Mark 2:6-8 - Who can forgive sins but God alone?

2:6,7

Now only God can forgive sins. Maybe if you are the one sinned against then you can forgive the one who sinned against you, but no one but God can forgive someone’s sins against someone else, indeed forgive all the sins someone has ever committed. So they accuse Jesus of blaspheming. This is a constant feature of the gospels, that Jesus is repeatedly acting as if He was God, which, of course, he was. There are those who seek to claim that the deity of Christ was an idea that slowly developed over time. Such ideas are utterly ludicrous. The gospels make no sense whatsoever unless Jesus was God. By the way, the corollary of all this is that Jesus does have the authority to forgive our sins, every single one of them.

2:8

Jesus knew what the teachers of the Law were thinking. Note that the teachers of the Law had not actually said anything at that point, but had merely thought it. So Jesus asks them “why are you thinking these things?” In forgiving the man his sins Jesus knew what He was doing. The teachers of the Law were correct in saying that only God can forgive sins. The correct conclusion to have drawn was that Jesus was God, the incorrect conclusion was that Jesus was blaspheming.