Jesus is the Son of Man. He drew that title from Daniel 7.13-14, from the vision of Daniel in which he saw "one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven," approaching the Ancient of Days, and being given a dominion and a kingdom "which shall not pass away." He makes the claim of being the Messiah foretold by the prophets. He also makes the claim of being God Incarnate, when he states that He has the power to forgive sins, and to heal paralysis with a word.
Another amazing aspect of Jesus' Person is His ability to discern peoples' thoughts. The scribes were thinking to themselves that Jesus had committed blasphemy when He spoke to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Jesus asked them why they were thinking these thoughts. Imagine being one of the scribes, and immediately being confronted with that question! This ability to read thoughts is also consistent with how the Messiah's identity is defined in the prophets. In Isaiah 11.2, the Spirit through Isaiah says that the Messiah will possess "the spirit of wisdom and understanding." In 11.4, the Messiah is to "strike the earth with the rod of his mouth." This Jesus does, when He speaks to the paralytic and tells him to be healed, to get up, and to take his bed and to go home--which the man does instantly.
Why did Jesus come? The ministry of the Messiah is defined in Isaiah 35.5-6--
"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy."
Jesus in Mark 2.1-12 heals the paralytic, a man who was lame. This physical infirmity represents a much more profound infirmity from which we all suffer. Spiritual lameness is the inability to do any work that satisfies the righteousness of God. When Jesus healed the lame man after forgiving him, He was demonstrating that He had the power to heal spiritual and physical ailments.
Apart from Christ, we are all spiritually blind--we cannot see the truth. We are all spiritually deaf--we cannot hear and respond appropriately to God's word. Each of us are spiritually lame and spiritually mute--we cannot speak the truth, nor can we speak to God as our own representatives. But Christ, through His death and resurrection, heals us from each of these infirmities when we place our confidence in Him alone. We were blind to the truth of God, but now we see it. We could not hear God's word, but now we hear it. We could not do anything for God, but now our work for Him is accepted because of Christ. And we could not speak to God as our own representative--but now we have Christ as our Intercessor, and the indwelling of the Spirit and we can pray freely to God knowing He will hear and respond.
The gospel is simply this: Jesus came to us as the God-Man to heal us of our diseases and to give us eternal life in Him. We are called "sons" and "daughters" of God upon our placing our confidence in Jesus alone, because Jesus alone died for our sins and rose again from the grave. And just as the people who saw Christ's work in Mark 2 said, "We never saw anything like this!"--we who have been united to Christ understand that Christ's work is truly unprecedented and unequaled.
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