Luke 5:12-16--Jesus Cleanses a Leper

Luke 5:12-16
English Standard Version
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Jesus Cleanses a Leper
12 While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” 13 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” 15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

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Luke is still going to focus on the theme of clean and unclean just like he did with the spirit in this passage.  For context on why this is important, all the people that Luke is describing as "unclean" were denied access to the Temple because they would define the holy things there.  Jesus now has His first disciples with Him and He is going to heal a man full of leprosy--an image of us who are dead in our trespasses and sins.

​Leprosy is not something that we typically deal with in the Western world, and if we do, we think of a variety of other skin conditions that are not what the Bible is talking about when it talks about leprosy.  Let's see if you can pick up some of the parallels though between this disease and sin.  It deadens the nerves so that you can no longer feel the sensory warnings of touching something too hot or too cold, and people would even lose fingers and toes to rodents that would eat their digits in which they had no feeling and they wouldn't know any better.  There would be other secondary bacterial infections associated with this that would essentially make these lepers to be dead-men walking as they would smell of death and decay and would look like they were decomposing from the outside in (both animals and bacterial would eat their flesh).  They were highly contagious and a danger to themselves and others.  They were excluded from going anywhere in public unless they would cover the face and yell "Unclean!  Unclean" so that people could move out of the way, but they were to live outside the camp when Israel was living in tents on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land, and they made leper colonies outside the cities once they got to the Promised Land and no one that was clean could come in contact with a leper without becoming unclean (that will be important to the passage today).  Again, note that their uncleanliness made other people who came in contact with them unclean and their disease was highly infectious.  As mentioned earlier, lepers were particularly shut out from the congregation in that they could not go to the Temple to offer sacrifices, worship the LORD or even learn about Him.  They were in many ways condemned to die in their sins if they did not receive and believe the gospel before they became ill, because no one was going to come to the leper colony to share the gospel with them (that is what made Mother Theresa so special, is that she worked among the lepers in India that were unclean that no one else would go near).

Now how is all that like sin?  It dulls our senses so that we no longer feel the conviction of our conscience and we do things that hurts and damage us.  The sin eats away at us (only this time from the outside in) and it takes away our ability to interact with God and with the others that are part of the congregation of God's people, the Church and True Israel.  Sin opens us up to even worse "secondary infections" that will cause us to be dead-men walking both spiritually and physically.  The Bible tells us that wages of sin is death and that when sin is fully grown it gives birth to death (Romans 6:23 and James 1:15).  This is separation from God as well as eternal separation from God and eternal judgment in what we call hell, but the Bible calls it the Lake of Fire--a place prepared only for the devil and his angels, but we chose to go there too when we choose to rebel against God, for all sin is rebellion against God's nature and character, and against His Law which is a reflection of that nature and character.  The other reason though that leprosy was like sin was that for man, leprosy was incurable.  Even for the thousands of years that it had been known about, no one could fix it--all they could do was put the infected person in isolation and hope they didn't infect anyone else.  It affected everyone great and small, and there was no amount of money large enough that you could spend on doctors to cure you from it--it would kill you.  It would take a miracle of God to heal someone of leprosy, and the Law said that anyone who had been healed must show themselves to the priest and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving (and because they have been unable to offer any sin offerings for so long)--that will be part of the instructions in this passage that may not make sense to us, but the priest needed to certify that this man who was unclean had become clean and was allowed in the Temple again.  The priests and Levites took care of many of the civil government duties that we would think of today including the health department, so they were responsible for identifying and dealing with infectious diseases as well as dangerous mold and mildew issues and telling people that they had to go into isolation and when they could come out of isolation.

The leper came to Jesus, which he probably should not have been able to do as he likely would have had to break quarantine to do this, but it seems that this man heard about Jesus and the miracles he had done and believed that Jesus had the power to will the man to be clean and that he would be.  This is the essence of how we must come to Jesus for salvation from sin, "Jesus, I know if you will me to be clean, you can make me clean."  Then we recognize that it is His choice whether or not to say, "I will," but I believe if He puts that desire in you to come to Him to make that request, then He won't ever say no--for He is the one who put the idea in your head to come to Him in the first place.

Jesus answers the man and says, "I will; be clean," and I believe this man was made clean not just on the outside, but on the inside too, as this is something we will see about many of Jesus' miracles as He uses them as an aid to teach us about something going on inside the person and even sometimes draws attention to the real issue the person faces, which is their sin and that only He can deal with that because He is the Son of God.

The leprosy immediately left the man, and Jesus instructed the man to see no one else but immediately go and show himself to the priest and make the appropriate sacrifices (to obey what was written in the Law), but instead the man goes near and far and tells everyone about Jesus and what He had done which causes a lot of trouble for Jesus.  Did Jesus know the man would do this?  Of course, but He told the man to obey the Law and the man chose to disobey and it caused consequences not just for that man, but for others including Jesus Himself.  Just because Jesus knew what the man would do does not mean that Jesus made it happen--it was the man's choice, but also that knowledge that the man would sin in the future did not stop Jesus from having grace on Him and making the man clean, otherwise, none of us would have have a chance of being made clean.

After this incident and the reports that the man made, it became impossible for Jesus to go into the cities any more and He had to stay out in the wilderness and in the country, and now people were coming to Him primarily for the purpose of the healing and blessing that they could receive instead of coming to hear the Word of God taught to them.  Originally people marveled at His teaching and how He taught as one with authority and not like the scribes and Pharisees and teachers of the Law, but now they will be selfish in their attempts to follow Him and will only do so as long as they feel it benefits them.  They will pretend to be His friends while the gravy train is flowing, but when Jesus cuts them off and calls them out, they will turn on Him and abandon Him.

Since we are like this man, what kind of testimony are we giving?  Are we being obedient to Jesus and showing ourselves to priest in a way where it can be obvious that we were once unclean, but now have been made clean and are giving glory to God, or do we think we need to be Jesus' PR department and get Him a larger following by saying, "He did a miracle for me, and will do so for you too." (That may be a false gospel unless the miracle that you're talking about is changing you from the inside-out through the transformational power of the gospel of Jesus Christ).  Make sure that you give glory to God--that was the goal of Jesus here, He wanted none of the glory for Himself, though it is okay for us now to magnify Jesus, just make sure you are primarily focused on His work of salvation before any signs or miracles which were meant to accompany that message at this time and show people that Jesus was who He claimed to be and was doing what He was sent to do (we have the Bible for that now, and we rarely run into people without the Bible or that would demand a sign in order to believe and actually would believe if they saw the sign, so we see fewer signs today, though they still exist for the purpose of coming alongside the gospel message and validating it and validating that the messenger is from God and is telling the true gospel).

Next time we'll see this theme continue as Jesus heals a paralytic, and He will intentionally shine a spotlight on the man's issue with sin, but notice that in that story the Pharisees are now following Him as He has caught their attention (probably because of the testimony this leper gave).  If you want to read ahead, compare today's passage with verses 17-26, and see how they are the same, and how they are different.