How do you expect authority to treat people who are guilty?
Most of us have a complicated relationship with authority. Authority exposes what is hidden. Authority investigates what happened. Authority corrects what went wrong. Authority punishes guilt. And when you are the one who has done wrong, authority can feel threatening.
That is why Matthew’s portrait of Jesus should get our attention. Matthew has been showing us that Jesus is King, and that His authority extends over everything that has gone wrong in the world. In Matthew 8, disease yields to His healing touch. A life-threatening storm obeys His command. Demonic forces submit to His sovereign rule.
But in Matthew 9, the question becomes personal. If this King has authority over sickness, storms, demons, and darkness, how will He use His authority in the lives of sinners?
Will He simply fix their immediate problems? Will He tell sinners to clean up their lives? Will He avoid them because of how messy sin can make things? Or will He use His authority to expose, confront, and condemn them?
Matthew 9:1–17 gives us a clear answer. Jesus uses His authority to forgive sinners who cannot remove their own guilt, welcome sinners who know they need mercy, and free sinners from relating to God as if He has not come.
Jesus Uses His Authority to Forgive Sinners
1Jesus climbed into a boat and went back across the lake to his own town.
Jesus climbed into a boat and returned to “his own town,” which was Capernaum, the place He had been using as His ministry base (Matthew 9:1). By this point, His reputation had spread. People were coming to Him with desperate needs, looking for healing, deliverance, and hope.
Then Matthew draws our attention to one desperate man: a paralyzed man brought to Jesus on a mat (Matthew 9:2).
2 Some people brought to him a paralyzed man on a mat.
Mark and Luke give us more detail. The house where Jesus was teaching was packed. People were shoulder to shoulder, pressing into doorways, crowding around windows, trying to get near Him. Then suddenly, there was movement on the roof. Dust and debris began to fall. The ceiling opened. And slowly, a paralyzed man was lowered down on a mat right in front of Jesus.
Everyone could see the effort it took to get this man to Jesus. They could see the sacrifice, urgency, and determination. But Matthew tells us that Jesus saw something deeper.
Jesus saw their faith.
Without anyone saying a word, everyone knew why they had brought him. The man was paralyzed. He was helpless. He was utterly dependent on others. And his friends believed Jesus had the power to heal him.
So now every eye in the room is on Jesus. Everyone assumes they know what Jesus is supposed to do.
2bSeeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Be encouraged, my child! Your sins are forgiven.”
But Jesus says something unexpected: the man’s sins are forgiven.
That is not why they brought him. Everyone could see that this man’s paralyzed body was his problem. From their vantage point, it looked like his greatest problem. But Jesus began with the problem only He could see: the deeper and more urgent spiritual problem, the one with eternal consequences.
His paralysis kept him from walking, and that mattered to Jesus. Jesus was going to heal him. But what mattered even more was the spiritual condition this man shared with all of us: sin that leaves us guilty before a holy God.
So before Jesus told him to stand up and walk, He spoke the most encouraging words this man could ever receive. He declared him forgiven.
3 But some of the teachers of religious law said to themselves, “That’s blasphemy! Does He think He’s God?”
That statement did not comfort everyone in the room. To the religious leaders, it sounded like blasphemy (Matthew 9:3).
To modern ears, this may sound like a theological disagreement. But to them, Jesus had crossed the ultimate line. He was claiming the right and power to do what only God can do.
Imagine a stranger walking into a courtroom during a convict’s sentencing and declaring, “Overruled. Forgiven. His guilt is removed. He is free to go.” That would be defiant, presumptuous, and completely out of order because he would be claiming authority that only belongs to the judge.
Now raise that infinitely higher. When Jesus declared the man forgiven, the religious leaders heard a man claiming divine authority. So they accused Him of blasphemy.
But their accusation was more dangerous than they realized. If Jesus really has authority to forgive sins, then they had just rejected the only One who could forgive them. They thought they had Jesus figured out, but Jesus showed that He saw the truth about them. He knew their thoughts. He saw the condemnation forming in their hearts.
4 Jesus knew what they were thinking so he asked them, “Why do you have such evil thoughts in your hearts? 5 Is it easier to say ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up and walk’?
So Jesus asked them which was easier to say: that the man’s sins were forgiven, or that he should stand up and walk (Matthew 9:4–5).
The question forced the issue. How would anyone know whether Jesus had authority to forgive sins?
