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Cleansing the Leper

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 24, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 4.

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Cleansing the Leper

By Arthur V. Fox

And there came a leper to Him, beseeching Him, and kneeling down to Him, and saying unto Him, If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. Mark 1:40-42.
It was a horrible case. Luke says that he was "full of leprosy." Yet no case, however bad, was too bad to be healed by Him. The sufferer himself believed this. Bad as his case was, and utterly incurable as it was thought, he yet believed that Jesus could make him clean. "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean."
The man does not actually ask Jesus to cleanse him. He only declares his belief in His power to do so. Incurable as he knew himself to be by any one else, he yet says, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." He believed that Jesus could do for him what no one else could. Yet there is an "if." His faith was less strong about the will than about the power. He had no doubt that Jesus could cure him; but would He? or would He shun him and avoid him as did others?
There was his doubt. "If Thou wilt, Thou canst." And the Compassionate One touched him and healed him.
We, too, want cleansing. Till cleansed by the Lord Jesus, we are all lepers spiritually, "full of leprosy," the leprosy of guilt and sin.
He can cleanse us by His precious blood. We are incurable by any other means; but He can make us perfectly whole. There is no "if" in the matter.
Our gracious Lord and Saviour invites all sinners to come to Him. He can forgive them, and He will. O, who will lose all, for want of asking? Taught by the leper, and by what the Lord did for him, let each draw near and beseech the same gracious Lord; with no "if," but in humble contrition and faith. He can, and He will, make us clean.
ARTHUR V. FOX.