Having two teenage kids, I’m regularly confronted with the plea to meet this or that need. “Dad, I really need it – the ‘it’ typically being this or that thing. On more than one occasion, I’ve had to be clear that our perceived needs aren’t necessarily actual needs – they are wants. And if we’re honest, all people have to grapple with what are real, or simply imagined, needs.
Here in the west, where we’re often fooled by our plenty, we also at times have a difficulty delineating between our real needs and wants. It’s so easy to say, “I really need this or that,” when in reality that perceived need is actually a want!
What do you and I really need to live? Food, shelter, water. But what of our greatest need as human beings?
This is certainly a good conversation starter and a topic germane to our witness for Christ.
If we ask people what they really want, no holds barred, we’re sure to have our audience chime in. Yet if we follow up by inquiring of their greatest perceived need, now that gets personal.
How people answer the question of our greatest need as human beings will reveal much about their worldview and what’s most important. And as such, it provides a tremendous platform to share a biblical perspective on the greatest need facing humanity, namely our need to be forgiven! For the issue of forgiveness lies at the heart of the gospel and what it means to both understand and personally know our Creator God.
Charles Sell noted:
If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent us an educator.
If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness, so God sent us a Savior.
(Unfinished Business, Charles Sell, Multnomah, 1989, pp. 121ff)
Incredibly, that Savior was given the authority to forgive sin, as revealed in the synoptic gospels. The story of Jesus forgiving a paralytic found in Mark 2:1-12 and Luke 5:17-26, provides much instruction for our witness:
And again He entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that He was in the house. Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And He preached the word to them. Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” – Mark 2:1-5
It may seem obvious to us, but it bears repeating: only those who recognize they’re ill seek a remedy. The paralytic had a need to be healed and recognized Jesus’ power to heal, as Luke 5:17 notes, “And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.”
In the narrative the connection between the physical and the spiritual is fascinating. You see, many first century Jewish people believed that all disease and affliction was a direct result of one’s sins, and it’s possible the paralytic also held this position. So in addition to healing his body, the Lord healed his soul. “When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, ‘Son, Your sins are forgiven you.’ I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house. Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all…” (Mark 2:5, 11-12).
Who recognizes their need for healing? Only those who recognize they have a malady! And this is obvious in the case of the paralytic and the drastic measures he and the others took to access the Great Physician. In our witness to people, many are blind to their need for forgiveness, restoration and reconciliation with God through faith in Christ.
In fact, I don’t know about you, but as I’ve shared with people over the years the truth that all people are sinners in need of a Savior, I’ve had many respond by saying in so many words, “I’m good. I don’t want or need a Savior.”
The scribes saw Jesus’ declaration of forgiveness as blasphemous, and while they rightly recognized that only God could forgive sin, they failed to realize the God-man, Messiah Jesus, was, in fact, divine, and as God’s Son, had such authority!
The Lord clarified His authority by stating “the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:11).
He would later delineate those who did and didn’t recognize their need for forgiveness: When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Mark 2:17).
The Holy Spirit must reveal to people that they are spiritually sick. Tragically, many people believe they’re spiritually “good,” and that they’re going to get into heaven somehow based upon their own human merit.
Only the Spirit can reveal the true condition of the heart, that it is “deceitful and wicked above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). And it’s also the Holy Spirit who convicts people of their sin (John 16:7), their need of forgiveness through faith in the Great Physician.
We need not shrink back when the scoffers scoff and the mockers mock. They attacked Jesus. They’ll attack us. But it didn’t stop Jesus from ministering healing to those who recognized their need to be healed, and it shouldn’t stop us from lovingly proclaiming the gospel to people.
As we share forgiveness found in Christ with people, may we pray that the Spirit would convict them and reveal their need of forgiveness and the Lord’s singular ability to meet that need.
In my journey I’ve not yet met a person who would claim they never miss the mark – their own! For atheists and agnostics alike, the missing of the mark is personal, based upon their own standards, with the consequences of those failings limited and temporal. In my years of witnessing, I’ve often followed up with this question, “If we as human beings don’t even live up to our own standards, how much less those of a holy, righteous, and perfect Creator?”
Ouch!
What a foreboding position to be! For there is a God, and He has standards for living, and there are consequences for failing to live up to those standards, both in the here and now and the hereafter.
So keep on loving. Keep on sharing. Keep on pointing out the truth, that if accepted, can set people free. We’re sick and need a healing touch from the Great Physician, namely forgiveness!
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” – Ephesians 1:7
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