Christ's Wish for Cleaning up our Lives

Mat 8:3 I will; be clean.

I got started on this project because I found that everything Christ said made sense even when it was taken out of the context of the Christ story, that is, if it was spoken to us rather than to the characters in Christ's life. Here we have a good example. A leper recognizes that Christ has the power to remove his disease and Christ cleans him. However, the phrase applies to Christ's feeling for us all. Thelo (I will) katharizo (make clean).

Thelo means not an expression of personal desire ("I want") but the expression of consent ("I wish").

Katharizo means to remove dirt. It is also used for removing the inedible parts from grain (winn0wing), clearing weeds from a field, pruning a plant and so on. It is also used for cleansing a person of leperosy. (It is interesting that Christ doesn't use the related word, katharopoieô, which means to cleanse but also has an economic meaning, removing encumbrances from property since these are often the version of these words we find in the Gospels.)

As an injunction to us all, this statement means that it is Christ's wish for us all to be clean, to remove what is unnecessary and unhealthy from our lives. The idea equates disease with that which is extraneous in our lives and the idea that we must remove that which is unnecessary to become more whole. In English, we have the term cathartic, which comes from the same root idea of cleansing.