If you choose

Mark 1:40 “…if you choose, you can make me clean”.

This excerpt is taken from a discourse between a leper and Jesus. Picture if you will a man, begging to be clean. It would have been so easy for Jesus to just walk the other way. I’m sure the disciples would have rather been somewhere else. In this one statement, the leper expressed his faith in the abilities of Jesus.

“If you choose”, are words not meant to shame our Savior, but to acknowledge that life and death, health and sickness, are all in the realm of his glory. In order to have a full relationship with God, we must realize that it is up to Jesus to make us clean.

As we read on in the story, Jesus chose to make the leper clean. Like the leper, our sins make us unclean. A leper is cast out from society, and sin keeps us away from knowing God fully, yet Jesus chooses to cleanse us so we can know God. Jesus will clean whatever it is, so that we will no longer be cast out from the kingdom.

The only thing separating us from God is our inability to ask Jesus to come into our hearts and wash away the muck and grime that sin has put there. When we ask, we hear those words in verse 41, “I do choose. Be made clean.” The wonderful thing about Jesus is this; He will choose to make you clean.

Have you asked?


Pastor Kent