Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 9:3

"And behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth." — Matthew 9:3 (ASV)

This man blasphemes — The words were merely an echo of the charge brought at Jerusalem, that “He made Himself equal with God” (John 5:18), and may well have come from some of the same objectors. Mark and Luke give the grounds for their accusation: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Abstractly speaking, they were affirming one of the first principles of all true religious belief. All sins are offenses against God, and therefore, although people may forgive trespasses as far as they themselves are concerned, the ultimate act of forgiveness belongs to God only. For a mere man to claim the right of forgiving so absolutely was to claim a divine attribute and therefore to blaspheme—that is, to utter words as disparaging to the majesty of God as open profanity.

What they forgot to take into account were two possibilities:

1. That God might delegate His power to His chosen servants, so that they, with sufficient evidence of that delegation, might rightly declare sins to be forgiven.
2. That the Teacher might Himself be one with God, and thus share in His perfections and prerogatives.

Based on either of these suppositions, the charge of blasphemy was fully answered. The sin of the scribes lay in their ignoring the fact that He had given sufficient proof of the first possibility, if not of the second as well.