Luke 5:20

Man St Mark has "Son," and St Matthew "Cheer up, son," which were probably the exact words used by Christ.

are forgiven thee Rather, have been forgiven thee, i. e. now and henceforth. In this instance our Lord's power of reading the heart must have shewn Him that there was a connexion between past sin and present affliction. The Jews held it as an universal rule that suffering was always the immediate consequence of sin. The Book of Job had been directed against that hard, crude, Pharisaic generalisation. Since that time it had been modified by the view that a man might suffer, not for his own sins, but for those of his parents (John 9:3). These views were all the more dangerous because they were the distortion of half-truths. Our Lord, while he always left the individual conscience to read the connexion between its own sins and its sorrows (John 5:14), distinctly repudiated the universal inference (Luke 13:5; John 9:3).