Which is easier?

Matthew 9:3-8

Just to recap: some men carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus who responds to their faith by forgiving the man's sins (rather than healing him, as everyone hoped). The key words and ideas in this next section are: authourity and forgiveness of sins. Jesus compares (contrasts?) forgiving the man's sins with telling him to get up and walk. He demonstrates his authourity to forgive sins by his authourity to command the man to walk.
Matthew includes a phrase that captured my attention: the crowd is filled with awe - which is common at the miracles of Jesus. However, it is the healing that fills the crowd with awe, not the miracle of forgiven sin. This speaks to me because I am drawn the the outwardly spectacular and need to be reminded that the act of God forgiving a person's sin is the most spectacular and awe inspiring thing that could ever happen. How much more awe inspiring that he would forgive my sin!
However, that's not the phrase that captured my attention. Matthew says that the crowd praised God, "who had given such authourity to human beings." I suppose you could argue that Matthew and/or the crowd mean that God has allowed Jesus to come and that Jesus was the gift. In essence, the phrase would read: "who had sent Jesus to human beings." There may be some merit to that for sure. That is certainly what the ESV says, "They praised God for sending a man with such great authourity." However, most of the other translations leave it the way the TNIV puts it. At face value it seems that Matthew and/or the crowd see the work of Jesus and praise God (which is what Jesus says should happend when he says that we are the light of the world) and somehow realize that in Christ, this authourity would be available to all humans.