February 2, 2025
Luke 5:12-26
“Strange Things, Indeed”
Before reading today’s passage covering two healings, we’re going to cover some health and wellness ground as understood two-thousand years ago.
First, and foremost, there’s the word translated “leprosy.” The Greek word is lepras, best literally translated as “skin disease.” When we think of “leprosy,” we think of a specific disease. In the nineteenth century, a Norwegian physician, Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, first identified the bacteria which caused a horrific skin disease. We now know it as Hansen’s Disease. This is not the skin disease of verse twelve. The Greek word, lepras, covered various kinds of skin ailments. In fact, in Jewish writings, as many as seventy-two kinds of skin disease were covered. {Pun intended.}
To understand how huge this first miracle was, we need to understand how devastating a skin disease was 2,000 years ago.
Forget about, for a moment, the wellness and healing challenges. We’ll get to that later. Right now, consider the social/emotional/relational disruption caused by, in particular, skin disease.
Listen to Leviticus 13:45-46:
“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
The sufferer of any type of skin disease meant one was cut off from the community. It was as if the person was a walking corpse. And if a clean person were exposed to an unclean person, it would render the clean person now unclean. Any exposure would make one impure. And an impure person could not properly worship God or receive forgiveness for
sin or be in any kind of right relationship with God.
Here’s how this played out in everyday life. In Luke 10, Jesus told a parable. Most of us know it well:
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.”
The two religious guys were on their way to doing religious things. If they got close enough to check on the body, if the guy were dead, then they would be unclean and would have to go through a cleansing process. Why bother disrupting your schedule, right?
The point wasn’t to prevent the spread of disease. The risk was becoming unclean. That was never a good thing.
Here’s why it wasn’t a good thing. Leprosy was seen as a punishment for sin from God. 2 Kings 15:5 describes what happened to disobedient King Uzziah:
“And the Lord touched the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death, and he lived in a separate house. And Jotham the king's son was over the household, governing the people of the land.”
So anyone with a skin disease carried an outward sign of sin. It was considered visible evidence of something impure about them. You saw on someone’s skin what was wrong in their relationship with God. They were not right. They were the walking dead.
Just a reminder. We’re not yet ready to read today’s passage. There’s one more piece to the health and wellness preamble to touch on.
Since the Bible implied that God caused skin diseases as punishment for sin, that got extrapolated to include any and all other illnesses and even tragedies. There are plenty of examples when Jesus was asked if so-and-so is disabled because of his sins or his parent’s sin. He was also asked about a tragedy where a tower fell and killed a lot of people. Again, the questioner wanted to know if it was because of their sin. We do the same thing. When a helicopter crashes into a passenger jet, first you gather the facts before jumping to conclusions. And even then, as Jesus reminds, if tragedy strikes you, will you be ready to meet God?” That’s the most important connection to be made.
It was not too farfetched of a correlation. We cannot dismiss out-of-hand the role sin plays in physical ailments. We recognize the psycho-somatic role played in diseases and disorders. There’s also choices people make that lead to illness and disease…smoking, abusing alcohol, overeating, engaging in risky behaviors, sexual immorality…are just a few of the examples. Sometimes, sinful choices can lead to pain and/or suffering. Obviously, not all the time. We now know the genetic causes to many diseases and disorders. Just because the Bible tells us that specific skin diseases are punishment from God, it doesn’t mean all skin diseases, or diseases in general, are punishment from God.
And now, Luke 5:12-26:
While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
I love the word translated, “extraordinary things” at the end of verse twenty-six. The Greek word is paradoxa. It is used to describe something that is “contrary to expectation, surprising, or remarkable. It conveys the sense of something that defies conventional understanding.” In the context of today’s passage, it refers to the surprising and unexpected nature of God's works and teachings. Strange things, indeed.
In our first case, the presenting problem is a skin disease. As we have already seen, the man’s suffering goes deeper than a skin disease. He is isolated. Isolated from family and friends. We cannot begin to imagine the shame he must have felt. No one wanted anything to do with him. In fact, he throws his face in the dirt, groveling for mercy from Jesus. What a horrible place to be at in your life. Shame and isolation are killers of the human spirit.
Yet in his desperation, what does he ask Jesus? He doesn’t ask Jesus to ask God. No…no…no…he says, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” What is he saying? What is Luke telling us about Jesus? While we’ll dig deeper into it next week, Luke is telling us, through the request of the man who is hurting, that Jesus possesses the power and grace of God to do as he wills.
And then, what does Jesus do? Jesus does a couple of amazing things. Remember, people said, “We have seen strange things today.” First, Jesus touches the one who is untouchable. Second, Jesus does not call on the name of God to cleanse the man. Jesus simply stretches out his own hand to heal the man. It is through the power of Christ, and Christ alone by which the man is made whole. He is restored. Jesus touches the untouchable. The Son of God came to seek and to save the lost.
So here we are. We have one more healing moment to capture. We’ll do that next week. Until then, let’s end with a simple assumption.
It’s not a stretch to assume there’s been times in our lives when we’ve felt unlovable. We’ve felt out of sorts. We’ve all had bad days…physically or emotionally or relationally. Of all the things you feel unsure about, the one certainty in your life is the love of Jesus Christ. More than anything else, Luke wants you to understand that Jesus will cleanse and heal you. You will not be the same person as when you first came to him. He will grow you into the person God created you to be. Let Jesus deal with the deformity in your life.
If it’s sin, Jesus forgives as you confess your sin. That’s the point we’ll be
moving toward when we look at the healing of the paralytic. Jesus forgives sin. Confess your sin, and you will be forgiven. When Jesus looks at you, it’s not with disdain or disgust. It is with delight. Like with the leper of verse twelve, with his outstretched hand, Jesus touches us with grace and mercy. Shame loses its grip on us.
Strange things, indeed.
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