The Touch

The miracle of salvation is an event that is extremely difficult to explain. What is it that happens in one’s life? We who are already followers of Christ may not be able to vocalize the event, but what we do know is that something miraculous happened in our lives, and because of that, we are no longer the same.

Jesus gives illustrations of the effects of salvation throughout His ministry. The one illustration that just touches my heart is found in a couple of gospels, but for this rap, we are going to look at Luke’s account. In Luke 5:12-13, “While He was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man covered with leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, 'Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” 13 And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately the leprosy left him.”

On the surface, we read about a wonderful miracle of healing, but I want us to look a little deeper and see what actually happened, and how this gives us an illustration of salvation. First, we see a man with a horrible disease. This disease rotted the flesh right off a person’s body. The disease was also highly contagious, and there was no medical treatment. The disease of leprosy was a slow, but unavoidable, death sentence. Those with leprosy were by law not allowed in public, and if, for some reason, they were in public, they had to cry out “unclean, unclean”, so that people could avoid coming into contact with them. 

This man was living with a death sentence, and his only hope was Jesus. Now, as we look at this text, we know Jesus is going to heal this man; that is who He is. But I want us to recognize the mode in which Jesus chose to heal this man. Jesus could have just spoken a word and healing would have occurred, but Jesus did the unthinkable, He touched the man that no one else would look at, let alone touch. This man probably had not been touched in many years, and yet the Savior of the world was willing to do what man wouldn’t do, or couldn’t do, give a touch.

This is true about salvation. We were living with a death sentence, without hope. Then along came the Savior of the world, the One who stepped into man’s flesh so that He could touch us, and with that touch He healed us from the worst disease of them all, sin.  There was no remedy for our sin; death was assured to us, but the blood of Jesus cleansed all who would accept His gift of eternal life. That is what salvation is like. We were once dying men who have now been freed from the disease of sin and have eternal life.