CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 1:44. Say nothing to any man.—Our Lord desired to check, as far as possible, the tendency on the part of the populace to regard Him as a mere wonder-worker, because such a reputation would inevitably blind men to the primary object of His Divine mission, which was not the healing of the body, but the salvation of the soul. For a testimony unto them.—He would afford the Jewish authorities no pretext for asserting that He set Himself above the law.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 1:40-45
(PARALLELS: Matthew 8:2-4; Luke 5:12-16.)
A parable in a miracle.—Christ’s miracles are called wonders—that is, deeds which, by their exceptional character, arrest attention and excite surprise. Further, they are called “mighty works”—that is, exhibitions of superhuman power. They are still further called “signs”—that is, tokens of His Divine mission. But they are signs in another sense, being, as it were, parables as well as miracles, and representing on the lower plane of material things the effects of His working on men’s spirits. This parabolic aspect of the miracles is obvious in the case before us. Leprosy received exceptional treatment under the Mosaic Law, and the peculiar restrictions to which the sufferer was subjected, as well as the ritual of his cleansing, in the rare cases where the disease wore itself out, are best explained by being considered as symbolical rather than as sanitary. It was taken as an emblem of sin. Its hideous symptoms, its rotting sores, its slow, stealthy, steady progress, its defiance of all known means of cure, made its victim only too faithful a walking image of that worse disease.
I. The leper’s cry.—Mark connects the story with our Lord’s first journey through Galilee, which was signalised by many miracles, and had excited much stir and talk. The news of the Healer had reached the isolated huts where the lepers herded, and had kindled a spark of hope in one poor wretch, which emboldened him to break through all regulations and thrust his tainted and unwelcome presence into the shrinking crowd. Mark’s vivid narrative shows him to us, flinging himself down before the Lord, and, without waiting for question or pause, interrupting whatever was going on with his piteous cry. Misery and wretchedness make short work of conventional politenesses. Note the keen sense of misery that impels to the passionate desire for relief. A leper with the flesh dropping off his bones could not suppose that there was nothing the matter with him. The parallel fails us there. The emblem is all insufficient, for here is the very misery of our deepest misery, that we are unconscious of it, and sometimes even come to love it. The worse we are, the less we know that there is anything the matter with us; and the deeper the leprosy has struck its filthy fangs into us, the more ready we are to say that we are sound. Oh! if the best of us could see himself for once, in the light of God, as the worst of us will see himself one day, the cry would come from the purest lips, “O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death?” this life in death that I carry, rotting and smelling foul to heaven, about with me, wheresoever I go. Note, further, this man’s confidence in Christ’s power. “Thou canst make me clean.” He had heard all about the miracles that were being wrought up and down over the country, and he came to the Worker, with nothing of the nature of religious faith in him, but with entire confidence, based upon the report of previous miracles, in Christ’s ability to heal. If we turn from the emblem to the thing signified, from the leprosy of the body to that of the spirit, we may be sure of Christ’s omnipotent ability to cleanse from the extremest severity of the disease, however inveterate and chronic it may have become. Sin dominates men by two opposite lies. I have been saying how hard it is to get people’s consciences awakened to see the facts of their moral and religious condition; but then, when they are awoke up, it is almost as hard to keep them from the other extreme. The devil, first of all, says to a man, “It is only a little one. Do it; you will be none the worse. You can give it up when you like, you know.” That is the language before the act. Afterwards, his language is, first, “You have done no harm; never mind what people say about sin. Make yourself comfortable.” And then, when that lie wears itself out, the mask is dropped, and this is what is said: “I have got you now, and you cannot get away. Done is done! What thou hast written thou hast written; and neither thou nor anybody else can blot it out.” Hence the despair into which awakened consciences are apt to drop, and the feeling, which dogs the sense of evil like a spectre, of the hopelessness of all attempts to make oneself better. Brethren, they are both lies: the lie that we are pure is the first; the lie that we are too black to be purified is the second. Christ’s blood atones for all past sin, and has power to bring forgiveness to every one. Christ’s vital Spirit will enter into any heart, and, abiding there, has power to make the foulest clean. Note, again, the leper’s hesitation: “If Thou wilt.” He had no right to presume on Christ’s goodwill. He knew nothing about the principles upon which His miracles were wrought and His mercy extended. But his hesitation is quite as much entreaty as hesitation. He, as it were, throws the responsibility for his health or disease upon Christ’s shoulders, and thereby makes the strongest appeal to that loving heart. We stand on another level. The leper’s hesitation is our certainty. We know that if any men are not healed it is not because Christ will not, but because they will not.
