8 - CHALLENGES TO JESUS’ AUTHORITY

In Luke 5:12-26, we are told next of two incidents that once more raised issues about Jesus’ authority and his growing popularity. Moving about Galilee, he was confronted by a leper who pleaded to be cleansed. Note the difference in this man’s attitude from the way Simon had reacted: he believed instinctively that Jesus could heal him.

In those days, any skin affliction was seen as leprosy, not just the true form we now know as the disabling and disfiguring Hansen’s disease. Having such an affliction meant being ostracized from family and community. Jesus touched him and he was immediately healed. To touch a leper was to make oneself also diseased and, more seriously, to be impure in the sight of the law of Moses. What happened next was the point of this incident in Luke’s mind.

Jesus demanded secrecy until the man had showed himself to the priest and offered an appropriate sacrifice, as the law of Moses required. Obviously Jesus was aware that his ministry of teaching and healing had social and religious implications. The religious authorities would be the first to challenge him. The attempt to keep the incident quiet failed completely. As the news of Jesus’ power spread far and wide, more and more people flocked to hear him and have their diseases healed.

A major turning point in Jesus’ ministry was at hand. So he retreated for a time to pray. Luke frequently used such a withdrawal as a warning that a new series of conflicts was about to begin. The challenge would come from the Pharisees and scribes, (i.e. teachers of the law). In Jesus’ time they were not yet a powerful significant party, more like a minor group of religious reformers or activists. By Luke’s time fifty years later, they had come to dominate the Jewish tradition.

The incident Luke related next not only reflected the determination and faith of the sick man’s friends, but more importantly raised the question of Jesus’ authority to forgive sins. Nothing was said about the nature of the man’s illness, but the implication is that it was due to some unstated sinfulness. We might call it a psychosomatic illness arising from a deep sense of guilt. The healing of the man stands alone as an act of mercy. Jesus did not question the man’s moral character. Yet the consequences of Jesus’ action caused immense controversy.

The religious authorities charged Jesus with blasphemy for forgiving the man’s sin. In the Hebrew tradition, blasphemy involved abusing God’s name (Lev. 24:10-11, 14-16, 23); attacking something belonging to God (2 Kings 19:4. 6, 22; Ezekiel 35:1-2). In this instance, the issue was usurping God’s unique power to forgive. To the Pharisees, by healing the man and forgiving him, Jesus had violated God’s very being, as their challenge revealed. Jesus claimed to be doing what only God was capable of doing. Did he have such authority?

Luke conveyed his understanding that Jesus indeed did have such authority in the phrase he put into Jesus’ response using the familiar term, the Son of Man. To Luke, late int the 1st century CE, the term meant something more than “the Human One,” an ordinary mortal, as in the Hebrew tradition of Ezekiel and Daniel. It had already become a christological confession.