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The event of Jesus healing the leper is again to be understood in its eschatalogical sense. In Jesus ministry God is visiting Israel and if the true king of Israel is coming to Zion then the Kingdom of God is arriving.
To begin with the cleansing of the leper has more to do with with Jesus
having mercy that it is with the lepor having faith in Jesus as Gods Christ. Yes he certainly did have a certain amount of faith. Because he is convinced that Jesus can heal him,all that remains for him is to find out if Jesus is willing. He says to Jesus "if you are willing I will be clean." Jesus answers in the affirmative saying" I will" and then speaks the command "be clean" and the lepresy immediatly left him!!!! What had just happened was one of the greatest miracles ever in all Israels History. The last time a leper was healed in Israel was through the prophet Elijah,when the commander of Syrias army Namaan was cleansed of Lepresy. This is what we would call headline news!! The time of God visiting his people before His kingdom came had surely arrived. God in Jesus was reversing the curse of which one aspect was disease. Who could do such things?!! Surely God was visiting Israel in mercy. Again we see what was only expected to happen in the age to come in Gods kingdom was happening in history in the now, in this evil age. healing was only assured to believing Israel in the Kingdom of God. This was truly a sign to Israel that Yhwh was visiting her before the age to come. Here was the one who John said would come after him who is Gods Christ. Jesus immediatly commands the man not to tell the people!!But He tells him to go show himself to the priests and to make the offering that Moses commanded be done. This would be at the temple and we can only deduce that Jesus is using the healing of the leper as a testimony to those who claim to represent God as His priests. If they allow Him to be examined and to offer the sacrifice then they must acknowledge he has been healed by the power of God and so testify that to the people. Jesus says as much when he says go show yourself to the priests as a testimony to the people. If the priests refuse the sacrifice they are saying he has not been made clean by the power of Yhwh. And if they testify to the glory of God then they must acknowledge his servant Jesus as Gods prophet and King over Israel. Also Jesus was able to do what the priests could not. Jesus could actually effectively make a person clean whereas the priests could only pronounce a person to be ceremonially clean and that only from sin. However from Marks account of the leper we see he disobeyed Jesus. He immediatly went and told the people of the glorious thing which God had done through Jesus. We aren't told if and when he showed himself to the priests in the temple. We see that because he told the people he hindered Jesus ministry because after that Jesus couldn't enter any town without been overwhelmed by the crowds. So we can safely deduce that the reason Jesus told him not to tell the people is so that his ministry wouldn't be hindered. So then the point to this miracle was to the purpose of bearing testimony to Israels religous leaders that God was visiting His people. Would they believe it and testify to the glory of God or would they be filled with unbelief and oppose Jesus to their own destruction. |