II. The Lord’s answer.—Mark puts the miracle in very small compass, and dilates rather upon the attitude and mind of Christ preparatory to it. Note three things—the compassion, the touch, the word. As to the first, is it not a precious gift for us, in the midst of our many wearinesses and sorrows and sicknesses, to have that picture of Jesus Christ bending over the leper, and sending, as it were, a gush of pitying love from His heart to flood away all his miseries? Show Him sorrow, and He answers it by a pity of such a sort that it is restless till it helps and assuages. We may rise higher than even this, for the pity of Jesus Christ is the summit of His revelation of the Father. The Christian’s God is no impassive Being, indifferent to mankind, but One who in all our afflictions is afflicted, and, in His love and in His pity, redeems and bears and carries. Note, still further, the Lord’s touch. With swift obedience to the impulse of His pity, Christ thrusts forth His hand and touches the leper. There was much in that; but whatever more we may see in it, we should not be blind to the loving humanity of the act. All men that help their fellows must be contented thus to identify themselves with them and to take them by the hand, if they would deliver them from their evils. Remember, too, that according to the Mosaic Law it was forbidden to any but the priest to touch a leper. Therefore in this act, beautiful as it is in its uncalculated humanity, there may have been something intended of a deeper kind. Our Lord thereby does one of two things—either He asserts His authority as overriding that of Moses and all his regulations, or He asserts His sacerdotal character. Either way there is a great claim in the act. Still further, we may take that touch of Christ’s as being a parable of His whole work. It symbolises His identifying of Himself with mankind, the foulest and the most degraded; and in this connexion there is a profound meaning in one of the ordinarily trivial legends of the Rabbis, who, founding upon a word of Isaiah 53, tell us that when Messias comes He will be found sitting amongst the lepers at the gate of the city. So He was numbered amongst the transgressors in His life, and “with the wicked in His death.” He touches, and, touching, contracts no impurity, cleansing as the sunlight or the fire does, by burning up the impurity, and not by receiving it into Himself. Note the Lord’s word: “I will; be thou clean.” It is shaped, convolution for convolution, so to speak, to match the man’s prayer. He ever moulds His response according to the feebleness and imperfection of the petitioner’s faith. But, at the same time, what a ring of autocratic authority and conscious sovereignty there is in the brief, calm, imperative word, “I will; be thou clean”! He accepts the leper’s description of power; He claims to work the miracle by His own will, and therein He is either guilty of what comes very near arrogant blasphemy, or He is rightly claiming for Himself a Divine prerogative. If His word can tell as a force on material things, what is the conclusion? He who “speaks and it is done” is Almighty and Divine.
III. The immediate cure.—Mark tells, with his favourite word, “straightway,’ how, as soon as Christ had spoken, the leprosy departed from him. And to turn from the symbol to the fact, the same sudden and complete cleansing is possible for us. On account of Christ’s sacrifice, whose efficacy is eternal and lies at the foundation of all our blessedness and our purity until the heavens shall be no more, we are forgiven our sins, and our guilt is taken away. By the present indwelling of that cleansing Spirit of the ever-living Christ, which will be given to us each if we seek it, we are cleansed day by day from our evil. We must come to Christ, and there must be a real living contact between us and Him through our faith, if we are to possess either the forgiveness or the cleansing which is wrapped up inseparable in His gift. Further, the suddenness of this cure and its completeness may be reproduced in us. Trust Him and He will do it. Only remember, it was of no use to the leper that crowds had been healed, that floods of blessing had been poured over the land. What he wanted was that a rill should come into his own garden and flow past his own door and refresh his own lips. And if you want to have Christ’s cleansing you must make personal work of it, and come with this prayer, “Unto me be all that cleansing shown!” Or rather you do not need to go to Him with an “If” nor a prayer, for His gift has not waited for our asking, and He has anticipated us by coming with healing in His wings. The parts are reversed, and He prays you to receive the gift, and stands before each of us with the gentle remonstrance upon His lips, “Why will ye die when I am here ready to cure you?” Take Him at His word, for He offers to us all, whether we desire it or no, the cleansing which we need.—A. Maclaren, D. D.
