Your sins are forgiven

(commenting on Mark 2:5):

The scribes and the Pharisees knew that sins could be forgiven. Indeed, they even knew that men who had received such authority from God could bestow such forgiveness. Leviticus is quite clear: 'So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin which he has committed, and it shall be forgiven him' (Lev. 5:10). But Jesus is neither a priest, nor at the alter in the forecourt of the Temple, nor offering blood there on behalf of the one seeking forgiveness. Far away from Jerusalem and the Temple, without any ancestry in the tribe of Levi and lacking any sacrificial blood to display to God, Jesus forgave the paralytics's sins by merely a word. (The Victory According to Mark p50)