“If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” – Mark 1:40
“Was Jesus willing? And what an answer came to feeble faith! For God will be God evermore, and surpass even our truest thoughts of Himself. “And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.” What a new thing was this on earth! A man most surely, yet, as surely, infinitely more than man; a heart touched with exquisite feelings of pity; a hand stretched to touch a leper! Was this law? Had it been only law, and a mere man in question, there would have been not the cleansing of the unclean, but the defilement of him who ventured into contact with that loathsome, forbidden object. But descend ever so low as He might in grace, Jesus was the Son of God, a divine person, Who alone of all men could sinlessly say, “I will; be thou clean.” No exertion of power could have so met the leper’s wants, his wants of soul as well as of body. The tenderness, the perfect, unselfish love that touched him—what should not this be to our hearts? Assuredly, it revealed the heart of Jesus, as no words alone could have done; and yet the words revealed One Who was God on earth. It was divine grace in man, in Jesus, the perfect servant of God, and the more blessedly serving man’s necessities, because thus perfectly serving God.”1
1 – William Kelly, An Exposition of the Gospel of Mark (Sunbury, PA: Believers Bookshelf, 1971), 27-28.
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