Mark 1:40-45. Christ’s healing touch.—What purpose did the touch of Christ serve? Perhaps we shall be helped in replying, if we think of how much tenderness and pathos the Gospel narratives would be deprived if this small feature were taken from them. The touch of Christ seems still to bring Him into contact with humanity; it falls into harmony with the whole story of His condescending sympathy.
I. In touching the sick Christ fixes and confirms faith in Himself as the Healer.—It is in condescension to a human weakness that He lays His hands on diseased folk. We believe in little that we cannot see. Pain and sickness are so sensible that we look for equally sensible tokens of the energy of the restorer. Christ came into the world to heal sicknesses; and faith in Him, as Healer, was essential to the cure. By His touch He fixed men’s thoughts upon Himself; this was the pledge of healing by which He stimulated and confirmed their faith. Christ’s touching the sick is then a symbol of that condescension to our weakness in which He still appeals to us, fixing our thoughts upon Himself, revealing His infinite power and ever-gracious purpose, arousing us by some special mode to contemplate what virtue is in Him, but which, without these special revelations, we should fail to see. Miracles themselves are such a condescension; in the miracle Christ “touches” us, that we may see how entirely and blessedly the universe is under His control. We may see this, too, as one among the reasons of Christ’s incarnation—“the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” that “touched” into attention we might behold “the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Christ was in God, before God was incarnated in Jesus Christ. The love and sympathy, the reverence and righteousness, the trustiness and truth—in one word, the grace that so moves and wins us in Jesus, dwelt in the bosom of the Father from before all worlds. But how could we have ascended up on high to bring Christ down from above? how could our world-dulled eyes have beheld, or our carnal hearts have trusted, the grace that is in our God? It needed to be not simply revealed to us as a heavenly doctrine, but embodied in an earthly form. And so it “drew from out the vast and struck its being into bounds.” Christian experience, again, will furnish us with many illustrations of the mode in which Christ condescends to our weakness in pursuing His purpose to save us. We none of us believe that there are times and seasons with Him. He is as ready to save us the first hour we hear of Him as He can be at any subsequent time; He “waiteth” to be gracious unto us, with hand ever stretched out, and with voice ever pleading, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” And yet how full is Christian biography of instances of Christ’s falling in with our expectation and using special events, special times, as the mode in which to heal us. The cares of life, the responsibilities of early manhood, the solemnity of parentage, the softening influences of bereavement, the terrors of pestilence, the fear of death—He makes all these the means of extending His grace to souls. He gives us the very sign we wish for, that we may believe that He is Himself making us whole.
II. See in Christ’s touch of the sick His answer to our craving for sympathy.—Those who have had much to do with the sick—who have seen how, in their tossings to and fro, a hand laid on theirs can quiet them—who have heard them say, “Sit there in the light, where I can see you”—who remember their restless craving for some token that they are being cared for, how they ask to be turned from side to side, that their pillow be smoothed, or the curtains drawn, or some little attention paid which makes their bed really no easier, but soothes them—will see in the touch of Christ a virtue beyond what it has as the appropriate sign of healing. They will understand that this token of sympathy had much to do with the faith in Himself as Healer, which Christ sought to cherish; for the sick have very little confidence in the power to help them of those who are not tender in their help. Some of us would do well to visit the sick, that we might learn what possibilities of suffering are in man, and be made more thoughtful, more tender-hearted. There was no need of Christ’s learning such a lesson, no need of awakening His sympathy. But we did need to have that sympathy revealed to us. And here, again, we are met by the wondrous doctrine of the Incarnation. Christ is with us, not only helping us, but feeling with us; knowing exactly how to succour, because He knows exactly how the burden presses on us. How the gospel lights up and fills with meaning such passages as these: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are but dust.” “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye.” Man’s craving for God’s sympathy is here met, the very craving we are sometimes ready to stigmatise as a weakness. “They brought unto Christ infants, that He should touch them; but when His disciples saw it, they rebuked them.” “What good can a touch do them? Silly mothers to long for, to find any satisfaction in a touch!” But Jesus rebuked His disciples, and took the children in His arms and blessed them. There are very many things that, like the touch of the children, do not seem to us of much use, but still we are weak enough to long for them. And we have a Father in heaven who is good enough to meet that weakness. Christ has made us understand the Fatherhood of God. He would have us not stiffly, severely good, but frank and natural with Him. The touch was not needed for healing, but it was a comfort to be touched by Christ; and “Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, and said, I will; be thou clean.”
