Israel’s Leprosy and the Son of God Who Can Cleanse (Mark 1: 40-45)
Israel’s Leprosy and the Son of God Who Can Cleanse
Mark 1:40-45
Introduction
We are all familiar with the character of the leper—the incurably diseased, the physically deformed, the socially outcast, the religiously excluded. We all have the default picture of the bloodied and bandaged, nearly mummified man hobbling up to Jesus and meekly asking Jesus to heal him. Perhaps this is not far off the mark. Yet perhaps there is more to the story than we realize.
We must, from the outset, recognize our tendency as Americans to see those who are diseased, oppressed, poor, or suffering in a naturally positive light. As those who expect to be healthy and wealthy most of the time, we have little to no understanding of the radical poverty and suffering that has characterized most of humanity for most of history. So, when we read a story like this, we are tempted to immediately cast the leper in a positive light. He comes to Jesus, begin on his knees. He humbly calls out to Jesus “If you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus pities him, touches him, cleanses him, thereby provides the conditions upon which he might be included back into Jewish society. Ostensibly he rejoices and spreads the word about Jesus and increases his fame. We see all this as positive.
If this is the case, then there are certain details of which we cannot make sense. A textual variant in 1:41 says not that Jesus was moved with pity, but was “aroused to anger.” If this is the correct reading (and there is good argument to think it might be), why does Jesus become irritated? Or, in v43, it says [literally] “He scolded him immediately and cast him out.” Why the harsh words? Or, in v 44, why does he not permit him to speak of this to anyone? Why is Jesus treating the leper the same way that he has treated demons?
At this point we must remember the context. Jesus has come as the Messiah and Son of God—not only to save, but also to judge the blindness of his people. In Isaiah 6:10, God charges the preacher to “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Israel is prominently blind, and the messiah comes preaching a message that confirms their blindness.
This is Jesus. He comes preaching that the kingdom is near and that repentance and faith in the gospel are required to enter it. He calls fishermen to follow him—the harbingers of judgment on an unrepentant people. He casts out demons, confirming the authority of his teaching and his kingship over his kingdom. And yet all this only has sparked frenzied attention. He came to be Jesus the king and to receive the repentance and faith of his people, but they received him not as a king but as a celebrity with a superficial approach. This was the response during his ministry in Galilee.
With this as the background, the story about the leper begins to make more sense. As Jesus travels around the towns of Galilee, preaching the kingdom and casting out demons, it only increases his fame. And in town after town, people ended up coming to him not to repent and believe, but to be healed. This story happened during that time. And it must have stuck out in Peter’s mind (the mind behind Mark’s gospel), because it is specifically chosen as uniquely illustrative of Israel’s problem. Of all the hundreds or thousands of healing stories Peter witnessed, this was the one he chose—and for good reason. It is the perfect illustration.
What was their problem? Fundamentally this: they came for outward cleansing but remained inwardly defiled. Jesus makes this point with a serrated edge in Mark 7:14-23. It is out of the heart of man that come evil things. The heart of his people must be changed. Yet, as John 1:11 says, “He came to his own, and his own received him not.”
The leper is a unique illustration of that. Leprosy was always meant as an illustration of the inward defilement of sin. Leprosy was a whole range of chronic skin conditions that deformed the body. There were strict guidelines for determining what was leprous and what was not. If it was leprous, there were more strict guidelines governing how a leper could interact with the public, and what he must do to be ritually cleansed if he was healed of his leprosy. To be a leper was to be somewhere between sick, cursed, and dead.
This was part of the broader system of holiness that God set up for the people. Closest to God was what was holy. This was the Most Holy Place and the Holy Place and the temple courtyard. Then there was what was common or clean. This could be among the people but could not yet approach God because it was not yet sanctified. And then there was what was unclean, unholy, defiled. This was not even permitted to be among the people but had to be outside the camp. And the message was clear: the closer you come to God, the holier you must be. God is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Hab 1:13). And so to approach God, you had to be “cleansed”—often with blood. But it wasn’t just leprosy or menstruation or childbirth or other things that made one unclean. It was also sin itself that made unclean. The message was very clear: uncleanness—particularly the uncleanness of leprosy—was a vivid depiction on the skin of what was happening in the sin-sick human soul. It was a living picture of the reality that sin defiles us and everything we touch.
