Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 4-5.

When Peter saw Jesus’ power demonstrated, he recognized both his sin, and how undeserving he was to be near someone as holy as Jesus.  His response was to ask Jesus to leave him so that he, Peter, would not make Him, Jesus, unclean.  In the account of the man with leprosy, which comes next, the leper says, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  To which Jesus replies, “I am willing. Be clean.”  I believe that Luke put these two accounts next to each other in order to show us that Jesus offers to cleanse us of both our physical uncleanness and our sin.  When Peter saw Jesus’ holiness, he saw the only answer to be separating himself from Him.  However, the account of the leper* shows us that if we acknowledge our uncleanness, our sinfulness, God, through Jesus, will cleanse us if we want to be cleansed.  We need to echo both Peter and the man with leprosy.  First, we must acknowledge our sin.  Second, we must recognize that being cleansed of our sin, being forgiven, only happens because God is willing to make us clean.

*I like how Luke writes “a man…who was covered with leprosy”, rather than “a leper”.  It indicates that the thing which made the man unclean did not define who he was.  We should view people the same way.  God does not define us by our sins, and we should not define our fellow man that way either.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.