III. See in Christ’s touch the symbol of Christ’s bearing our infirmities and carrying our sins.—This is, after all, the sublimest meaning of our text. He “touched” our nature in all its pollution; He shrank not from it, but took it upon Himself, and bore its shame and suffering. A thousand will subscribe to a hospital for one who will live with the idiot or deformed; a thousand will pay the doctor and the nurse for one who will enter the cottage of the squalid sick and spend one night there. It needs much schooling of self to suppress the instinct of revolt at sickness hideously before us. Turn now and read of Christ, that He “touched” the sick and healed them. You will see that in His dealing with bodily disease He did but symbolise how entirely He had taken human sinfulness to Himself.—A. Mackennal, D.D.
Mark 1:43-45. Be silent.—
I. This is not at all the command we should have expected; and we cannot but ask, therefore, for the reason of it. Can it be that a very common conception of Christian duty is after all inaccurate and misleading, and that it is not every convert’s first and great duty to bear verbal witness to the Saviour who has redeemed him? It may be that this is an inaccurate and a misleading conception of Christian duty; and for myself I think it is. But, assuredly, there were other reasons for our Lord’s prohibition; and it may be well to look at these first.
1. Doubtless one reason why Christ enjoined silence on many of those whom He had healed was, that He did not as yet wish to draw on Himself the public attention. He came not to strive, and cry, and make His voice heard in the streets. He desired to go quietly about His work, sowing seeds of truth and grace which might hereafter bring forth fair fruit abundantly.
2. Another and more special reason in this case was, that He wished the leper to discharge a special duty, viz. to bear a “testimony to the priests.” As yet they were prejudiced against Jesus of Nazareth. They thought of Him as a zealot, a fanatic, who had swept away corruptions at which they had connived, by which they had profited. Probably they feared that He might set Himself to destroy, rather than to fulfil, the Mosaic Law, or that He might undermine their authority with the people. Now if the leper had done as he was bid, if he had held his peace, if he had gone straight to Jerusalem and told the priests that Jesus had sent him to them in order that they might examine him by the Mosaic tests and say whether he was clean, and if he had taken them the offerings which Moses had commanded the cleansed leper to present before the Lord, he would have carried them “a testimony” which could hardly have failed to produce a happy effect on their minds. First, his very healing would have testified that Jesus wielded a Divine power, and then the deference of Jesus to the law and to the priesthood would have predisposed them in His favour.
3. But besides these, we cannot but feel that there must be some reason in our common human nature for this constant injunction to silence, that our Lord must have been thinking of the spiritual welfare of men when He forbad them to bear public witness to His marvellous works. One such reason is to be found, I think, in the very different estimate put on miracles by Christ and by the Church. It is only of late years that the more thoughtful students of the Word have come to suspect that miracles are a burden which the gospel has to carry rather than wings of proof which bear it up. But however we may regard them, our Lord and His apostles laid very little stress upon them. To the leper, possibly, nothing was so grand, nothing so desirable, as the power to work miracles; but Jesus knew “a more excellent way,” and held not love alone, but almost any ethical and spiritual virtue, to be worth far more than tongues, or prophecy, or the faith that can only remove a mountain. For this reason, therefore, among many others, He bade the leper “say nothing” of the miracle “to any man.” Consider, too, how religious emotion evaporates in talk, how virtue goes out of us in the words we utter. Is it not always better to obey than to talk about obedience, to show love than to profess love? Obviously, though no doubt he thought to honour Christ by “much publishing” what He had done, this man was not strong enough for that form of service. To what good end did he honour Christ with his tongue, while he dishonoured, by disobeying, Him in his life? See what harm this leper did, though doubtless he had none but a good intention, what an ill return he made for the grace of Christ. By touching the leper Christ had become a leper, in the eye of the law. The kind hand laid upon him not only healed him, but drew him from the desert into the city, and readmitted him to the society of men. And the leper rewarded his Healer by driving Him out of the city into the desert. Simply because his foolish tongue would wag, “Jesus could no more openly enter into a city, but was” compelled to remain “without in desert places.” Could we have a more convincing illustration of the danger of disobedience, however pure and generous its motive may seem? Yes, for it is a still more bitter proof when we find that by our own fluent religious talk, and the easy but eager profession by which we honestly meant to serve Christ, we have alienated from Him those who stand nearest to us and know us best.
