Unclean!

Sin Separates Us from God

According to God’s law, skin diseases made people unclean, and when they were unclean they were not allowed to enter the area of the tabernacle. Sin separated them from the place of worship. That physical reality carried an important spiritual lesson—sin separates us from God. Of course, these chapters in Leviticus state people were declared unclean and excluded because of a skin disease, not because of sin. However, the skin disease was an external reminder of sin and the physical deterioration sin causes.

Why did God choose skin disease as a symbol or reminder of sin and the physical deterioration sin causes? There are many forms of sickness, many diseases. People were not excluded from worship because of a heart attack or a headache. Why did God choose skin disease and a few other disorders as the conditions that would cause His people to be ritually unclean? First, we should remember that these rules come from God, and since He is God, making the rules is His divine prerogative. I do not discourage people from asking questions about the Bible, but as we do so we should be aware that God, since He is God, has the right to issue commands without explanation. We may be unable to understand the reason for every law because God did not supply us with a reason. Perhaps we do not understand the reason or the meaning of some laws because our understanding is finite and God, who gave the laws, is infinite. However, if for some reason we reject God’s law or decide it is incorrect, we are at least being impertinent, if not blasphemous. God had a reason for all the laws He gave, even though those reasons may not be clear to us. So when we encounter things in the Bible that don’t make sense to us, our impulse should be to give God the right to be God. Skin disease symbolized sin and separation from God because that is the symbol God chose.

It does seem, however, that skin disease, especially leprosy, is well-suited to communicate the message of uncleanness. Skin disease is external, visible. God wanted to remind His people of uncleanness and sin, and He chose something they could see so they would remember. Leprosy is progressive; its effects grow worse over time. Sin also is not stagnant. Sin seems insignificant at first, but it is insidious. The Devil and the world deceive us, and we deceive ourselves about how lethal sin is. Both leprosy and sin are progressive. Also, at the time God gave this law, leprosy was incurable. Sin is also an incurable disease as long as we are on this earth. Jesus saves us from sin, but we will never be completely without sin on this side of heaven. Some people are farther down the road of holiness than the rest of us, but none of us have reached the state of sinless perfection. First John 1:8 says, “If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Almost constantly we need to go to God for forgiveness and cleansing. Both leprosy and sin are incurable. Also, leprosy affects the nervous system so that infected people become progressively desensitized to pain. Most forms of sickness cause suffering by making us hurt; leprosy causes suffering by making its victims incapable of hurting. Sin affects us in the same way. The more we sin, the more we are desensitized to sin and its pain. The first time we do something wrong we feel guilt keenly. Sometimes we are even shocked. However, if we do it again, and again, we become progressively desensitized to the awfulness of sin until we lose the capacity to feel sin’s pain. Both leprosy and sin have a desensitizing effect.

Leprosy was a reminder of sin and its effects on our bodies. God’s law that skin disease made people unclean and they were to be separated from worship was a good reminder that sin separates us from God. Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God.” What does it take to come into the presence of the holy God? Psalm 24 asks and answers that question: “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not set his mind on what is false” (v. 3). Skin disease made people unclean, and we have to have clean hands to come into the presence of God. Numerous commentators have pointed out that the skin disease described in Leviticus 13 and 14 is an especially apt representation for sin. As Wiersbe has written, like leprosy, “sin is deeper than the skin . . . sin spreads . . . sin defiles . . . sin isolates . . . sin is fit only for the fire” (Be Holy, 56–60).

God Cleanses What We Cannot

In the laws concerning skin disease God gave the priests no ritual for healing the disease. Healing was in God’s hands. People with a skin disease would get well or get worse, and that was according to the sovereign providence of God. The laws God gave describe what to do if people got well, to re-introduce them into the community and into worship. So these laws are not about physical healing; they’re about ritual cleansing, being prepared to be in the presence of God. God gave a process for His people to follow to move from a state of uncleanness to a state of cleanness. If they followed the process God gave, they could be confident that they were no longer unclean.

The process was gradual; it involved multiple steps. The people saw that being re-introduced into the presence of God in the sanctuary was not automatic or thoughtless. We too have a process to follow when sin has made us unfit to be in God’s presence. It involves confession, repentance, and seeking God’s presence in prayer and worship. All our spiritual progress is gradual. When we put our faith in Jesus, immediately we move from spiritual death to spiritual life, but our sinful flesh is still present. Christians can and do sin, so we still need help in dealing with our sin problem. God gives that help in His forgiveness, His cleansing, and His sanctifying power in us.

What sin did you commit last week? What sin do you struggle with regularly? Think about the sin in your life as you read 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God forgives our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. How do we access God’s forgiveness and cleansing? God gives it in answer to our prayer of confession. Part of our process of cleansing is the prayer of confession.

What prevents us from being healed? We cannot be healed as long as we defend our sin or make excuses instead of confessing. We say, “I can’t stop myself from sinning. That’s just the way I am. That’s the way my family was, and that’s the way my friends are.” We use excuses like that instead of humbling ourselves and confessing. Our pride resists confession, but if we don’t confess we miss God’s cleansing.

Confession is necessary for cleansing, and so is allowing God to speak to us and change us through His Word. In John 17:17 Jesus prayed to God the Father, “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.” God uses His Word to sanctify us, to make us holy, and He uses our prayer of confession to cleanse us. Leviticus 13 and 14 say that God’s process for moving His people from uncleanness to cleanness also involved a priest in every step. God uses His people to help us in the process of cleansing from sin, just like He uses His Word and our confession. God uses other means to move us from a state of uncleanness to a state of cleanness, and He uses it all by the power of His Holy Spirit in us. It is a process; we are never finished growing in holiness. Thank God that He enables the process of sanctification by cleansing what we cannot! If some sin is in your life, why not ask God to cleanse you right now? Will you finish reading this section clean before God or unclean because of unconfessed sin? God cleanses what we cannot.

