{"id":106341,"date":"2026-08-27T11:11:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=106341"},"modified":"2026-08-27T11:11:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:11:57","slug":"when-jesus-saw-their-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/when-jesus-saw-their-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"When Jesus Saw Their Faith: Can Your Faith Carry Someone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>14 Minute, 12 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You have prayed for the same person for years now.<\/p>\n\n<p>Maybe it is your husband, who goes quiet whenever God comes up. Maybe it is a daughter who used to sit beside you and does not anymore. Maybe it is your own mother, and you are running out of time. You have prayed at the sink. You have prayed in the car. You have prayed the kind of prayer you do not say out loud because it would sound like begging.<\/p>\n\n<p>And nothing has moved.<\/p>\n\n<p>So somewhere in there, a quieter thought started up: <em>maybe I have not believed hard enough.<\/em> If your faith was stronger, they would be different by now. That thought is heavy, and a lot of people carry it in silence.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is one story in the Gospels where friends do the carrying. And in that story, something is recorded that is easy to read straight past. <strong>When Jesus saw their faith<\/strong> \u2014 not the sick man&#8217;s faith, theirs \u2014 he spoke. It is a small word. It changes a great deal.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Prayer You Have Prayed a Thousand Times<\/h2>\n\n<p>Before we go to the story, it is worth naming what praying for someone actually costs.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is not one prayer. It is thousands, over years, with no scoreboard. You do not get to see progress. You are not sure anyone is listening. And unlike almost anything else you work at, effort and outcome do not seem to line up. You can pray harder and watch nothing change.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is its own kind of tired. If you have been the one carrying someone for a long time \u2014 praying for them, worrying about them, holding a rope you cannot let go of \u2014 it may help to look honestly at how worn down you actually are. Our free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/am-i-burned-out-from-caregiving\/\">Am I Burned Out From Caregiving?<\/a> check takes about two minutes and is surprisingly hard to argue with.<\/p>\n\n<p>Because the story we are about to read is not about people with extraordinary faith. It is about four people who were tired enough to do something undignified.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"884942602c\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/884942602c\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>What Happened the Day When Jesus Saw Their Faith<\/h2>\n\n<p>Jesus had come back to Capernaum, a fishing town on the north shore of the lake. Word got out fast.<\/p>\n\n<p>Mark sets the scene plainly: &#8220;And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them&#8221; (Mark 2:2, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>No room. Not even by the door. Picture the doorway of a small house packed solid with backs and shoulders, and more people behind them in the street.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then this: &#8220;And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four&#8221; (Mark 2:3, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>Four men. One paralysed friend. And a wall of people between them and the only person they believed could help.<\/p>\n\n<p>They could have waited. They could have come back tomorrow. They could have told him, kindly and reasonably, that they had tried.<\/p>\n\n<p>They did not do any of that.<\/p>\n\n<h2>They Did Not Open a Door. They Dug a Hole.<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the verse most of us picture wrong: &#8220;And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay&#8221; (Mark 2:4, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>We tend to imagine something like a hatch. Lift a panel, lower him through, tidy.<\/p>\n\n<p>It was nothing like that. Houses in that region were built with heavy beams laid across the walls, then covered with branches, packed mud and clay, rolled flat so the rain would run off. Archaeologists working at Capernaum have described roofs of basalt beams with thinner stone slabs across them, sealed over with plaster. A roof was a floor. People slept on them.<\/p>\n\n<p>The Greek word behind &#8220;broken it up&#8221; is <em>exoruss\u014d<\/em> \u2014 it means to dig out, to gouge through. Mark uses it only here. These men did not open the roof. They excavated it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which means: dust, then clods of dried mud, then daylight, falling into a crowded room, onto the heads of the people below, directly above where Jesus was teaching. It took time. Everyone in that house heard it happening and watched it happen and had to move out of the way while it happened.<\/p>\n\n<p>And it was somebody&#8217;s house. Somebody&#8217;s roof. Somebody&#8217;s repair bill.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nobody in the text says a word about it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Read the rest of the chapter and you find plenty of complaining \u2014 but the scribes sitting there were upset about the forgiveness, not the vandalism. The hole in the roof draws no objection from anyone, including Jesus.<\/p>\n\n<p>One small note worth being honest about: Luke, telling the same story, says they let him down &#8220;through the tiling&#8221; (Luke 5:19, KJV). Scholars differ on why. Some think Luke was describing the same packed-clay roof in words a Greek reader would picture; others think he adapted the detail for an audience who knew tiled roofs. Either way, both writers keep the same picture \u2014 the roof came apart.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Word That Survived Every Retelling<\/h2>\n\n<p>This is the part that stopped me, and it is not something you notice reading one Gospel at a time.<\/p>\n\n<p>Three writers tell this story. Watch what each one keeps.