Jesus the Willing Healer

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” (Mark 1.41)

Leprosy and the various skin diseases are not as common or untreatable as they were two millennia ago but soul decay still is. We can readily identify with the leper who came to Jesus, not because of a physical ailment that makes us unclean, but because we know and have experienced the heart-rending pain of our soul in decay. We know what it feels like to have the numbness of sin give way to the dark night and our desperate cry for help.

Like the leper who came to Jesus, falling on his diseased knees in a gasping plea, we know the feeling of a decomposing soul. He was seeking a willing healer, an accessible savior. Do we seek anything different? We long to meet with Jesus the Healer. For some of us at some times our prayer is for physical healing, but like the leper, who's disease was not just a physical barrier, we all know our desire for restoration.

And Jesus the Healer is faithful. He is compassionate when we come before Him confessing our failure. Jesus the Healer looks on us in our piteous state and stretches His holy hand and touches our sin-riddled souls. We cry to Him for willingness because even though we have found undeserved salvation in the cross we somehow still refuse to believe their could be more grace for us yet. Jesus the Healer hears our infant-like cry for cleaning and says, "I am willing, be clean."

Jesus, thank you for healing me in my miserable state, for hearing my confession of absolute need and embracing me in Your love.

Jesus the Tempted

And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. (Mark 1.13)

Do we think of Jesus as being able to be tempted? Could the everlasting Holy One truly succumb to such base manipulated desires? Surely the glorious Creator could not be felled by such demonic arrogance. But we do not serve a God who is transcendent and aloof. Jesus emptied Himself and stepped down into His creation as a helpless baby. He grew up with the same casing of human flesh, the same heart and desires as all His creation. Jesus lived like His beloved creation, in the midst of our fallen and broken world.

There is a magnificent beauty in seeing our Lord like this. In the wilderness. In hunger. Solitude. Temptation. The One who is fully God and fully man pressed Himself beyond the flesh, fasting 40 days, and then engaged the enemy. In his physically weakened state, surrounded by the wild animals of the desolate lands, He came face to face with the great temptations. And in all of this, Jesus prevailed. Jesus the tempted refused to mar His holiness, the holiness of the Father and Spirit.

Jesus the tempted sets a model for us, for surely we will walk through the desolate plain of temptation again. We will climb by the dangerous crags where wild beasts are ready to prey on us as our souls search for significance. And in the moments of temptation He calls our eyes to look upon Him in the wilderness, to remember His enduring for His holiness and for ours. If we can just hold on through the struggle He will send angels to our side.

Jesus, thank you for setting yourself as my enduring example. I will fix my eyes on you in the dark nights of my soul and strive for holiness.

Jesus the Driven

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. (Mark 1.12)

When we think of being driven we conjure up mental images of fierce determination. We imagine an inner propulsion that pushes us to success, and an urgency that compels us through difficult times. There is a sense like irresistibility to that drive. This does not mean that people cannot reject the drive. People can choose to embrace or reject the internal drive but the drive is still influencing their actions. A godly call to leadership can be twisted into cruel dictatorship. A moral responsibility to rescue others from a similar tragedy can be manipulated into a devaluation of human life. The energy that could drive the calling could push the person in the opposite direction.

Jesus had this option just as much as every man, woman and child. Jesus was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus the driven was lead forcefully in His spirit (truly by His Spirit) into a desolate place to determine how He would walk among us. The temptations He endured in the desert were potential channels He could have driven His ministry, sinful self-centered channels, but channels all the same.

Jesus the driven stands before us and calls us to glorify Him through our God-given drive. As we pursue our Lord through our drive, our God-calling, we must recognize that the Holy Spirit will bring us through a season where we will be tempted to re-direct our drive, to fulfill our passion in ways that cease to honor God. As followers of Jesus are we open to the Holy Spirit driving us?

Jesus, place a drive within my heart. Please, give me Your Holy Spirit to keep me from manipulating my calling, attempting to divert your glory to myself.

Jesus the Baptized

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. (Mark 1.9)

Did Jesus need to be baptized? Jesus is the sinless one, the one who reconciles all humanity to Himself. Jesus does not need to repent from sin, from failure to keep the divine law. He is the author of the law and the perfecter of our faith. Did Jesus need to be baptized?

Considering this, Augustine wrote if it was needful for Jesus to be born? Was it needful for him to be crucified? Truly everything that Jesus did on Earth was a humiliation of His Divinity. He emptied himself, became the servant of the humanity made in His image, to share life with us and pass through death among us.

His baptism, then, becomes an amazing symbol of solidarity. His willingness to bend low in the waters of redemption, to submerge in the bathwater of humanity, opens our path to unity. He humiliated himself to embrace us, the sinful people of Israel and the sinful assembly of the nations. We step into the water to symbolize our need for redemption, our need to be made clean, made new. Jesus the Baptized steps out of the water bearing the waste of the world, the washed away dregs of our sin. They cling to Him and He carries them to His cross. This is how He began His ministry.

And drenched before humanity, soaked in the same water, God the Father and Spirit display their unity with the Son, God's triunity. Jesus is the the beloved baptized, the anointed baptizer, the bridge where the Triune God meets with the humanity made in His image.

Jesus, thank you for humiliating yourself to lift me up before the Father.