And it also teaches us that, if we are to be made clean—even made holy—so that we can be among his people, so that we can come into his presence, we must be cleansed. Yet, it is not just the external and ritual cleansing that must be performed, but the internal cleansing of the heart through repentance and faith. So, as we walk through this account, let us learn two things: 1) Jesus can make you clean, and 2) We must not be satisfied with outward cleansing.
I. Jesus Can Make You Clean (Mark 1:40-42)
Jesus is on his Galilean circuit, preaching in town after town. Often there would be small, outlying farming communities in little pockets, all leading to a central town for that area. Jesus would go to the town and would attract people from neighboring cities and the surrounding farm country.
During that ministry, a leper finds him. Luke 5 gives us the detail that this would have happened inside one of those cities. And it also tells us that this particular man was “full of leprosy”—it was a severe case. If it was indeed Hansen’s disease (what we call leprosy today), it worked in the body by deadening the nerve endings in the extremities, including the toes, the fingers, the eyes, ears, and nose. You could burn yourself without realizing it. So, drop a potato into the fire and you would reach in and horribly injure yourself and not know it. You could scald yourself on boiling water, even be nibbled on by mice and rats without knowing it. This man was that kind of case. No doubt he stank of unwashed, putrid flesh. His eyelids would droop. He likely had stumps for fingers, a nose collapsed, ears rubbed off, toes missing. By law his hair was unkept.
It is amazing to consider the boldness of the leper in approaching Jesus. If Jesus was in a city, the leper would have had to shout as loud as he could as he entered the town, “Unclean! Unclean!” as he covered his mouth with his hand. The crowds no doubt parted in revulsion as he made his way down the street to find this miracle worker who he was sure could heal him.
He came “imploring” and “kneeling” and says to Jesus, “If you will, you can make me clean.” There is no doubt in the leper’s mind about Jesus power. It is Jesus will he is unsure about. “Jesus can heal me,” he thought, “but will he want to?” But being clean not only would free him of the painless hell he found himself in, it would also mean inclusion back in his family—to hold his wife and children again, to go inside his own home again, to worship at the temple again. He would forever be freed from the living reminder in his decaying hands that he was a walking illustration of sin.
Jesus responds, it says, with pity. This is the reading that the ESV goes with, and that the Greek critical text go with. It is possible. Jesus was a man of compassion. He felt sympathy for the suffering. He was often moved by compassion for the crowds (Mark 6:34; 8:2; 9:22). Compassion is the visceral, gut-felt reaction we get when we see suffering. It is the gut-wrenching experience of watching a child struggle with severe illness or a spouse struggle with chronic or terminal illness—the internal drive to say, “If I could take this for you or make it go away, I absolutely would!”
What is unique about Jesus is that he can take it away, and so he does. Because he is moved with compassion he stretched out his hand and touched him. This would have been not only deeply revolting but religiously unthinkable. Here was a man who claimed to speak for God, who proclaimed the kingdom of God, who presented himself as the king, who teaches with authority, who casts out demons, who heals the sick. And he will willingly defile himself? Make himself unclean?
And yet, the unexpected happens. Rather than defiling Jesus—which would have happened for anyone else—it cleanses the leper. Jesus says, “I will, be clean,” and the leper is clean. His stumps returned to fingers and toes. His ulcerated skin suddenly no longer stank. His skin was restored to its smooth, supple, comfortable state. “Immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”
Typical to Mark, the implications are vastly understated. We must see two of them. The first is seen by looking again to the OT regarding the healing of leprosy. And, surprisingly, it only happens twice. The first is Miriam. She and Arron rebel against Moses’ authority and God strikes Miriam with leprosy. Aaron immediately speaks to Moses about it and says, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother’s womb.” Moses, rather than healing her, prays for her: “O God, please heal her—please” (Num 12:13). And God heals from leprosy.
The other is Naaman in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was the commander of the armies of Syria and had leprosy. He hears from and Israelite slave girl that there is a prophet in Israel who can cure him. So, he sends a messenger to Israel to find out who this prophet is. When he tells this to the king of Israel, 2 Kings 5:7 says, “When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?” When Elisha finds him and tells him to was seven times in the river, the implication is very clear: God heals from leprosy.
Can you now see why it is important that Jesus heals the leper? Mark is unfolding again something unique about Jesus indirectly. God sends fishermen into Israel. God has authority over demons and fevers. And God has the ability to cleanse leprosy. Jesus is God.
