The Jesus Touch

I receive a regular e-mail update/newsletter from J. Lee Grady (editor of Charisma Magazine). Here are some of his thoughts in an April 30th e-mail on the Gospel story of Jesus' controversy with the Pharisees over ceremonial hand washing.

Jesus broke every religious rule in the Pharisees’ hand-washing manual when He performed this miracle. The Bible says He put His fingers in the man’s ears, spit on His hands and touched the man’s tongue with His own saliva (see Mark 7:33). Eeuuww! Jesus was not concerned about germs or spiritual defilement, and I doubt He used hand-sanitizer after the man was healed.

Jesus was making a point. He didn’t come to earth to spend His time washing his hands inside a synagogue. His message was not about what not to eat or who to avoid. He came to touch dirty people. He came to cleanse lepers, heal bleeding women, hold children, eat with tax collectors and forgive prostitutes. He even visited a cemetery so He could cast devils out of a lunatic! That’s our Jesus.

Too often we fall under the influence of the “religious sanitation police.” Before you know it, we too are sequestered inside our holy walls, compulsively washing our hands and obsessing over who wore what and who went where. Legalism is a tool of the devil, but it masks itself as a Christian virtue. Ultimately it has no power over sin and it eventually causes spiritual sterility.

I believe the American church today must confront the spirit of the Pharisees head-on. Religious systems despise healing, and they certainly don’t endorse touching the addicted, the diseased, the demonized or the dying. Many sectors of the church have rejected God’s healing power altogether, and they certainly don’t encourage Christians to touch the pain of our generation.

My pastor often points out that, although under the Old Testament touching an unclean thing made people unclean, under the New Covenant when Jesus touches lepers the lepers become clean and get healed. We should touch people with the hands of Jesus.