<p>5:22 <i>But Jesus, perceiving their reasoning, answered and said to them- </i>Time and again, the Gospels record how He &ldquo;perceived&rdquo; things about people. Admittedly this could have been because He simply had a Holy Spirit gift to enable this. But I prefer to think that His sensitivity, His perception, aided by His extraordinary intellectual ability as the Son of God for intelligence and perception / sensitivity are related&hellip; these things developed within Him over the years so that He could sense the essential needs and feelings of others to an unsurpassed extent. &ldquo;Jesus, seeing their thoughts&hellip;&rdquo; (Mt. 9:4 RVmg.) shows how He came to perceive the hearts of others from His observation of them. This was the same Jesus who could be ridiculed into scorn / shame / embarrassment (Mt. 9:24), such was His sensitivity to others. This incident helps us to understand the ability of the mind / spirit of the Lord Jesus to connect with that of human beings. Mk. 2:8 puts it like this: &quot;Now immediately, when Jesus realized in his spirit that they were contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, &quot;Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?&quot; (NET Bible). The spirit / mind of Jesus was at one with the spirit / mind of those men. Such was His sensitivity. I don't think it was a gift of Holy Spirit knowledge so much as His sensitivity to the minds of men... and yet Rom. 8:16 calls Jesus &quot;The Spirit&quot; as a title, saying that He bears witness with our spirit / mind, in His intercession to the Father. So this incident in the Gospels gives us as it were an insight into how He&nbsp;<i>now</i>&nbsp;operates too... He's the same today as yesterday. He's at one with our mind / spirit, and also with the mind / Spirit of the Father. Thus is He such a matchless mediator. The way the Lord Jesus 'knew' things because of His extreme sensitivity, rather than necessarily by some flash of Holy Spirit insight, isn't unparalleled amongst other men. Elisha knew what Gehazi had done when Gehazi went back to ask Naaman for a reward- Elisha commented: &quot;Went not my heart with you, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet you?&quot; (2 Kings 5:26). Elisha imagined Naaman dismounting from his chariot, etc. And he could guess that the request had involved &quot;money... garments&quot; etc. That the Lord's knowledge wasn't necessarily automatic is reflected in the way we read things like &quot;When he saw their faith... when Jesus heard it...&quot; (Mk. 2:5,17). He 'saw' and knew things by the sensitivity of His perception.</p><p><i>Why reason you so in your hearts?</i>- This was a rhetorical question. Why did they struggle with His offer of forgiveness? Because it required an acceptance of it from them, which in turn required repentance.</p>