Leprosy Is A Lot Like Sin

Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him, and saying to Him, "If You are willing, You can make me clean." Mark 1:40

Leprosy is a lot like sin. 

It's a disease that slowly eats away at your flesh, but also numbs your sense of touch.

In Third World countries today, many of the people with leprosy have deformed-looking hands and appendages, not because of the disease itself, but because of its numbing effect on pain. Since these people can't feel pain when something touches their skin, they may wash their faces with boiling water or reach into a fire to pick something up, and never feel the burning taking place on their skin.

Leprosy not only eats away at your skin and flesh, but it also robs you of feeling.

And I think this is a real picture for us of the disease of sin.

Not only does it eat away at your soul, but it also robs you of your feelings for God and others.

Its danger lies not only in its ability to cause us harm but in its power to numb us from any sense we are even being harmed.

It can eat away at our souls for years, all the while numbing us from any realization that it is killing us.

You see, sin is a disease that always kills. If any trace of it is found in you, I'm sorry to say, you have no hope of escaping its death grip.

Romans 6:23 says "The wages of sin is death," and Romans 3:23 makes it clear that "all have sinned." But that's not the whole picture. Romans 6:23 also says, "The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Today, if sin is eating away at you, it's time you realize the damage it is doing. It's time to realize that you have been given a gift -- the gift of God -- and that gift is life, itself.

Eternal life.

You don't have to accept the death sentence of sin, because God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him!" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Don't let sin have its way in your life any longer. Don't let it numb your vision, your mission, or your calling to love God and love others. Confess it to Jesus and let Him wash you clean.