<\/p>\n\n<p>Mark: &#8220;When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee&#8221; (Mark 2:5, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>Luke: &#8220;And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee&#8221; (Luke 5:20, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>Matthew: &#8220;And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee&#8221; (Matthew 9:2, KJV).<\/p>\n\n<p>Look at Matthew again. No crowd. No roof. No four men. No digging. Matthew cuts the entire spectacle \u2014 the most memorable, most retold, most painted scene in the whole account \u2014 clean out.<\/p>\n\n<p>And he still keeps <em>their faith<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Think about what that means. When the story got compressed, the dramatic part was the first thing to go. The plural word stayed. Of everything in that room, the detail none of them would drop was that Jesus responded to a faith that belonged to more than one person.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Their faith got him in the room. It didn&#8217;t decide what happened there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<h2>The Turn: Their Faith Got Him In \u2014 It Did Not Decide What Happened Next<\/h2>\n\n<p>Now here is the thing almost nobody points out, and it is the whole difference between hope and pressure.<\/p>\n\n<p>Those four men carried their friend across town, climbed a roof, and dug through it for one reason: they wanted him to <em>walk<\/em>. That was the goal. That was the entire plan.<\/p>\n\n<p>And the first thing Jesus said was, &#8220;Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>That is not what they came for. Nobody dug a hole in a roof for that. The healing does come \u2014 a few verses later, the man picks up his bed and walks out in front of everyone. But it comes second, and it comes as proof of the first thing, not as the fulfilment of their request.<\/p>\n\n<p>So their faith moved Jesus to act. Their faith did not tell him what to do.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is not a small distinction. It is the difference between two completely different pictures of what you are doing when you pray for someone.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the first picture, prayer is a lever. Enough pressure, enough belief, enough years, and the outcome you want pops out the other end. If it does not, you did not pull hard enough. That picture will quietly crush you, and it will make God into a machine.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the second picture, prayer is a stretcher. Your job is to get someone in front of Jesus. What happens after that is his, and it will very likely not be the thing you had planned \u2014 it may be deeper than the thing you had planned.<\/p>\n\n<p>Notice, too, who Jesus talks to. Not the four. He never addresses them at all. He speaks to the man on the mat, and he calls him &#8220;Son.&#8221; The friends are not standing between him and Jesus. They carried him <em>to<\/em> Jesus and then they were out of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is what carrying someone looks like. You get them there. You do not get to be there instead of them.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What This Story Does Not Say<\/h2>\n\n<p>It would be easy to twist this into a formula, so let us be careful.<\/p>\n\n<p>The text never says the paralysed man had no faith of his own. It does not say his friends believed for him or in place of him. Read it again \u2014 the man let himself be carried, let himself be lifted onto a roof, and let himself be lowered through a hole into a room full of strangers. That is not nothing. That is trust, without a single word recorded.<\/p>\n\n<p>And this is not a promise that enough faith from you guarantees that someone else will be saved. Scripture does not offer that trade, and anyone who tells you it does has handed you a burden Jesus never gave you. People are not outcomes. The person you love has a will of their own, and God honours it \u2014 which is exactly why you cannot force it, and exactly why it is not your fault.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you have been carrying quiet guilt about this, put it down. It was never yours.<\/p>\n\n<p>What the story does say is smaller and better: a person who cannot get themselves to Jesus can be carried there by somebody who loves them. That is real. That is recorded. That is enough.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Actions to Take Today<\/h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Name your four.<\/strong> Take sixty seconds and think of who is carrying the person you love, besides you. A grandmother who prays. A friend from their old job. A neighbour who is kind to them. You have been holding one corner of the mat and assuming you were holding all four. You are not alone in this, and knowing that changes how heavy it feels.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Change the ask, once.<\/strong> The next time you pray for them, do not ask for the outcome. Ask that they would end up in front of Jesus somehow, and leave the rest open. Say it out loud so you hear yourself do it. Most people find this harder than they expect, and most people feel lighter afterwards.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Put something in their hands.<\/strong> Not an argument \u2014 a door. Send one thing they could open on their own, with no pressure and no follow-up message asking if they read it. A short passage. A song. A story about Jesus. Then let it sit there. Digging through a roof was a physical act, not a persuasive one.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<h2>Journaling Prompts<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Write down the outcome you have been praying for, in one sentence. Then write down what you would still want for this person if that exact outcome never came. What is underneath the ask?<\/li>\n<li>When did you first start believing that their change depended on your faith? Try to remember where that idea came from \u2014 a sermon, a book, a person, or your own conclusion drawn in a hard season.