If you want to ...!

Matthew 8:1-4

After Jesus had come down from the mountain large crowds followed him. A leper now came up and bowed low in front of him. ‘Sir,’ he said ‘if you want to, you can cure me.’ Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said, ‘Of course I want to! Be cured!’ And his leprosy was cured at once. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Mind you do not tell anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and make the offering prescribed by Moses, as evidence for them.’

Food for thought!

This gospel says a lot. It is talks of the leper's approach and Jesus' response. In the leper's approach there were three elements.

(i) The leper came with confidence. He had no doubt that, if Jesus willed, Jesus could make him clean. No leper would ever have come near an orthodox scribe or Rabbi; he knew too well that he would be stoned away; but this man came to Jesus. He had perfect confidence in Jesus' willingness to welcome the man anyone else would have driven away. No man need ever feel himself too unclean to come to Jesus Christ. Indeed, the more sinful we become, the more we deserve Jesus. He said, "I came not for the well but for the sick."

He had perfect confidence in Jesus' power. Leprosy was the one disease for which there was no remedy. But this man was sure that Jesus could do what no one else could do. No man need ever feel himself incurable in body or unforgivable in soul while Jesus Christ exists.

The leper came with humility. He did not demand healing; he only said, "If you want, you can cure me." It was as if he said, "I know I don't matter; I know that other men will flee from me and will have nothing to do with me; I know that I have no claim on you; but perhaps in your divine condescension you will give your power even to such as I am:" It is the humble heart which is conscious of nothing but its need that finds its way to Christ.

The gospel says a lot about Jesus too. According to Law, Jesus had to avoid this man, but Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. For Jesus there was only one obligation in life, and that was to help. There was only one law, and that law was love. The obligation of love took precedence over all other rules and laws and regulations; it made him defy all physical risks.

Jesus told this man not to tell anyone but go and show himself to the priest and make the offering prescribed by Moses. There is lesson for us here. Jesus was telling that man not to neglect the treatment that was available for him in those days. We do not receive miracles by neglecting the medical and scientific treatment open to us. Man must do all man can do before God's power may cooperate with our efforts. A miracle does not come by a lazy waiting upon God to do it all; it comes from the cooperation of the faith-filled effort of man with the illimitable grace of God.

By ordering the man to keep silence, and not to publish abroad what he had done for him, Jesus was teaching us too that not everything he does for us it for public consumption. There are things the Lord does for us, or tells us, that we must never tell anybody.