Luke 5:13 - Exposition

And he put forth his hand, mad touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him . St. Mark adds here, "being touched with compassion." The Redeemer, at the sight of the man's awful wretchedness—wasting away, shunned by all men, dragging on a hopeless, aimless, weary life—in his Divine pity, with a sudden impulse tosses aside all considerations of ceremonial uncleanness or contagion, and lays his hand on the miserable sufferer from whom all shrank, with his word of power exclaimed, "I will: be thou clean." St. Ambrose writes here how "Jesus, because he is the Lord of the Law, does not obey the Law, but makes the Law." "Here Jesus obeys that Divine eternal law of compassion, in its sudden impulse, which is older and grander than the written Law" (Farrar). It is observable that in these sudden cases, in which the common brotherhood of man was involved, the nobler spirits of Israel ever rose above all consideration of law and custom, and, putting aside all legal, orthodox restriction, obeyed at once the sovereign dictates of the heart. So Elijah and Elisha, those true saints of God, shrank not from touching the dead.