To say, “Your sins are forgiven,” is easier to say because no one in the room can verify whether it happened on the spot. But to say, “Stand up and walk,” is harder to say because everyone can see immediately whether it happened.
6 So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.”
Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” 7 And the man jumped up and went home!
So Jesus healed the man’s body in a way everyone could see, to prove that He had authority to forgive sins in a way no one could see (Matthew 9:6–7).
But Matthew does not want us to stop at the healing. He wants us to see what the healing proves: Jesus has authority to forgive sinners.
This is the first way Jesus uses His authority in the lives of sinners: He forgives sinners who cannot remove their own guilt.
Do you see your need for His forgiveness?
Not just the problem you and everyone else can see. Not just the pain you want healed, the circumstance you want repaired, or the struggle you want fixed. Jesus cares about all of that. But this passage presses deeper.
A healed body, a repaired circumstance, or a calmer life cannot remove the condemnation beneath our spiritual condition. Jesus’ greatest mercy is not that He improves your life. His greatest mercy is that He has authority to remove your guilt before God (Psalm 103:12).
If you have not yet believed the gospel, this is why Jesus came. He died on the cross for your sins. He rose from the dead. And He has authority to forgive anyone who turns to Him in faith.
And if you already belong to Him, remember the truth the gospel has declared over you: your guilt has been removed, your sin has been forgiven, and you are not waiting for God to decide whether He will be merciful to you. Because of what Jesus did at Calvary, mercy has already been given to you.
So receive it. Stop negotiating with your guilt. Stop trying to outrun your shame. Bring the sin only Jesus can forgive to Him. Confess it humbly and honestly. Trust His authority more than your feelings. If He declares you forgiven, your past does not get the final word over you. Jesus does.
Live as a forgiven person.
8 Fear swept through the crowd as they saw this happen. And they praised God for giving humans such authority.
And respond the way the crowd responded. When they saw what happened, fear swept through them, and they praised God (Matthew 9:8). They probably did not understand everything about Jesus yet, but they understood enough to know they had witnessed something holy.
When you realize Jesus has the right and power to forgive sins, the fitting response is worship: gratitude, humility, reverence, and praise to God.
Jesus Uses His Authority to Welcome Sinners
As Matthew continues showing us how Jesus uses His authority in the lives of sinners, the next example gets personal. Matthew writes about himself. This is his testimony of being seen, called, and welcomed by Jesus.
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him.
Jesus saw Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth (Matthew 9:9).
That may not sound scandalous to us at first, but in Matthew’s world, that booth was a symbol of betrayal. Matthew was a Jewish man collecting money under the authority of Rome, profiting from the burden of his own people. When his neighbors saw him there, they did not see a spiritually curious man trying to improve his life. They saw a sellout. They saw the kind of sinner respectable people avoided.
Matthew does not soften the picture. He includes himself with tax collectors and other disreputable sinners (Matthew 9:10). He also tells us that the Pharisees looked at that whole group with contempt (Matthew 9:11).
It is as if Matthew is telling us, “I want you to know this is the kind of man I was when Jesus saw me and invited me to follow Him.”
Jesus called Matthew to follow Him, and Matthew got up and followed Him (Matthew 9:9). Luke tells us Matthew left everything (Luke 5:28). He did not just leave a desk. He left his old life. He left the identity everyone knew him by. He left the booth where he had been taking from people, and he followed the King who was calling him to a new life.
10 Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. 11 But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?”
Then Matthew invited Jesus and His disciples to his home for dinner, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners (Matthew 9:10).
The religious leaders were offended. Earlier, they accused Jesus of blasphemy for forgiving sin. Now they criticized Him for eating with sinners.
And what offended them was not merely that sinners were in the room. It was that Jesus was at the table with them.
He was not repulsed by their sinfulness. He did not treat them like they were contaminated. He was at ease around the people the Pharisees avoided.
But even more surprising, those people were at ease around Jesus.
To the Pharisees, that was not beautiful. It was scandalous.
In that culture, sharing a meal was not a neutral experience. It communicated welcome. It said, “I am willing to sit with you. I am willing to be seen with you.”
The Pharisees were serious about obeying God’s commands, especially the commands about ceremonial purity and separation from compromise. In practice, they believed holiness required distance from people who were morally and ceremonially compromised.
So, to them, Jesus was being careless. He was violating the boundaries that defined how a righteous person should live.
But they had misdiagnosed the whole scene.
