HE who believes in a God Almighty and Supreme can have no difficulty in crediting miracles, especially when they are vouched for in God-breathed Scriptures. The objection that miracles are inconsistent with natural laws is beside the mark, seeing that they have nothing to do with natural laws, being instead sovereign interpositions of God altogether apart from, and above, them. No greater miracles can be conceived than the momentous facts on which Christianity rests―the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. He who bows in faith to these will necessarily regard all other marvels as small in comparison. He who turns away from the facts of Christ’s miraculous incarnation, etc., has no claim whatever to be recognized as a Christian.
Our Lord’s miracles were not mere works of power; nor were they simply expressions of love and sympathy toward those who benefited by them: they were truly all this; but they were also intended to teach spiritual truths. The cleansing of the leper is recorded by all the evangelists excepting John. Matthew gives it in the opening verses of his eighth chapter. Guided by the Spirit of God, Matthew disregards historical sequence in his presentation of it, placing the Miracle after the Sermon on the Mount, although it took place some time earlier. His object apparently was to put in strong contrast the low faith of the Jewish sufferer with the high faith of the Gentile centurion described in the verses immediately following.
Leprosy is a type of sin. Those under its terrible power were as unfit for God’s earthly dwelling-place as unpurged sinners are for His heavenly abode. The only physician for leprosy was God Himself; the same gracious One can alone meet the need of those polluted by sin. In answer to the leper’s appeal our Lord “put forth His hand and touched him.” Contact with the diseased one conveyed no defilement to Him, but it conveyed healing to the sufferer. Beauteous picture of the grace which brought Him from above into man’s circumstances; touching sin, so to speak, at every point, yet personally unstained from first to last. The leper’s faltering “If Thou wilt, Thou canst” was at once answered by the Saviour’s hearty “I will; be thou clean.” To His ability and willingness to heal and to bless there is no limit; whatever limitations there be are in the trembling faith of the human heart.
The healed one was then bidden “show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.” A striking testimony indeed, seeing that this was the first Israelitish leper cleansed (so far as Scripture speaks) since the instructions of Leviticus 13, 14. were given nearly 1,500 years before. The presence of a cleansed leper at the altar with his two birds in his hands testified that God had come into the land, and was meeting men’s need apart altogether from priestly ministrations and religious ordinances. A principle this of the greatest possible moment for our souls to-day. Cleansing for the soul is found, not in human doing of any kind, but in the fountain of the Saviour’s blood. This, when divinely applied, makes the vilest sinner whiter than snow, a greater moral miracle than the physical wonder wrought upon the Jewish leper.