II. How came this leper to disobey the word of the Lord?—This ought not to be a puzzle to you, and could not be if you were thoughtful students of your own hearts. Have you yet to learn that it is much easier to brace oneself for great endeavours than to maintain a faithful discharge of simple and lesser duties? easier to suffer death, for example, in some great cause than to set such a watch over the lips as never to offend? easier to make a great sacrifice for some worthy end than to keep one’s temper under the slight frets and provocations which every day brings with it? A great faith is not always a patient and submissive faith. We should also remember into what fatal languors great spiritual excitement is apt to react. The leper who, face to face with Christ, could live or die for Him, but no sooner quits His presence than he cannot even hold his tongue for Him, is but a glass in which we may see ourselves and read a warning against our own peril.—S. Cox, D. D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 1:40. Various attitudes of men towards Christ.—In Mark 1:27 we found men putting questions regarding Christ’s power; in Mark 1:40 we find a poor sufferer seeking to avail himself of Christ’s curative energy. This marks the great difference between various classes of society in relation to the work of the Saviour. One class is content with looking, wondering, and perhaps admiring; another class must test His power in direct personal experience.—J. Parker, D. D.
Christ inspires trust.—This incident shows the trust which the ministry of the Saviour had inspired in the minds of sufferers, specially so in the case of the leper; the leper lived under the most terrible restrictions, yet his heart rose to the point of trust and love when he heard of the wonderful works of this new Man.—Ibid.
Personal faith in Christ.—This man did not merely believe that Jesus Christ could cleanse a leper, but that He could cleanse him! It is very easy to believe for other people. There is really no faith in such impersonal, proxy confidence. The true faith believes for itself first, and then for others.
Sickness and the soul.—Sicknesses and diseases, says an old writer, are often necessary to the soul’s health. God knows this better than we; wherefore we ought to resign ourselves into His hands, and not to ask for health and relief absolutely, but conditionally, as it shall please God, and as it shall conduce to our spiritual good.
Mark 1:40-42. Leprosy.—Leprosy was regarded as the symbol of sin and of judgment (Numbers 12:10; 2 Kings 5:26; 2 Kings 15:5; 2 Chronicles 26:20-23); also of inscrutable visitations (Job 2:7).
2. Recovery from leprosy was regarded as a symbol of salvation, as in the case of Naaman (2 Kings 5:2: cp. Psalms 51:9, with Leviticus 6:7).
3. The uncleanness, the gradual destruction of the system, the disgusting appearance, and the unexpected recovery by a full outbreak of the eruption—and, again, the slow but sure progress of the disease, the isolation of those who were affected by it from the society of the clean, the infectious nature of the trouble, its long duration and hopelessness—presented a variety of views under which sin and guilt with its consequences and effects, even upon innocent individuals, might be symbolised.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
A signal instance of faith in Christ.—
1. In the cures wrought by Christ faith was ever the connecting link between cause and effect—the channel which conveyed the healing balm to the festering sore—the medium which brought the saving power of God to bear upon the suffering weakness of man.
2. Faith in the heart was ever accompanied by confession with the mouth and expression in the life. As men believed, so they spoke and acted.
3. This leper came to Jesus, besought Jesus, and confessed his faith in Jesus. So far, he acted like the blind men at Jericho (Matthew 20:29-34), and the father of the child with a dumb spirit (Mark 9:17-27). But this leper’s confession, unlike theirs, was made not in reply to any question put by Christ, but of his own voluntary motion. His soul was as full of faith as his body of leprosy. He had no doubt whatever as to Christ’s power to heal; yet in his great humility he would not dictate to the Divine Physician, but leave himself entirely in His hands: “If Thou art willing, Thou art able to cleanse me.”
4. To such an appeal the Saviour had but one answer—the echo of the suppliant’s cry: “I will; be thou clean.” And as He uttered these gracious words, to show that He could do what He would, and would do what He could, He “put forth His hand, and touched him,” and “immediately the leprosy departed,” etc.
