Three Things That Jesus Did

‘There are’, of course, as the Apostle John said in the last verse of his Gospel, ‘many other things which Jesus did’ but I want us to focus in this article on just three. I want us to think of the time when the Lord Jesus did:

1. something which others shouldn’t do
2. something which others wouldn’t do
3. something which others couldn’t do.

Something which no one else should do

I call to the witness box, an unnamed leper from a town somewhere in Galilee.

Luke tells us that ‘while [Jesus] was in one of the towns, there came a man full of leprosy … and Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him’.¹

In those days, it was as if a leper carried a placard around his neck which said, ‘Do not touch’.

But our Lord didn’t send the hapless man, as Elisha had once sent Naaman, the Syrian leper, to wash seven times in the Jordan.² Nor did the Lord do as Naaman had expected Elisha to do; namely, to ‘wave his/His hand’ over the leprosy and to heal it.³Our Lord did not ‘wave His hand’. He ‘stretched out’⁴ His hand and actually touched him.⁵

Doubtless, the Saviour ‘stretched out (not just, ‘put out’) His hand’ to touch the leper because the leper hadn’t dared come close enough for Him to touch him otherwise. What a moment that must have been! I wonder when the man had last felt a human touch?

By touching an unclean leper, anyone else would, of course, have automatically become ceremonially defiled.⁶ But, far from Himself becoming unclean, when doing that which no one else should do, Jesus makes the unclean to be clean: ‘immediately’, we read, ‘the leprosy left him’.⁷

Something which no one else would do

I call to the witness box, Simon Peter, reclining in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem.

We read that there, shortly before His suffering and death, Jesus took a towel and a basin full of water and washed the feet of His disciples⁸ - including, I note in passing, those of Judas Iscariot.⁹

In New Testament days, the task of washing the feet of others was often performed by a slave - although, to the Jews of the time, feet-washing was regarded as such a menial and demeaning task that no Jewish slave could be required to wash the feet of his Jewish master. That duty was reserved for Gentile slaves.

Yet He, the disciples’ ‘Lord and Teacher’, stooped (quite literally) to perform the lowly task which not one of the twelve would carry out¹⁰ - to do what no one else would do.

Not that this was the only time that our Lord stooped. He had:

1. stooped to write (twice) in the dust¹¹ when confronted by the scribes and Pharisees who had brought a woman ‘caught in adultery’,¹²
2. stooped to lift young children in His arms that He might bless them,¹³ and
3. stooped to pull ‘sinking’ Peter out of the Sea of Galilee.¹⁴

But, chiefly, we would think of how He stooped from the heights of glory¹⁵ and the very throne of heaven,¹⁶ not only to the manger of Bethlehem,¹⁷ but, also, how, when ‘found in fashion as a man’, He ‘continued to descend the stairway of condescending love by humbling Himself yet more’,¹⁸ right down to the fathomless depths of death on a cross.¹⁹

This brings us to our third point.

Something which no one else could do

This time, I call to the witness box, ‘a strong [“mighty”] angel’ from before the throne of God in heaven, Rev. 5. 2.

Scripture speaks of all angels as ‘mighty ones’²⁰ which ‘excel in strength’²¹ and which are great in might and power.²² But this particular angel is distinguished as ‘strong’²³ because he is to issue a challenge which must reach to the remotest bounds of creation: ‘Who is worthy’, he proclaims, ‘to open the scroll [which lies in the hand of the majestic Throne-sitter] and to break its seals?’ - symbolically, worthy to set in motion God’s future purposes for the earth.²⁴

But ‘no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth [the realm of the dead] was able to open the scroll’. No one, that is, was deemed worthy to take up the challenge. No angelic being (such as Michael or Gabriel), not one of the righteous dead of Old Testament history (such as Abraham, Moses, or David), no New Testament apostle (such as Peter or Paul). ‘No one’ was counted worthy for the task.²⁵

And why so?

Because ‘no one’ possessed the necessary credentials. ‘No one’, that is, until the one spoken of as the ‘Lamb’ comes into view.²⁶ And His qualification? The ‘new song’ of heaven declares His credentials, ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and have redeemed [“bought”, “purchased”] men for God by your blood’.²⁷

Yes, we can say, that, at Golgotha, the Lord Jesus most certainly did something which no one else could do.

A psalmist once wrote, ‘None … can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him … that he should still live forever and not see corruption’.²⁸ Although, in context, those words were written of man’s inability to buy back earthly life for someone when God claims it in death, the same can most certainly be said of purchasing ‘eternal redemption’.²⁹ ‘None … can’.

Only the Lord Jesus possessed all the qualifications necessary to redeem you and me - to be both God and man³⁰ (our ‘kinsman redeemer’, if you like) and to be entirely sinless - so as to offer Himself ‘without blemish to God’.³¹

Truly, we say with Cecil Frances Alexander:

‘There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate Of heaven and let us in’.