NOTES for Luk 5:17-26
How often it happens that we do not see the miracle taking place before our eyes. We find natural causes for what is happening. Is it simple to say to a person, "Rise and walk," if he is paralyzed? But people do not understand that a miracle is required here; it seems to them that this is not so difficult. One simply needs to call a doctor, and he will cure him. And people often do not want to notice that a doctor's work is blessed from above and that, therefore, each time we are speaking again of a miracle.
Still less do these people want to recognize in any person divine authority to forgive sins. But even those who believe in the forgiveness of sins, even we Christians, do not understand fully what this is. We take it too lightly, bring our repentance, and are completely confident in the forgiveness of our sins. But here the Lord gives an answer to the first group, the skeptics, and to the second: forgiveness of sins takes place by the power of a miracle, by the power of an immense exertion. For every miracle is labor for the Lord.
In other words, it is worth learning to see the miracle, and then an understanding of Christ's divine authority will come. But this is a special authority: not an authority that can command sins to be forgiven as though it cost Him nothing, but one that participates in forgiveness by the power of a miracle.