The Lord and the Leper
Scripture Reading: Matthew 8:1-4; Leviticus 22-23
Although we are told in general terms that Jesus had been healing the sick and casting out demons (Matthew 4:23-25), it isn’t until chapter eight that we read the first specific instance of Jesus healing someone. There we are told that a leper approached Jesus, knelt before him, and confessed, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Jesus responded, I will; be clean. He did more than that though. He touched the man, an act that shocked those who looked on.
Leprosy was an incurable and contagious disease. The disease was so horrific that once you contracted leprosy it became the most important thing about you. You were, can you imagine it, forever labeled “a leper.” Not a poet. Not a priest. Not a politician. Always and forever and only a leper. A leper was banned from society, shut out, and confined to live only among other lepers. This disease was regarded as a sign of judgment. It was, as they called it, “the stroke of God.”
To touch a leper was to make one’s self unclean. That wasn’t superstition. That was God’s law. Leviticus chapters 22 and 23 extensively speak to the issue of how to deal with leprosy, and exclusion from society, from the Temple, and normal human contact was included.
As stunning as it was for Jesus to heal the man (this was the first recorded instance of a leper being healed since Naaman 800 years prior), more astounding was the fact that Jesus touched him. This act of kindness demonstrated that though the sinner, unclean and defiled by sin, can not possibly approach a holy God, God in Christ comes in mercy and grace to the sinner. He comes in Christ to cleanse us from the defilement of sin and to welcome us into the community of God’s people.
If you come in faith to the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean,” you will find that he always responds, “I will; be clean.”