mortal man of flesh and blood which we do not have now. The New Testament period can be broken into two parts, as it pertains to this question, 1) when Christ was living and 2) after Christ’s resurrection when Peter was given authority to lead as the prophet of Christ’s Church (at that time).

The second verse clearly shows that the miracle, at this time, was given as a sign that Christ (the Messiah) not only can heal (as did many other prophets in the Old Testament) but that he could also forgive sins simultaneously (which no prophet ever could as done in Matthew 9: 6). Forgiveness of sins (as it is today) is only done in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — our Redeemer.

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