Mark 1:41 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Mark 1:41

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What encouraging words! Christ was deeply moved by this man’s condition, by the fact that this man approached him for help at all. He saw the trust that was in the man’s words. No matter how far we have gone from God, if we come and pray, he is moved, and if he is moved by physical leprosy, how much more when he looks at our sin within. Christ touched him, but only when he spoke was the leper healed. The touch was Christ's identification with the leper. In every other case the contagion of sin is so great that the clean is made unclean by coming into contact with the unclean, but in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is able to make the foulest clean; his blood avails for us. ‘He [alone] is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). Christ touches our hearts, and his touch justifies us and creates a new spiritual nature within. When we come to Christ we are responding to a specific invitation from him to come. The leper was healed instantly. Conversion is a crisis experience. We long to be given spiritual faculties: a new heart and a new mind. When you come to Christ, he doesn’t say, ‘I will begin to convert you and it will be completed in twenty years’ time.’ He does it straight away.

Application

Do you think, ‘Who am I that the Lord who is far away, the Almighty God, should be interested in me?’ That is why this is recorded. Christ is only too ready to forgive. He is more ready to forgive than we are to come.

If you approach Christ, it is so different to anything you have ever done before. You pray to him, ‘Lord, change my life.’ When you ask, you have never asked for anything before. You have never asked him to change you before. You come trusting in him. It doesn’t matter who you are. No sincere approach to Christ was ever refused. There is not a single instance recorded in Scripture of anyone who came and was turned away. The Lord heals and answers every time. They had no specific promise of leprosy being healed, but the leper observed the Saviour and saw his willingness to heal all manner of conditions, and he desired to come.

Christ is willing to heal us, even though the cost to himself is more than we can understand. His willingness, is a willingness to do everything necessary to bring us to glory: to take the punishment for our sins, and to suffer the wrath of God on our behalf. Although conversion is a crisis experience, the Lord must then sanctify us over the course of our lives, and bear patiently with all our falls and failings. But he never abandons those whom he has once adopted as his children. His willingness is never an obstacle to those who come humbly and sincerely to seek his help.

What the sinner takes hold of is the compassion of the Lord; it is that which assures him that he will not be turned away. We do not come to Christ by hiding what we are from him, but we tell him the worst about ourselves. If the full horror of our sin were to put him off, then we would be without hope, but he knows better than we do what we are, and yet he came to save those whose sin has made them repulsive and deformed and unclean in the eyes of God. We can only be healed from our sins if the full extent of our depravity is known to God. Thanks be to God that his mercy is so great that none of these things put him off.

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Mark 1:41 Commentary and Bible Study