Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 8:4

"And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." — Matthew 8:4 (ASV)

See that you tell no one — Mark adds, with his usual vividness, that Jesus “sternly charged” him and “immediately sent him away.” The reasons for this command are not given, but they are not hard to find:

1. The offering of the gift was an act of obedience to the Law (Leviticus 14:10, 21-22) and was therefore the right thing for the man to do. In this way, our Lord also showed that He had not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it.
2. It was the appointed test of the reality and completeness of the cleansing work.
3. It was better for the man’s own spiritual life to cherish his gratitude than to waste it in many words.

This much is clear on the surface. But as the treatment of leprosy in the Mosaic code was clearly symbolic rather than sanitary—dealing with the disease as a special type of sin in its most malignant form—so in the healing of the leper, we can rightly see the symbol of our Lord’s power to purify and save from sin.

In His touching the leper, we also see the close fellowship into which He entered with our unclean nature, so that through His touch it might be made clean. The miracle, like most others, was also a parable in action.