What Can Wash Away My Sin?
The Lepers of Old
Leprosy is a horrific skin disease.1 It literally eats your flesh away (Numbers 12). Painful, open wounds cover your entire body, from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. Because of the sores, your skin oozes, hardens, dies, and then falls off. And then, it happens again.2
But for an Israelite, leprosy was more than just a sickness. It meant you lived in abject humiliation (Lev 13:45-46). If you became a leper, you lost everything—reputation, job, family, friends, fellowship. You must be disheveled so that others can see, from a distance, that you are a leper. And just in case anyone has bad eyesight, you are commanded to cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” as proclamation of your disease. You live in quarantine, outside civilization, in the wilderness—not merely for two weeks, but sometimes for life—for as long as you have the disease.3
Yet, there’s more. As one who is spiritually unclean, it means that before God, you are dirty. Because God is holy, pure, and clean, one who is unclean cannot enter into His presence. If you tried, you would die. To be unclean is to be unworthy. If you were unclean, everyone would be ashamed of you—including yourself. Maybe, even God.
And this is exactly why Mark 1:40-45 is so shocking. While on a preaching tour in Galilee, Jesus meets a leper.
Mark 1:40 And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Do you hear his cries? He calls from a distance, “Wait, Teacher!” And then he comes, step by step. See his tattered clothes, filthy hair, diseased skin, and tear-stained cheeks. Now he is 6 feet away, and then another step. Still, he comes closer, until finally he kneels, his face to the ground4, at the feet of Jesus. And then he says, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Do you see his faith? The leper heard of Jesus’ power and believes it. “You can—that is, You are able to, You have power—make me clean.” He has heard how Jesus casts out demons, heals the dying and lame and blind. He believes that this One is a miracle-worker like the prophets of old.
Do you hear his words? He doesn’t ask, “Will You make me clean?” He doesn’t plead. He merely states a fact: “If You will, You can make me clean.” But he doesn’t know what Christ will do. Maybe Jesus would be like every other religious person, treating him as if his leprosy was a punishment from God.
What would Jesus do?
Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.”
Jesus was “moved with compassion.” He was pained by his plight. His heart was filled, not with judgement, not with apathy, not with disgust, not with annoyance, but with compassion. And thus, He stretched out His hand. Every single Jew there would be absolutely losing his mind. “Don’t touch him, Jesus! You will get leprosy! You’ll become unclean!”5
But He touched him. That touch would have stunned the leper. Panic, wonder, fear, terror, amazement shot through his soul like lightning. Who knows how long since he had felt the touch of another human being?
Normally, if someone touches uncleanness, they become unclean. If a leprous man touches even clothing, that thing is now unclean. Uncleanness contaminates and destroyed cleanness.
But Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Beloved of the Father, Jesus the LORD in flesh, touches leprosy—but He doesn’t become unclean. With the authority of God Almighty, and His merciful hand on the leper, Jesus says, “I will; be cleansed.”
Mark 1:42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
Jesus’ cleanness makes the leper clean! Jesus’ cleanness destroys the leper’s uncleanness. Can you imagine the leper’s shock? His uncleanness gone. His hope restored. His humiliation eradicated. His shame erased. His life new.
The Lepers of Today
If you’re reading this, most likely you’re not a leper; thankfully, modern medicine has been able to address many types of leprosy. But, if you’re reading this, like the lepers of old, are in desperate need of a cleansing that only Jesus can bring.
In Isaiah 64:6, the nation of Israel prays:
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
This should be our prayer. Our sin has made us unclean. We are spiritually dirty, unacceptable in the sight of a holy God. Even the best parts of us, even our righteous deeds, are like a defiled, muddy rag—contaminated by our sinfulness. We fade, wither, and die like the leaves in autumn. Our sins take us away from God, away from community, away from life.
As sinners, we are sick, diseased, and helpless to cleanse ourselves, separated from God and His life. Our fingers are covered with black ink; everything we touch is stained. Our hands are covered with sludge; the more we scrub, the stronger the stench. Our eyes are blinded by the despair of our hearts; the more we strain for the light, the deeper into the pit we fall. Our hearts are enslaved to sin; the more we struggle, the tighter the chains. We cannot cleanse ourselves. We are helpless, as defiled as lepers—wretched, miserable, uncleaned.
So many of us spend our days trying to deal with the filth of our sin in vain. We tend to fall into two extremes in dealing with our uncleanness: self-righteousness or self-condemnation.
Self-righteousness: you try to make up for your sins. You do good, act good, as if being good washes away your uncleanness. But it doesn’t, and you are plagued by the question, “Is it enough?”
Self-condemnation: you have walked in hopelessness and self-pity. “I am so bad that God cannot save me. I am the worst; I deserve the worst, and there is no hope for me.” You hate yourself and give in to the slavery of sin to numb yourself to the pain. But you still feel the darkness.
If you are not a Christian, you need to be cleansed. The blood of Jesus is the only thing that is powerful enough to wash our guilt away. Christ died for sinners, not good people. He died in our place for our sins, that we might be forgiven and washed, made clean.
Come to Jesus. Jesus is the incarnate God, the embodiment of all of His mercy, grace, patience, abounding steadfast love and faithfulness, and forgiveness.6 There is no one more loving than Him. He sees His suffering people as sheep without a shepherd, and He longs to bring them home. There is no one more tender than Him. He sees a sin-ravaged earth suffering the consequences of sin and yearns to establish His kingdom forever. There is no one who longs for righteousness more than Him. He serves, saves, and sanctifies—willingly, enthusiastically, with great joy, even extending His hand to an unclean leper. There is no one more committed to our good, than Him.
If you are a Christian today, you still need to be washed. We who have trusted in Christ are forgiven, once for all, of all our sins—past, present, and future. Jesus paid it all, and salvation is accomplished. Period. Yet we still need to be washed, over and over (Ephesians 5:26, Titus 3:5). Jesus paid the eternal judgement we deserve with one perfect death [justification], yet we still need continual washing to be made like Him in holiness [sanctification].
As one writer says:
Jesus’s cleanness is a far more powerful contagion than any dirt we can bring to him. There is always more that’s right in Jesus than there is what’s wrong in us, more grace in him than offense in us, more forgiveness in him than sin in us. The very worst in us cannot compete with the best in Christ. We can’t sully him. He can only purify us. However deep our mess goes, his holiness goes deeper. We will never exhaust it.7
But, perhaps the old hymn says it best.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.8
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Footnotes
Some historical elements inspired by The Chosen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8DThllZAY It does a surprising good job of capturing the social stigma and shock of this passage. ↩︎
Job is a man in the Bible, whom we learn about from the book of Job. Although we can’t be sure, it does seem like he had a type of leprosy. Listen to how it’s described.
Job 2:7-8 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.
Job 7:5 ...my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.
Job 30:17 ...and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.
Job 30:30 My skin turns black and falls from me, / and my bones burn with heat.
https://www.gospelgazette.com/gazette/2005/jan/page15.htm, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17516561/
James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002).
Lk 5:12 πεσὼν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον
Many themes taken from this sermon: https://t4g.org/resources/ligon-duncan/the-gospel-by-numbers-2/
Exodus 34:6-7
...“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, ...
Sam Allberry, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-stains-that-no-one-sees
Adapted from a sermon preached for Lighthouse Community Church’s Youth Group on 2020.07.31.
Photo by Gareth David on Unsplash