Specifically, Jesus’ authority to forgive sins.
In my soon-to-be-released book, The Book of Love, I share a story from college. I was in my Gospel of Luke class, and we encountered one of those stories where Jesus forgives a man’s sins. The arrogation of authority alarms the Jewish leaders. Who does Jesus think he is?
As we discussed the story in class, I raised my hand to ask a question: “I thought blood was necessary to forgive sins. But Jesus was forgiving people by fiat. He just declared it so, and it was so. What gives?”
My comment about blood being necessary to forgive sins comes, as you know, from Hebrews 9:22: “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” So if that’s true, what’s going on with Jesus forgiving sins just by saying a word? Is blood necessary or not?
What I’m wondering here is whether the category of high-handed sin in Numbers 15 helps clarify some of what is happening in Jesus’ ministry. Specifically, think about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. Think about Jesus going to the house of Zacchaeus. Think about Jesus’ mission to seek and save those in Israel who were lost. Who were these lost people? Many of them would have been high-handed sinners, according to Numbers 15, those who had been “cut off” from the community.
As I described in the recent series, such sinners would have been cut off from the temple cult, deprived of any sacrificial remedy for their guilt. The provocation of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, was his going to these high-handed sinners in order to restore them to community. But as we reflected on in the last series, this restoration could not be accomplished through the Levitical system or the temple cult. Restoration, akin here to a resurrection from the dead, could only be accomplished by a direct act of God.
And that is precisely what Jesus does. Jesus assumes the authority to restore the high-handed sinner, an authority the Jewish leaders rightly note only God possesses. And relevant to my question in my college class, this forgiveness does not involve blood, because it is a restoration happening “outside the camp,” beyond the imagination and purview of the sacrificial system.
I have not comprehensively stress-tested this idea across Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but I am floating it as a hypothesis that might clarify, more precisely, what was so controversial and provocative about Jesus’ actions and ministry. In his restoration of high-handed sinners, he was doing something only God could do.
