Scripture Daily

Context No. 3132 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 15:7-11: in context

7“‘He who touches the body of him who has the discharge shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 8“‘If he who has the discharge spits on him who is clean, then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 9“‘Whatever saddle he who has the discharge rides on shall be unclean. 10Whoever touches anything that was under him shall be unclean until the evening. He who carries those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 11“‘Whomever he who has the discharge touches, without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.

These laws describe how ceremonial uncleanness spreads by contact: whoever touches the one with a discharge, or what he has sat on, or is touched by him, becomes unclean until evening and must wash. It taught Israel a vivid lesson, that impurity is contagious, passing readily from one person to another by touch.

Under the old covenant, defilement spread by contact, and the clean had to keep their distance and wash. But here is the astonishing reversal the Gospels reveal. When Jesus reached out and touched the leper and the unclean, he was not defiled by them. Instead his cleanness flowed to them and made them clean. Where the law's holiness had to guard itself against contamination, Christ's holiness overcomes and reverses it. In him the direction of the contagion is turned around, so that what once made the clean unclean now finds the unclean made clean by his touch.

Do I grasp that in Christ the flow is reversed, that his cleanness reaches and heals my uncleanness, rather than my uncleanness defiling him?

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