5. Behold that leper—as he was, and as he is! The disease, how hopeless: the remedy, how sure: the application of that remedy, how simple: the cure, how speedy and complete! That hopeless disease was leprosy: that sure remedy, the power of Christ: that simple application, faith in Jesus: that swift and effectual cure, a new creation!
Mark 1:41. Christ’s touch.—The word “be clean” was sufficient for His healing: why then the touch? What an illustration of Divinity!
1. That He could touch pollution and be undefiled. The water of life is not fouled by the corruption of those who come to drink.
2. This was Divine sympathy. We can almost hear this leper say, “Lord, I am unclean, vile, sinful, and separated; no one can even touch me, for fear of pollution; oh, heal me!” We can almost feel the thrill as the healing tide responded to the word of Jesus, and the new love, like an electric current, came at His touch. 3. In all Christian work the loving hand should accompany the loving word. John B. Gough says of the man who was permitted to reach him, “After twenty years, I can feel the power and love of the hand that was laid upon my shoulder that night.” And the world has felt the touch, just as the multitudes who came to be healed felt the word and touch Jesus gave to the leper.
Christ’s helping hand.—Like a sunbeam passing through foul water untarnished and unstained, or like some sweet spring such as travellers tell us rises sometimes in the midst of the salt sea and retains its freshness and pours it over the surrounding bitterness, so Christ takes upon Himself our nature, and lays hold of our stained hands with the hand that continues pure while it grasps us, and will make us purer if we grasp it.
The symbolic teaching of this miracle is thus expressed by Bede: Typically, the leper represents the whole race of man languishing with sins, as this sufferer, full of leprosy, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” By the hand of the Saviour put forth—that is, by the Word of God become incarnate and touching human nature—they are cleansed from their old transgression, and are enabled to hear with the apostles the cheering words, “Now ye are clean, because of the word which I have spoken unto you”; and they who once, as abominable, were excluded from the city of God, are now brought within the Temple, and are presented unto Him who is a priest for ever, and offer for their cleansing their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.
Christ touching the leprosies of humanity.—How often, in His human life, Christ repeated in the spirit what He here did in the body! When He ate with the publicans and sinners, endured the kiss of the fallen, sent away uncondemned the penitent adulteress, opened paradise to the dying malefactor, He was again and again touching the leprosies of humanity, touching them that He might make them clean. And when His Church went forth from the upper chamber, in the strength of His unseen presence and His Spirit’s guidance, and stood before the dying pagan world; when it confronted the hideous profligacy of Corinth or Antioch, and the frivolous scepticism of Athens, and the dark devil-worship of Ephesus, and the coarse brutality of Philippi, and the wild fanaticism of Galatia, and the pitiless cruelties of Rome,—then over and over again Christ touched the leper and made him clean; and through the tainted views of that polluted world there flowed out straight from Christ the resistless current of a new and purer life. The history of the first Christian centuries is the fulfilment of that of which this miracle was the shadow and promise.—John Ellerton.
The leprosies of modern society.—Think of the leprosies of modern English society, which some are afraid to touch, which too many have touched to their sorrow and ruin. Look at that great subject of popular amusements. There is plenty of corruption and disease there. But it is not copying Christ to stand aloof from it all and say, “Oh! these things are all so bad, so dangerous—the vice of the drama, the frivolity of fashionable pleasure, the immorality of popular fiction—these are so great, so corrupting, that we must ignore them; they are too bad for us to try to mend them.” And it is pitiful when the reaction from this moral cowardice comes, and bright young lives are carried along by pleasure; when with a sort of feeling that they are defying and separating themselves from the good and the serious, they touch that which defiles, and lose their purity of heart, their faith in Christ, their longings to be His for ever. We want men and women to deal with this question of amusement in a spirit of courageous faith—to say, “These things need not be bad, and ought not to be bad; and if we bring Christ’s touch upon them, we can and will purify them—purify our social life, our politics, our business, our commerce, our amusements, aye, and our Churches and our religious life too, for they too need the outstretched hand of Christ to make them clean.”—Ibid.