They thought the problem was Jesus’ nearness to sinners, so their solution was distance from sinners. But Jesus knew the deeper problem was hidden under their question: they refused to show compassion and mercy to those who needed it most.
They assumed Matthew and his guests were the sick ones, while they saw themselves as healthy. In their minds, it was obvious that a holy man should not be around those kinds of people.
12 When Jesus heard this, He said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, sick people do.”
Jesus answered them with the image of a doctor and the sick (Matthew 9:12).
In the analogy, Jesus is the Doctor. Sinners are the sick. And Jesus is saying, in effect, that He eats with sick tax collectors and sinners because that is where a doctor belongs. Doctors do not avoid sick people. They move toward sick people.
So Jesus corrects their diagnosis. The issue was not that Jesus was too close to sinners. The issue was that the Pharisees did not realize they were sick sinners too. Because they thought they were healthy, they could not see their need for the Doctor.
The difference was not sinners versus non-sinners. The difference was sinners who knew they needed the Doctor and sinners who denied it.
That matters. Jesus is not teaching that any sinner can claim His welcome while proudly defending the sin that is making them sick. The sinners who receive His welcome are the ones humble enough to admit they are sick and need the Doctor’s mercy. They come because they know they are not healthy, and they trust Jesus to forgive and heal what sin has broken.
13 Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’
Then Jesus tells the Pharisees to go and learn what God meant when He said He desired mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6).
In other words, Jesus sends them back to their Bibles to learn what God actually wants. Hosea confronted people who were serious about religion but had lost the heart of God. They offered sacrifices. They kept rituals. They knew the right words. They were meticulous with the details. But for all their religious precision, they were too stubborn to give God what He wanted: love and faithfulness toward Him, and mercy toward others.
There was nothing wrong with taking God and holiness seriously. Recognizing the sickness of sin and refusing to participate in it is good. But the Pharisees’ version of holiness made them experts at identifying sin in others and strangers at being merciful to others.
As religious leaders, they were misrepresenting God’s heart toward sinners. God did not see contaminants to avoid. He saw sick people who needed mercy. As long as the Pharisees insisted on seeing sinners differently than God did, they would never understand what Jesus was doing among them.
13bFor I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
Jesus did not come to call those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners (Matthew 9:13).
His point is not that sin does not matter to God. His point is that sinners matter to God. They matter so much that the Doctor has come to heal what sin has made sick.
This is the second way Jesus uses His authority in the lives of sinners: He welcomes sinners who know they need mercy.
Do you know you need the Doctor?
If you think you are spiritually healthy, your self-made righteousness will keep you from admitting you need Him. But Jesus will not let self-righteousness hide behind religion. He exposes it for what it is: another form of sickness. Self-righteous sinners need the Doctor too.
And if you know you are sick, there is real hope for you in the gospel. Jesus died for your sins, rose from the dead, and has authority to forgive and welcome anyone who turns to Him in faith.
There is mercy at His table for sinners who know they need the Doctor.
But do not stop there. If King Jesus uses His authority to welcome us, then we must learn to welcome sinners. We should not use our seriousness about God, our concern for holiness, or even our need for wisdom as an excuse to distance ourselves from the people God wants to reach. That posture misrepresents Jesus, and it assumes we know better than the King.
If Jesus came near to call and heal sinners, who are we to think the better, holier option is to stay away from them?
That does not mean every relationship is wise or every situation is safe. Boundaries matter to God. Parents are responsible to exercise wisdom over what influences their children. But sinners are not the source of your sin. James tells us, “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” (James 1:14–15).
Being near sinners may reveal sin already in us, but it does not create sin in us. Sin already lives in us all. And for that reason, we should be grateful that Jesus uses His authority not to reject sinners, but to welcome them.
Jesus was at ease around the people the Pharisees avoided. But again, even more surprising, they were at ease around Him—not because He made sin comfortable, but because His holiness did not feel like hatred. His mercy made room for sick people to come near the Doctor.
So we should ask ourselves: are sinners at ease around us? Not comfortable in their sin, but comfortable enough to be honest, to ask questions, to confess, to repent, and to receive the mercy and truth of Jesus through us?
How do we welcome sinners without pretending sin is harmless?
We move toward people through real conversations, meals, friendship, and better listening. When we respond with truth, we speak it with love instead of disgust. We keep wise boundaries, but we do not use “wisdom” as a respectable excuse for coldness.
When sinners come into our gatherings, and when we are among them during the week, we should be the kind of people who make it safe to be broken without making it safe to stay stuck in sin.