Yet, we also should not miss the further step. Remember: leprosy was a parable of sin. As the rotting flesh prevented one from entering the temple, sin prevented one from entering God’s presence. If uncleanness was always meant to point to the deeper reality of sin, then the one who can cleanse what is unclean also must have the ability to forgive sin. In fact, this is the whole point of the very next story, when Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic. So, once again, Mark is implying not only that Jesus is God, but that Jesus, as God, has authority over the entire code of Moses, all of which was meant to drive Israel to a Savior by realizing their sin problem. The law came in, Paul says, because of the trespass, and to increase the trespass. So, the holiness code was designed to magnify the problem of sin and force Israel to seek a Savior. And now here is Jesus solving the problem of uncleanness, which means that Jesus can forgive sin.
And yet again, there is something else implied further, which will come to the surface throughout Mark’s gospel: there is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. If Jesus can cleanse a leper by his words, then blood must be shed for the leper’s cleansing. This blood is nothing less that Jesus’ own. Hebrews 10:22 says that we now draw near to God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Sprinkled clean with blood, just as the leper was sprinkled clean with the blood of a bird seven times to be cleansed.
So, here this: Jesus can cleanse you. He can make you clean. He can forgive your sin and remove the defiling effects of sin from your life. He can cleanse you with the washing of water with his word. Scripture promises that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He makes us fit to enter his presence.
There is no degree of rottenness of soul that Jesus cannot cleanse. The worst sinner, the most defiled person, the most profligate sinner, Jesus loves to save. In fact, he often saves those first! His company was with tax collectors and sinners, women, lepers, and fishermen—in those days the lowest of the low. Jesus loves to save what Bunyan called “Jerusalem sinners”—the worst of the worst. Because in ones like that are the greatest displays of his mercy and the most loving of servants.
There are two great problems we face as sinners. The first is to see our sin in the first place. This was Israel—constantly confronted by their sinfulness yet never actually seeing it. Sometimes, it feels like you can hit someone with a 2x4 over the back of the head and they’ll still be unfeeling. But then, once we see our sin, we are tempted with the opposite danger—to believe that our sins are so egregious that Jesus would not accept us even if we did turn to him. But this is also untrue. In fact, it is pride—it is to say, “Jesus is not sufficient enough for my sins. My sins are unique, different, special, requiring a special sacrifice that Jesus has not provided.” We need to humble ourselves and come to Jesus and, with our sins and hearts in mind, say, “If you will, you can make me clean.” And he is willing: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus can make you clean. All you must do is ask.
II. We Must Not Be Satisfied with Outward Cleansing (Mark 1:43-45)
To go from such an apparently heart-warming scene, to the words of Jesus in response is almost jarring. Yet, when you remember the context, Jesus’ response is somewhat understandable. Doubtless, this same story had played out hundreds of times throughout Galilee. As the next story will demonstrate, people were not beyond ruining private property to get to Jesus. And the same request was made: “Jesus, heal me. Jesus, cleanse me. Jesus, help me.” You can understand Jesus’ reaction: “He sternly charged him and sent him away at once.” Literally, “He scolded him and cast him out immediately.” Additionally, he says, “See to it that you say nothing to anyone.” It almost seems that Jesus is treating the leper the same way that he treats the demons. Sternly charging with displeasure. Casting them out. Commanding them to be silent.
Why? Is Jesus just mean? Has Jesus lost his cool? Is he lashing out in anger at the never-ending, lack-luster, faith-absent responses? I don’t think so. Yet, the candor with which Jesus speaks in Mark is characteristic of Mark. Jesus’ response helps us to see something about the leper: the leper is the villain, not the hero. He knows what will happen. On the human plane, as we say, “I’ve seen this before. I can see it coming!” On the divine plane, Jesus knows the hearts of man. He knows that this man will not obey his command to keep silent—demonstrating his submission to Jesus Lordship. He knows he will not submit to the regulations of Moses—which Jesus himself had given in his preincarnate state. He knows that his cleansing power is wasted on the blind, deaf, hard heart of this man.
The leper thus becomes something of an emblem for all Galilee and all Israel. They are sin-sick and unclean, separated from God and needing to be cleansed in heart. And although they recognize Jesus’ authority in some way, they only come close to him to receive external cleansing and healing—not the kind of cleansing they really need. It is the same reaction he will have in Mark 3:5, “He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.”
