Daily Bible Reading 18th May 2026 // Luke 5:12-15
12 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.” 13 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 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.” 15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities.
In the parallel account of this incident, Matthew in his gospel places it immediately following the Sermon on the Mount (8:1-4), and this serves to underline from whence the leper's conviction came as to Christ's power to help Him. With him, faith came by hearing (cf Romans 10:17). Luke does not indicate this, but at all events he does show a man with a great confidence in Jesus' power to help him. Nor was that confidence misplaced: it was confirmed in the word of sovereign authority which Jesus spoke to him: 'I will: be thou clean'. The faith that was in his heart found an immediate response in the Son of God, and the miracle was done. But we must notice that there was an 'if' in the leper's approach to the Saviour. 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst cleanse me'. There was no doubt as to His power to do so; that was clear to him from all he had heard of, and from the lips of, Jesus. But there was a doubt as to His willingness. 'It does not follow', he thought, 'that although He is able, He will be also willing to help me'. Why is this? We can scarcely say that though the power of Christ shone through His preaching, His compassion failed to do so to the same extent. The conclusion we must come to is this: a dreary sense of utter helplessness and despair, born of long years of isolation, ostracism and loneliness must have bred in him such a spirit of hopelessness that he doubted whether Christ, mighty as He was, could even want to have anything to do with him. 'Could even a loving God care for such as I?', he must have thought. It was surely this that kindled and called forth the compassion of Christ and made Him assure the man immediately that He would cleanse him.