Jesus turned upside down the accepted wisdom of the day. Pharisees believed that touching an unclean person polluted the one who touched. But when Jesus touched a person with leprosy, Jesus did not become soiled — the leprous became clean. When an immoral woman washed Jesus’ feet, she went away forgiven and transformed. When he defied custom to enter a pagan’s house, the pagan’s servant was healed. In word and in deed Jesus was proclaiming a radically new gospel of grace: to get clean a person did not have to journey to Jerusalem, offer sacrifices, and undergo purification rituals. All a person had to do was follow Jesus.
–Philip Yancey
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