Lepers

This week, I’m writing about an incident that is only written about in Luke 17: 11—19. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, and as He’s walking along the road, He encounters ten men. These ten have one thing in common: they’re all sick. Really sick. They have leprosy, a horrible and deadly disease. Let me give you a little background. People who had leprosy were outcasts. Forbidden to be a part of society. This was because not only were they sick, but since this was a killer disease, anyone who had it had to live separated from others, outside their town or village so that others wouldn’t get sick. If someone happened to be coming toward them, they had to shout out, “Unclean!” It warned the other person not to come any closer. Can you imagine? Dreadful situation. So, Jesus was walking along, and ten men with leprosy shouted out to Jesus. They didn’t shout out a warning like they were supposed to but they called out, “Master, have mercy on us.” As you might expect, Jesus didn’t do what everyone else did. He didn’t ignore these guys, He didn’t walk away, He didn’t even tell them to leave Him alone. Instead, Jesus spoke to them. He told them to go and show themselves to the priest. That seems like a weird thing to say, doesn’t it?

In the Old Testament, if a Jew was healed of leprosy—which would have been a miracle—then to prove it and get a clean bill of health so to speak, the healed person had to go get “approval” from the local priest. The approval of the priest allowed the leper to rejoin society. That was the law. So, Jesus told the ten men to go do this. But there they were, still with leprosy! It doesn’t say in the Bible that Jesus had already healed them. Yet, every one of them listened to what Jesus told them to do…and then they were healed! Not before they left, but after. How do we know? Because the Bible also says that all of them were healed “as they went.” As they went. Think about that. This lets us know they had some level of trust in Jesus, right? It tells me they already knew who Jesus was and what He has done for others. So, even though they still had signs of their disease, every single one of them turned to go do what Jesus had told them to do.

And then, one man turned back. He came back to Jesus. The others kept going, but this man returned Why? To praise God…to fall on his face at Jesus’s feet…to worship Jesus…to thank Jesus. Ten were healed, yet only one man returned to Jesus. This man praised God, worshipped Jesus, and thanked Him. And Jesus said to this man, this lone individual, these beautiful words: “your faith has saved you.” All ten men had been physically healed, but only one received both physical and spiritual healing. Only one received spiritual life. So what’s Jesus’s point here? Is He saying that if I say thanks to Jesus Christ, He will save me? Is Jesus saying that somehow I have to do something or say something to be saved? Not at all! The man believed who Jesus was and worshipped Him. He recognized Jesus was the Son of God, the source of true life, and he believed. He believed. It’s that simple. Put your faith in Jesus, dear friend. Believe in Him. And you too, will find life in Him. If you need prayer or a Bible, let me know.