You Cannot Soil God

One of the easy-to-forget details in the account of Jesus's healing of the man with leprosy is the fact that both the man and Jesus act in ways that were completely taboo, that would have been unthinkable in the time and culture of Jesus. The man comes right up to Jesus (which he was not supposed to do, lest he come in physical contact with another person and render them unclean (and perhaps communicate the deadly disease of leprosy in the process)). And Jesus, rather than running as fast as he could in the opposite direction, reaches out and touches the man. According to Mosaic Law, this would have rendered Jesus unclean and would have excluded him from public worship and from close contact with others for a period of time. But what happens instead? We see that Jesus is so clean that he can never be soiled but can only render clean those who approach him with confidence. So we should never hesitate to bring our uncleanness directly to him -- so that he will make us clean.

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