Dogmatic teaching of verse.—This verse was regarded by the early Church as a mine of dogmatic teaching, specially suitable for the confutation of heresy. To Photinus, who taught that Jesus was a mere man and in no sense God, was objected the word, “I will,” as indicating His claim to possess an almighty will, the power to heal at His own will. To Arius, who taught the inferiority of the Son to the Father, were objected the words, “I will; be thou clean,” as claiming equality of power. To Manichæus, who taught that Jesus did not possess a body in reality, but only in appearance, were objected the words, “Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him.”
Mark 1:42. The healing of the leper a sign of hope to the world.—
1. The Lord can restore, even where a case seems desperate.
2. He is willing to do it.
3. He does it by entering into fellowship with the sufferings of the world.
4. By His suffering He takes away ours.
5. He separates between sin and its counterpart, misery; thus taking away the strength of sin.—J. P. Lange, D. D.
Mark 1:44. The use and abuse of testimony.—There is no doubt real power in personal testimony, but it is quite possible we may lay too much stress upon it; and that is the danger in the present day. The young convert, before he has had any experience, is encouraged to tell forth his story, until there is this danger—that when the devil of unbelief is driven out, the devil of pride shall enter in, and the man begins to think that he has done something very great in trusting in Jesus. There is very great danger of pressing personal testimony too far. But there is real use of testimony. Our Lord seems to indicate it here: “Tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer,” etc. It would be far better for you to go to your house in solitude, to think over in silence what God has done for you, and there in your solitary chamber to pour out your thanksgiving to God. There is more real true work done in the stillness of solitude than if you go and publish abroad what Christ has done for you. But there is a testimony you must bring: “Go thy way, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded.” Not so much go and speak, but go and live; go and shew, not so much go and tell them I am a cleansed man, but let them see the anointed hand, the purified ear. Let them see the life-blood coursing through your veins, and that you have become as a little child, humble and faithful. Go and shew yourself to the priests. And who are they? Those most opposed to My claims, those who hate Me, as the Messiah. Go and shew thyself to My enemies; they will not care for your speaking, but it will be your life that will be a testimony to them. Then go and offer as a gift what Moses commanded. If Moses has told you to sprinkle your hand, your ear, your feet—your ear, your hand, and your foot, and every part of your body must be sanctified not now in obedience to some iron law, but as expressive of your heart’s gratitude for what Christ has done for you.—E. A. Stuart.
Christ’s command.—What our Prophet commands is no costly offering, no painful penance—a delightful service, a surrender which is a relief. That we offer and present our souls and bodies to Him—that we trust our way to Him and say, “I will follow Thee”—that we snatch ourselves away from the old tyrants, from whose hands He has rescued us, and watch against any hint of a return to them—that we be His who has bought us with His blood.
Mark 1:45. A fault to be guarded against.—The healed leper was like those who, out of thankfulness of heart indeed, but yet inconsiderately, neglect the inward commandment of the Holy Spirit, and make too much talk about the grace of God, to their own and others’ hurt.—Von Gerlach.
Imprudence better than apathy.—The case of those who in our own days are led to do things of which Christian prudence cannot approve is nearly parallel; they do what is not right, but yet it may be easily believed that their fault is in some cases more easily pardoned than the coldness and apathy of those who undertake to condemn them.—Bishop H. Goodwin.
Christ’s withdrawal.—Some have thought of this withdrawal as a kind of Levitical quarantine, in acknowledgment of the ceremonial uncleanness acquired by touching the leper, which became generally known from the report of the latter. Certainly the multitude had no scruples arising from this consideration, and it is more natural to suppose that Christ refrained from openly entering any city in order to avoid the applause of men, and the commotion which, at this moment, His presence would have excited. Those who really desired to be with Him for any high and sufficient reason would follow Him even into the wilderness; but He would not thrust Himself voluntarily into the idle throng, which, for any or no cause, is collected with little notice in a populous town.—W. J. Deane.
