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BETTING IT ALL

“I’m going to break that little weasel in one brilliant cross.” Thirty years ago, that was the secret wish of famous trial lawyer James St. Clair as he prepared to go up against John Dean in the Watergate trial. This boyish turncoat, with the fashionably long hair, bell-bottom pants, and devastating stories of Nixonian coverups and presidential abuses was a “bottom-dwelling slug,” according to one conservative columnist. He had to be stopped . . . and he, James St. Clair, the President’s lawyer, was sure he could bust him in one explosive afternoon.

As he studied the transcripts and prepared a time line, he was sure he had Dean caught in a web of lies. And now he was going to nail him in court, before the Judiciary Committee, bring this whole Watergate foolishness to an end with one devastating burst of cross-examination.

They got into court, and St. Clair led the victim right where he wanted him to go. Step by step, he took him through the events; he built up his case. And then, when he had him right where he wanted him, he asked the “smoking gun” question. Wasn’t it true that on March 21, 1973, Ehrlichman had reported such-and-such conversation TO THE PRESIDENT? Didn’t that nail it shut?

And Dean, just as cool as can be, said to St. Clair: “You have your dates wrong. That conversation happened on the morning of the 22nd, so it would be impossible to report it to the President on the 21st.” And the hotshot lawyer — his mind whirring a million miles a second — could only gape at him. What? Had he messed up on such a simple thing? How could he have gotten his own time line wrong? But John Dean sat there looking at him, knowing he’d just scored a grand slam home run. All St. Clair could do was to mutter to the judiciary committee chairman: “I am sorry. I misspoke.” He sat down in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and sighed. His big chance had just gone down the drain.

Have you ever had — on a smaller scale, I hope — the experience of just betting the whole ranch on one thing being right? Your whole life rests on that one closing argument. Your entire financial future hinges on one job offer coming through, or that “ten” coming out of the dealer’s shoe in Vegas to complete your double-down. You’ve asked someone — long-distance, via e-mail — to marry you, and everything in the world falls apart if she doesn’t say yes.

Here in this very colorful New Testament story we’ve been studying, where a sick man came down through the roof wanting to be healed, that exact scenario happened on both sides of the political aisle. First of all, this paralytic man and his four friends very clearly were betting everything they had on Jesus of Nazareth being a healer. Not only did they climb up on the roof, pull away some tiles, and fashion the world’s first elevator. But they were risking the wrath of the establishment, the religious hierarchy of the day. The Pharisees and Sadducees and priests and rulers were all there in that house. The Sanhedrin’s lawyers were there. And to run afoul of those guys was not a smart thing to do in 27 A.D.

On the other hand, the religious rulers were ready to roll the dice with one big bet as well. Knocking Jesus down was the only thing in their playbook. Their entire framework depended on discrediting Him. They had to prove that He was NOT the Son of God, NOT the Messiah, NOT sent of heaven. “Turn the other cheek” and “Ye are the salt of the earth” were innocuous enough, but when Jesus talked about “Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days,” or “The day is coming when you will see the Son of Man – Me – coming in the clouds of glory” . . . that was absolutely devastating to their entire system. So this is why they were standing there in the living room, note pads out, Walkmans recording, MP3 mikes humming, just waiting for Jesus to say the wrong thing and indict Himself.

And what do you know? When the paralytic man comes drifting down from the sky, their fondest hopes materialize right before their eyes. Jesus opens up His mouth and says five words – unsolicited! unprovoked! – which were a guaranteed death sentence all by themselves. Here’s Luke 5:20:

“When Jesus saw their faith” — that of the sick man and his four bed-toting friends — “He said, ‘Friend, YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN.’”

And instantly, the priests and rulers knew Jesus was sunk. He was heading to the crossbeams of Calvary right there. Because He’d just perjured Himself — and committed blasphemy — in front of 500 witnesses. Here’s verse 21:

“The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, ‘Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’”

The fascinating Message paraphrase, which we enjoy using in some of our study here, is very descriptive. Listen to this:

“That set the religion scholars and Pharisees buzzing. ‘Who does He think He is? That’s blasphemous talk! God and only God can forgive sins.’”

Right there all these men with starch-stiff robes and their tassels and their “phylacteries” — little boxes with Scripture verses in them, which dangled from their foreheads or arms — were ready to stake everything they had and believed in on two premises. One: that only God can forgive sins. And two: that this guy wasn’t God. Case closed.

Of course, as you and I would agree, Premise One was absolute truth. Only God CAN forgive sins. That is a pivotal reality in the world of religion. In his book, Mere Christianity, Christian apologist C. S. Lewis takes us right through that cutting-edge truth:

“What this Man [Jesus] said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips . . . the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on OTHER men’s toes and stealing OTHER men’s money?” And this is just great. Listen: “Asinine fatuity” — you can look it up — “is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the Person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really WAS the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is NOT God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivaled by any other character in history.”

The odd thing, this writer goes on to wonder about, is that many people who don’t believe Jesus Christ was ever “the Son of God” still consider Him to be a wonderful teacher and a nice, meek man. And Lewis says with a shake of the head that if someone goes around claiming to forgive sins — and isn’t really God, with God’s Calvary credentials — “meek” would be just about the LAST word you’d put down on his resumé. “Complacent stupidity,” which is Webster’s definition of “fatuity,” would be more like it.

In any case, in that crowded Law and Order courtroom, the prosecution was ready to rest right there. Because they had Him. A: only God can forgive sins. B: this guy isn’t God. They bet everything they had on those two things being true. Here two thousand years later, you and I agree with them that “A” is true. The only question is “B”: was this Man named Jesus God? Could He forgive sins?

The New International Version text notes help us understand why this was an all-or-nothing moment.

“In Jewish theology,” they explain, “even the Messiah could not forgive sins, and Jesus’ forgiveness of sin was a claim to deity — which they considered to be blasphemous.” Then they add: “The sin of blasphemy not only involved reviling the name of God but also included an affront to His majesty or authority. Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah and, in fact, to have majesty and authority belonging only to God was therefore regarded by Caiaphas as blasphemy, for which the Mosaic law prescribed death by stoning.”

You can read more about this farther down in the book of Mark, chapter 14, and also back in the Old Testament, Leviticus 24:16, where it says:

“Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him.”

So Jesus, standing there, with those five words permanently out of His mouth — with the toothpaste out of the tube, as we sometimes say — was nailed. There was no chance for Him. He’d just SAID that He could forgive sins — a death-penalty offense — and there was no way to prove that He COULD. Forgiving someone’s sins, erasing them off heaven’s data bank — is kind of an invisible phenomenon.

Little did the priests and rulers know that they were just about ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.