<\/li>\n<li>The four men damaged someone&#8217;s property to get their friend to Jesus. What have you been unwilling to look undignified about? What is the polite, reasonable thing you have been doing instead?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>A Prayer for the One Doing the Carrying<\/h2>\n\n<p>God, I am tired of praying for the same person and seeing nothing. I have started to think it is because of me \u2014 that if I believed better, they would be different by now. I do not want to carry that anymore. I am going to keep bringing them to you, and I am going to stop deciding what you owe me when I get there. Do what only you can do, in your own time, and please help me trust you with someone I cannot fix.<\/p>\n\n<p>If the waiting itself is the hardest part right now, you are in good company \u2014 even Paul prayed three times for something that never got taken away, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/prayer\/what-was-pauls-thorn-in-the-flesh\/\">what he learned in that silence<\/a> is worth sitting with.<\/p>\n\n<h2>A Question Worth Talking About<\/h2>\n\n<p>Do you think the four men would have called what they did &#8220;faith&#8221; while they were doing it \u2014 or did it just feel like desperation at the time? We would genuinely like to hear how you see it. Leave a comment below and tell us.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"884942602c\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/884942602c\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Four men dug through a roof to get their friend to Jesus. The text says he saw <em>their<\/em> faith. If you are praying for someone who cannot get there themselves, that word is for you.<\/li>\n<li>Matthew tells this story without the crowd, without the roof, without the four men. He cut the whole dramatic scene. He still kept the word &#8220;their.&#8221; Of everything in that room, that was the part nobody would drop.<\/li>\n<li>Those men carried their friend across town so he could walk. The first thing Jesus gave him was forgiveness. Their faith moved him to act \u2014 it did not tell him what to do. That is the difference between a stretcher and a lever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Questions People Ask<\/h2>\n\n<h3>Whose faith healed the paralysed man in Mark 2?<\/h3>\n\n<p>Mark 2:5 says, &#8220;When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.&#8221; The word is plural, and in context it refers to the four men who carried the paralysed man and dug through the roof. Matthew 9:2 and Luke 5:20 both preserve the same plural wording. The text does not say the paralysed man lacked faith of his own \u2014 he allowed himself to be carried, lifted onto a roof and lowered through it, which is itself an act of trust. What the passage records is that Jesus responded to a faith belonging to more than one person.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Can my faith save someone else, like an unbelieving spouse or child?<\/h3>\n\n<p>No passage of Scripture promises that one person&#8217;s faith guarantees another person&#8217;s salvation, and treating it as a formula turns prayer into pressure and God into a transaction. The account in Mark 2 shows something more limited and more hopeful: friends brought a man who could not get himself to Jesus, and Jesus responded. Intercession puts someone in front of God. It does not override their will or dictate the result. If you have been praying for a loved one for years without change, that is not evidence that your faith failed.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What kind of roof did the men dig through in Mark 2:4?<\/h3>\n\n<p>Houses in first-century Galilee were roofed with beams laid across the walls, then covered with branches, packed mud and clay, and rolled flat to shed rain; excavations at Capernaum have also found roofs built from basalt beams with thin stone slabs and plaster over them. Roofs were flat and used as living space. The Greek verb in Mark 2:4 translated &#8220;broken it up&#8221; is <em>exoruss\u014d<\/em>, meaning to dig out or gouge through \u2014 it appears only here in Mark. Luke 5:19 describes the men letting the man down &#8220;through the tiling,&#8221; and scholars differ over whether Luke was describing the same clay roof in different words or adapting the detail for readers familiar with tiled roofs.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Why did Jesus forgive the man&#8217;s sins instead of healing him first?<\/h3>\n\n<p>The four men carried their friend to Jesus for physical healing, but the first thing Jesus said, in Mark 2:5, was that the man&#8217;s sins were forgiven. The healing follows several verses later, and Jesus presents it as evidence that he has authority to forgive (Mark 2:10-11). This ordering matters for anyone praying for another person: the friends&#8217; faith moved Jesus to act, but it did not determine what he did. He gave something they had not asked for, and gave it first.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Does Jesus speak to the friends in this story?<\/h3>\n\n<p>No. In all three Gospel accounts, Jesus responds to the friends&#8217; faith but addresses only the paralysed man, calling him &#8220;Son&#8221; in Mark 2:5 and Matthew 9:2, and &#8220;Man&#8221; in Luke 5:20. The four men are never spoken to and never answer. They carry him to Jesus and then drop out of the conversation entirely, which is a useful picture of what intercession is and is not \u2014 it brings a person into the room, but it does not stand in for them once they are there.<\/p>\n\n<p>If the person you are carrying is closer to the door than you think, it may help to know that <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/ask-jesus-into-your-heart-bible-verse\/\">the verse most of us quote about asking Jesus in<\/a> was originally spoken to people who already believed. 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Here is what that plural word means for the person you keep praying for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[669,56,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-answers","category-prayer","category-what-jesus-teaches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106342,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106341\/revisions\/106342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}