The Healing Touch of ChristÀpẹrẹ

Day 3 Devotional:

Our Separation from God

Because of how highly contagious the coronavirus was, it created fear in us, but we now know that it was not always fatal. So, although we still socially distance and separate ourselves from a person who is infected with the virus, the coronavirus still does not carry the same moral stigma of isolation and separation that leprosy carried in the days of Christ Jesus.

As we have already seen, the leper in our passage came to Christ with a sense of shame and unworthiness about his condition. He was isolated, he was ostracised, and he was separated from society by his illness.

For the lepers of Jesus’ time, however, just imagine the thought of never being touched again by another human being. Just imagine the thought of never feeling the hug of a little child. Just imagine the thought of never feeling the hand of a friend shaking your hand. Just imagine the thought of never feeling the embrace of your spouse, or the arm of your friends across your shoulder, because anyone who touched you would become defiled themselves.

The religious leaders of Jesus' day adopted a very strict strategy of quarantine, isolation, and separation for lepers. A rabbi would not even look at a leper. In fact, a rabbi was the last person a leper wanted to see because he knew that if he got close to a rabbi, he could easily be stoned to death.

Gen. 3:23-24 tells that God banished our first parents, with all of us inside them, from His presence in the Garden of Eden after they sinned against God through their disobedience. Isaiah 59:2 tells us that our spiritual sickness of sin is like a face mask that hides God’s face from us. In other words, our spiritual sickness of sin quarantines and separates us from God.

The symptoms of our spiritual sickness of sin include our pride, our bitterness, and our un-forgiveness which isolate us from God and also sour our relationships with other people and isolate and separate us from them when we sin by lying to them, or stealing from them, or committing sexual immorality with them, and so on.

So, we can summarise our second S from this passage by saying that it reminds us that our spiritual sickness of sin separates us from God and from other people around us.