Jesus Transforms Access to God’s Presence

God gave His laws concerning cleanness and uncleanness in the context of His covenant with His people. God has now established the new covenant in Jesus. God’s old covenant prepared for Jesus’ coming and taught us principles that help us understand the person and work of Jesus. God always knew that when the Messiah came and He initiated the new covenant, the old covenant would become obsolete. The New Testament describes the new covenant in Jesus and confirms the obsolescence of the old covenant. Consider three ways Jesus transforms access to God’s presence.

Jesus Eliminates Ceremonial Law

The process described in Leviticus 13–15 is now obsolete. So are all the laws related to old covenant ceremonies. Jesus made that clear when Jewish leaders confronted Him about non-compliance with ceremonial law. The Jewish leaders asked Jesus why His disciples didn’t wash their hands properly. For the Jews, that wasn’t a matter of hygiene; it was a matter of ritual cleanness, or ceremonial law. Jesus responded by saying that the Jewish leaders were wrong to observe their ceremonial tradition while they disobeyed the moral law of the old covenant (Matt 15:1-9). On another occasion, some Jewish leaders accused Jesus’ disciples of breaking ceremonial law by picking some grain and eating it on the Sabbath. Again, Jesus responded by treating ceremonial law as obsolete and stating that He is the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28).

Jesus also encountered lepers. Instead of pronouncing them ceremonially unclean and following the Levitical process, Jesus healed lepers. One time a woman with a flow of blood touched Jesus’ robe. According to ceremonial law, He should have been made unclean by being touched by an unclean person. Instead, Jesus made ceremonial law obsolete as His power flowed to her and she was healed. Jesus eliminates ceremonial law.

Jesus Graduates Us from Symbol to Substance

Colossians 2:16-17 refers to old covenant ceremonial law as “a shadow of what was to come,” and it says, “the substance is the Messiah.” The old covenant ceremonial laws were the shadow, and Jesus is the substance. God uses laws like those in Leviticus 13–15 to teach that there is a difference between uncleanness and cleanness, and He wants His people to be clean. There is a difference between sin and holiness, and He wants His people to be holy. When Jesus came as God in the flesh, He introduced the new covenant in which He did away with the shadow and proved He is the substance. He taught that external things do not make us clean or unclean, sinful or holy, anymore. Instead, what is in our hearts makes us sinful or holy, and only He can change our hearts. The old covenant law shows us our dirtiness in God’s sight, and Jesus came to be the way we become clean—not just clean on the outside, but clean on the inside, and clean forever. He graduates us from symbol to substance.

Paul wrote in Galatians 3:24 that the law is our “tutor” (NASB) or “guardian” (HCSB) to lead us to Christ. In his commentary on Galatians, Martin Luther cited the proverb that hunger is the best cook. Then Luther wrote that the law makes us hungry, and Jesus satisfies our hunger. Luther also wrote that dry ground longs for rain.

So the law makes troubled and afflicted souls thirst after Christ. To such people, Christ tastes wonderful; to them, he is nothing but joy, consolation, and life. And then Christ and his benefits begin to be recognized. Christ requires thirsty souls, whom he lovingly calls; he delights to water such dry ground. . . . He comforts those who are bruised and afflicted by the law. (Galatians, 178)

Jesus Incarnates God’s Presence

In these chapters in Leviticus the tabernacle symbolized the presence of God. The Bible teaches us that God is everywhere all the time because He is God, but God especially associated His presence with the tabernacle. God said that He would meet with His people at the tabernacle
(Exod 29:42-43). The laws concerning uncleanness and cleanness taught the people of Israel to come in a state of cleanness into His presence at the tabernacle. John 1:14 says Jesus “became flesh and took up residence among us,” and the word translated “took up residence” means to pitch a tent. Some scholars have suggested that “he tabernacled among us” is an apt translation (Michaelis, “skenoo,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 7:385–86). The tabernacle was a big tent where people went to meet with God, but now God Himself has come in the flesh in Jesus. God has pitched His tent among us in Jesus, and if we want to know God and meet with God, we go to Jesus. He incarnates God’s presence.

Followers of Jesus Have a Future with No Sickness

Leviticus 13–15 is about physical infirmities, but the Bible says that one day followers of Jesus will no longer suffer from physical infirmities. Our earthly bodies are deteriorating. When we’re children and teenagers our bodies grow bigger and stronger until we’re fully grown. But not long after our bodies are mature, the aging process begins. The aging process is, like leprosy, a process of gradual deterioration. When we age we face all sorts of physical challenges as our bodies grow weaker. As a friend said, “Old age is not for sissies.”

That sounds pretty glum, but it’s true. Paul wrote, “Our outer person is being destroyed” (2 Cor 4:16). However, he also wrote about our future. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul wrote, “We will all be changed. For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality” (vv. 52-53). In eternity, when we have immortal bodies, what will life be like? Revelation 21 gives a glimpse of what heaven is like.

God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away. (vv. 3-4)

Skin disease will pass away. Uncleanness will pass away. Death will pass away. Sin will pass away. Life without infirmity is in store for every person who knows Jesus as Savior—no more pain, no more crying, no more death or mourning. God will wipe away every tear. How do we get to that life in heaven? Jesus said He is the way to heaven. Do you have a hurt in your life right now? Maybe you have been shedding tears or struggling with sickness or pain. God has in store for you an eternity without pain. Our bodies will be eternally well, and our hearts will be unspeakably joyful. In the meantime, God teaches us in passages like Leviticus 13–15 to keep ourselves clean and holy until we are in His holy and loving presence forever.

Reflect and Discuss