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13. Healing of a Man with Gout.

Once they brought a man with gout on a cot to Jesus so that he could heal him. The poor man was so sick that he could not walk. But when they came with him to the house where Jesus was, so many people were gathered there, and there were so many people standing at the entrance to the house, that it was impossible for the porters to bring him in. So they carried him up to the roof and let him down through the roof so that he could come to the Lord to be healed. How can you take a sick person on a stretcher to a roof when there are so many people outside the house that you can't get in the door? Answer: In those days, as is still the case today in hot regions, the roofs were flat and level over the houses and were not covered with the kind of tiles that are common today. The room was enclosed by a breastwork. People came together there; they did business there; they prayed there. There were probably also stairs leading up from the outside on one side of the building. The houses were usually built very low for this purpose. But on such a staircase the sick person could be brought to the roof or the so-called ‘Söller’ and from there into the house without unusual effort, and understanding children would not immediately consider something impossible because they could not grasp it quickly for lack of proper knowledge. Otherwise, many things would be impossible that happen every day.

But when the sick man was brought to Jesus in this way and the Lord saw this trust, he said to him, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven.’ Some others who heard this looked at each other as if to say: ‘How can a man forgive sins? Who can forgive sins but God?’ Jesus asked them, ‘Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, ’Arise and walk? Everyone must have thought it was easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ but more difficult to say, ‘Arise and walk,’ because it had to be shown whether it was actually done. Jesus therefore said: ‘So that you may see that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins - get up!’ he said to the sick man, ‘pick up your bed and go home!’ The sick man got up, praising God, for he had recovered through the word of Jesus. He carried his bed home himself, on which he had previously had to be carried because he could no longer walk.