There is a strange tension in Jesus here. It is the tension of a hope deferred. The tension of persistently offered yet consistently spurned love. On the one hand, he is filled with compassion and moved to help and heal and restore to community and fellowship. Yet, on the other hand, he is also stirred to anger and exasperation at the entrenched unbelief of his people. It is the same tension felt by God in Hosea 11:5-9: “They shall not return to the land of Egypt but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels. My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.” There’s the irritation. Yet, he still has love and compassion: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”
And Jesus doesn’t want any more of it, so he says, “Don’t go blabbing about this! Rather, go and obey Moses. Do what he commanded. Demonstrate that you truly have a repentant heart by obeying my commandments. Go and offer the two birds over fresh water, and the two male lambs, and the ewe land, and the grain offering. It will be a proof to the priests that you are in fact healed and can be restored to community with them. Go, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”
Not only would the leper offering himself at the temple provide ample proof to the priests that Jesus could heal from leprosy (with all that entailed). It also provided proof to them that Jesus was no lawbreaker—something which would come into dispute later.
But we have no record of the leper doing this. Rather than obey Jesus’ command, he did precisely the opposite. To “began to talk freely about it”—everywhere he went: “I was a leper, and he healed me! Go and see him for yourself!” He spread the news, such that Jesus could no longer enter a town. He was hindered in the purpose for which he came out. He could not preach the kingdom of God and call for repentance and faith. His celebrity status got in the way. Instead, he goes back out to those “wilderness places”—calling his people yet again to join him in the wilderness, even as one rejected by his own people.
Oh how often this plays out in the church! A person does something wrong, or something traumatic happens in their family. Perhaps they lose a spouse or a child. It causes questions and guilt to rise in their minds. And they seek for relief. So they come to church, trying to find out how to feel better. And they hear about this Jesus person who can cleanse the conscience, wash our hands free of the blood of our sins, who can set the prisoner free, and comfort the downcast. And so they keep coming and they inquire into Jesus, and they hear the good news—your sins can be forgiven. And in a moment, they have an encounter with Jesus, and it seems that they have been cleansed and forgiven and released from their sins. They have a catharsis, a cleansing. Then Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and they are gone in a snap. They are eager to tell others of all the good that Jesus did for them, even while they remain entrenched in their own sins. Do not be like leprous Israel, who had their skin washed but left their sin untouched.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to address three different groups that might be here today. First, there are those who need to be cleansed of your sin. Jesus can make you clean. You need to know that he is powerful! He is God dwelling in flesh. He has the power to cleanse you from your sins. And not only is he able, he is willing! He says, “I will!” I will do it! Come to me, all you who are wearing and heavy laden, and I will give you rest! Jesus says, “I am willing, I am willing I am willing!” Will you prove humble to bring you sin to him? To violate the rigid social expectations of self-righteous Minnesota? To be willing to be publicly outed as a leper, even as you approach Jesus with your face to the ground and say, “If you are willing, you can make me clean”? Jesus can make you clean.
Second, there are those satisfied with outward cleansing. There are those who know that Jesus can and will make you clean, but perhaps you are seeking him only for external purposes. We are satisfied with partial cleansing—cleansing of part of our sin while we leave the secret parts untouched. That is like someone who cleans half a glass, or wipes down half a dinner plate, or mows half a yard. It is incomplete. It is not thorough-going. If you have come to Jesus only to mollify your conscience, only to improve your circumstance, only to improve your health or fill your bank account, you have not repented and believed. Outward cleansing may feel good now, but it does not save. You need to be cleansed inwardly. Confess your sins. Leave nothing covered. Do not be happy with leaving a sweet and poisonous morsel under your tongue while you spit another out. Spit it all out of your mouth. Save your soul, and give it up!
Third and last, there are those who have been inwardly cleansed, but feel defiled by the ongoing walk through this world. Perhaps this is most of us. Maybe you are battling an entrenched sin, and it makes you feel dirty and unclean. Jesus can make you clean. Maybe you are in a situation in which the sins of others splash into your little boat and you have been defiled by the sins of others. Jesus can make you clean. Maybe you aren’t battling any specific sin, but you simply feel dirty from sin that remains in you each day. Jesus can make you clean. Maybe its all of these and more. Jesus can make you clean. For these specifically, but also for all, here this:
No separation from the world
No work I do, no gift I give
Can cleanse my conscience, cleanse my hands;
I cannot cause my soul to live.
But Jesus died and rose again—
The pow’r of death is overthrown!
My God is merciful to me
And merciful in Christ alone.