<p>8:3&nbsp;<i style="font-size: 12pt;">And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">- The Lord is described a staggering 28 times in the synoptics as touching people. This was a studied rejection of the false teaching of 'guilt by association' or 'contamination by contact'. More than that, the Lord was at such lengths to identify Himself with suffering people.</span></p>
<p><i>I do desire. Be made clean!</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">- In Mt. 10:8 the Lord told the disciples to likewise &quot;cleanse the lepers&quot;. Again the Lord is giving the disciples the work of the priests to do. For it was their job to pronounce lepers cleansed. But He is asking them to do what He Himself had done in Mt. 8:3. His work was to be theirs. The later NT references to&nbsp;<i>our</i>&nbsp;being cleansed by the Lord Jesus (Eph. 5:26; Tit. 2:14; 1 Jn. 1:7,9 etc.) perhaps look back to how the historical Jesus cleansed lepers in Galilee. We are to see ourselves in that isolated and rejected man.</span></p>
<p><i>And immediately his leprosy was cleansed</i>- The Greek literally means 'scales' and the same word is used of scales falling from Saul's eyes in Acts 9:18. It could've been any skin disease rather than Hansen's disease.</p>