Faith Bible Study Guide
I want to give you an illustration from the New Testament which demonstrates what faith is. Let’s look at a passage of Scriptures in Luke 5. First, we have the story in Luke chapter 5 of the man who was brought by four friends to Jesus (Luke 5:18-25). Jesus was in a house teaching and they could not get in because of the crowd. The man was bedfast – he had palsy – so they took the man up on the roof and let him down into the room where Jesus was. The Scripture says, “And when he [Jesus] SAW their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee…. Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house” (Luke 5:20,24).
Some ask, “Just whose faith was it that got the man healed?” The Bible says, “When Jesus saw their faith.” That’s plural. That includes all of them. It was not only the faith of the four men who brought the man with palsy in, but it also included the faith of the sick man on the bed too.
The man who was bedfast demonstrated that he had faith because how many bedfast people would let someone take them up on top of a house and let them down through
the roof. We also know that the man who was bedfast had faith because when Jesus said to him, “Rise up,” he wasn’t any better. He was lying there just as help-less as he ever was. Instead of trying to get up, he could have said, “Why, Lord, didn’t you see them carry me in here? I can’t possibly get up. You’ll have to heal me first.” But, no, when Jesus said, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk,” the man with the palsy began to move, and when he did, healing was the result. If he had refused to act on the Word of the Master, he would not have received healing; but because he acted on what Jesus said, he did receive his healing.