After all, we are the church. We should be among the safest places for sinners because Jesus uses His authority to welcome them.
Jesus Uses His Authority to Free Sinners
In Matthew 9:14–17, we come to Jesus’ third encounter. This time, the disciples of John the Baptist come to Him with a question about fasting.
John was the prophetic messenger God sent ahead of Jesus’ public ministry to prepare people for the arrival of the Messiah. That shaped everything about John’s ministry.
John lived in the ache and mourning that came with yearning for God’s promises to be fulfilled. Because the promised Messiah had not yet arrived, sin had to be confessed, hearts had to be made ready, and God’s people were still longing for forgiveness, restoration, and the arrival of His kingdom.
So John’s message was urgent. His tone was serious. His call was to repent and be ready because the King was coming.
As people responded to John’s ministry, some became his disciples. They followed him, learned from him, and adopted his practices. One of those practices was fasting.
14 One day the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked him, “Why don’t your disciples fast like we do and the Pharisees do?”
So John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked why His disciples did not fast like they and the Pharisees did (Matthew 9:14).
It makes sense that they would ask. They fasted the way John did, aching for God to send the Messiah. To them, going without food was a way for their bodies to embody the mourning and longing that came with waiting. Their fasting was a way of saying, “God, we are not ready. Come and save us. We are still waiting for the Messiah.”
So they noticed the difference. They fasted. The Pharisees fasted. But Jesus’ disciples did not.
Jesus answered them with three pictures that make the same basic point: His arrival changes the way people respond to God.
15Jesus replied, “Do wedding guests mourn while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.
The first picture is a wedding centered on the groom (Matthew 9:15). If the groom is in the room, you know you are at a wedding, not a funeral. When the groom is present, the fitting response is joy and celebration, not mourning.
That is what John’s disciples did not yet understand. Fasting marked by mourning, aching, and unfulfilled longing fit while they were waiting for the Messiah. But Jesus’ point is that the Messiah is here. His arrival makes that response unfitting.
Then Jesus gave two more pictures: a new patch on old clothing and new wine in old wineskins (Matthew 9:16–17).
16 “Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.
17 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins.
He is expanding the same point. The Messiah is here. His arrival not only makes their response to God unfitting. It makes that response incompatible.
It is as incompatible as sewing a new, unshrunk patch onto an old garment or pouring fermenting new wine into an old leather wineskin that can no longer stretch without bursting.
Something significant has happened. The Messiah has come. And because He has come, that changes everything about the way people respond to God.
If fasting marked by mourning, aching, longing, and waiting is both unfitting and incompatible with His arrival, then what response fits?
Jesus says new wine belongs in new wineskins (Matthew 9:17).
In other words, because He has come, John’s disciples need a new way of responding to God.
This is the third way Jesus uses His authority in the lives of sinners: He frees sinners to respond to God as if Jesus has come.
Because Jesus has come, sinners are now free to respond to God with the confidence and joy of people who are no longer waiting for the One who has authority to forgive, welcome, and free them.
So how about you? Are there ways you are still responding to God as if Jesus has not come?
We do this when we treat our guilt, shame, spiritual seriousness, or spiritual effort as if they can do what only Jesus can do.
Guilt may tell us something is wrong, but it cannot pay for what is wrong or make us right with God. Only Jesus can do that.
Shame may make us feel like we are taking sin seriously, but it cannot make us cleaner before God. Only Jesus can do that.
Spiritual seriousness may be sincere, and spiritual effort may be useful, but neither can open the way to God the way Jesus can.
Jesus frees sinners to stop relating to God as if the Messiah has not come. He has come. He has forgiven. He has welcomed. He has opened the way.
Will You Trust His Authority?
After seeing how Jesus uses His authority in these three encounters, the question is simple: will you trust Him?
Will you trust Jesus’ authority when He declares you forgiven, or will you keep believing your feelings of guilt and shame?
Will you trust Jesus’ authority enough to approach Him honestly as a sinner who needs the Doctor, or will you keep hiding behind the appearance of health?
Will you trust His authority enough to welcome sinners the way He has welcomed you, or will you keep trusting distance to keep you holy?
Will you trust Jesus enough to stop approaching God through old responses, or will you trust Him to bring you near because He has already come?
Jesus does not use His authority the way we often fear authority will be used.
He uses His authority to forgive sinners.
He uses His authority to welcome sinners.
And He uses His authority to free sinners.
