Insult

He's blaspheming (2:7)

I spent an educational few minutes looking up Shakespeare's best insults, in the hope of making a comparison with the scribes' attack on Jesus, only to find that they were almost universally unrepeatable. Mind you I quite liked 'Why what's the matter that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?' Probably not the best way of eliciting a happy response but a lovely description of grumpiness.

The scribes, by contrast, do not seem to be seeking to insult Jesus. They used careful logic to conclude that Jesus' forgiveness of all the man's sins can only be interpreted as a claim to be God. They had spotted, using reason, what no one else could see. Sadly their conclusion led to anger not faith. Funny that. Even when it becomes clear that the only logical interpretation of Jesus' life, death and resurrection is that he is God, many still turn away. Reason only gets us so far. Next comes faith.



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