Retirement from the world.—The more a servant of God withdraws himself from the world, the more highly does the world esteem him, and the more likely is it to heed his admonitions.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Mark 1:40-45. Leprosy.—As to this disease observe: heat, dryness, and dust predispose to diseases of the skin everywhere, and all these causes are especially operative in Syria. Insufficient food assists their action; and boils and sores are apt to fester and poison the system. Leprosy is a disease found over a large tract of the world’s surface; it is found all round the shores of the Mediterranean, from Syria to Spain, in a virulent form, and in North and South Africa. It was carried to various countries in Europe by those who returned from the Crusades, and became prevalent even in England, in the times when our forefathers had no butcher meat in winter but what was salted, and little vegetable diet with it. In a form less virulent than in Palestine it exists in Norway, where the government supports several hospitals for lepers, and seeks to prevent the spread of the disease by requiring all afflicted with it to live—unmarried—in one or other of these. Probably salt fish in Norway forms the too exclusive food of the poor, as it also probably did in Palestine in the time of Christ. Mrs. Brassey found it in the islands of the Pacific. It is so common in India that when Lord Lawrence took formal possession of Oude, he made the people promise not to burn their widows, nor slay their children (the girls), nor bury alive their lepers.—R. Glover.
Leprosy.—You remember the story of the leper which Swinburne has woven into one of his most beautiful, most painfully realistic, poems. He tells about a lady at the French Court in the Middle Ages who was stricken with leprosy. She had been courted, flattered, idolised, and almost worshipped for her wit and beauty by the king, princes, and all the royal train, until she was smitten with leprosy. Then her very lovers hunted her forth as a banned and God-forsaken thing; every door in the great city of Paris was slammed in her face; no one would give her a drop of water or piece of bread; the very children spat in her face, and fled from her as a pestilential thing, until a poor clerk, who had loved the great lady a long way off, and had never spoken to her until then, took her to his house for pity’s sake, and nursed her until she died, and he was cast out and cursed himself by all the religious world for doing it.—J. G. Greenhough.
Mark 1:40. Growth of sin.—The Jews have a tradition about the growth of leprosy, that it began with the walls of a man’s house; then, if he did not repent, it entered his clothes, till at last it affected his body. So it is with the growth of sin. It begins with neglect of duty, it may be of prayer, or the warning voice of conscience is unheeded. Habits of sin are formed, till at last the soul that lets God alone is let alone by God.
No “if” in Jesus.—A little girl was awakened to anxiety about her soul at a meeting where the story of the leper was told. Well, this dear little girl, who was anxious, said, “I noticed that there was an ‘if’ in what the man said; but there was no ‘if’ in what Jesus said. So I went home and took out the ‘if,’ by my granny’s fireside, and I knelt down, and I said, ‘Lord Jesus, Thou canst. Thou wilt make me clean. I give myself to Thee.’ ”
Mark 1:41. Hand-help.—You know what it is to feel a man’s hand warm within your own; the cheer that comes from a good hand-shake of an honest heart is what?—why, it is this: that you feel the friend understands you and gives you hope; the spirit of your friend touches your spirit in the hand-grasp, and that hand-shaking is instinct with life. He might write and say good things, and true and helpful to you, but they did not seem to be half as good and true till he took your hand into his own. Or, again, you have need of a physician, and he writes you a prescription. The medicine does not do half so much good as the visit in which he took your weak hand in his own strong one, and shewed you by the way he held it that he meant to bring you through, God helping him. Yes, hope in the touch of a human hand of love, faith in the touch of a human hand of pity, cheer in the touch of a human hand of power—this is the doctor’s gift to his patient, and this was God’s gift in Christ to a poor, sin-weary, leprous world that felt there was need of healthier, happier life, and knew not where to turn for it.—H. D. Rawnsley.
Christ’s answer an exact echo of the request.—The echo which the mountain gives back to our cry is, as you must often have noticed, calm and pure and musical, however harsh or dissonant or strained our voice may be. Your cry or shout may rise to a piercing scream; but if you wait and listen, it comes back to you with all the discord and excitement strained out of it—comes back at times with a mystical force and sweetness and purity. And when the leper heard his passionate cry come back from the lips of Christ, must there not have been a heavenly sweetness and power in that gracious echo? Must he not have wondered how his poor words should have suddenly grown instinct with a celestial music and energy?—S. Cox, D. D.
Mark 1:45. Talkativeness a great evil.—He that cannot refrain from much speaking is like a city without walls; and less pains in the world a man cannot take than to hold his tongue. Therefore if thou observest this rule in all assemblies, thou shalt seldom err: restrain thy choler; hearken much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world (Job 2:10; James 1:19; James 1:26).—Sir W. Raleigh.