Mark 1:41 Meaning and Explanation

Mark lets us see inside Jesus: he is moved with compassion, stirred to the depths. Then he does the unthinkable. He puts forth his hand and touches a leper, a man whom no one had touched since his disease began, and answers the man's own words exactly: I will; be thou clean.

To touch a leper was to become unclean, but here the current runs the other way: cleanness flows out from Christ into the defiled. He could have healed with a word from a safe distance; the touch was for the man's heart, not only his skin. And the words I will settle forever the question the leper raised. Bring Christ your own if thou wilt, and learn how he loves to answer it.