When the leper came to Jesus, saying, "Lord, if You will, You can make me clean, Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him." (Matthew 8:2-3)
The leper was an unclean being, and great was the fear of contagion; yet Jesus was not afraid to touch him, and He suffered no injury from the touch. This is a likeness of Christ's connection with sin. "[He] bore our sins in His own body on the tree." (1 Peter 2:24) "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6)
Yet although "He was made to be sin for us, [He] knew no sin." (2 Corinthians 5:21) "[He] did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." (1 Peter 2:22)
He could come into the closest contact with sin and not be defiled by it. He received sinners, and was their friend, associating freely with the worst of them, yet He was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." (Hebrews 7:26)
So may it be with us, if Christ dwells in us. We may work for the degraded, coming in contact with them, and giving them the sympathetic touch, as He did, and not be defiled. We may be "unspotted from the world," (James 1:27) while coming close to it as Christ did. It is possible that we may not be in high repute with the world for so doing; but that matters not if we have the mind that was in Christ, who "made himself of no reputation." (Philippians 2:7)--Present Truth, January 9, 1896--Timeline: IV-8 (The First Leper)--Matthew 8:2-3.