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.
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.