Leviticus 3

Chapter 3. The Ordinances of CleansingLeviticus 11-15Let us not fail to notice the beautiful order in the successive developments of truth in this wonderful book of gospel teaching. First and best of all, we have the offerings, unfolding the perfect sacrifice of Christ as the ground of our access to God. Next we have the priesthood, which prefigures the way of access through the person and intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our priesthood in Him. And now we have in this third section the condition of access, namely; our cleansing from sin and defilement. This is set forth in a number of ceremonial provisions with regard to uncleanness, culminating in the most significant of all these ordinances, namely, that respecting the leper.

Section I: Clean and Unclean Animals

Section I—Clean and Unclean AnimalsLeviticus 11These various distinctions are specified in the 11th chapter of Leviticus. While they were, no doubt, to a great extent purely ceremonial, and may seem to us somewhat obsolete and are no longer binding, yet they were intended as simple object lessons to lead the thoughts and consciences of the people, step by step, to the conception of the moral difference between right and wrong. God was teaching His people as we would teach a little child, or an irrational animal, first by symbols and then afterwards by deeper moral intuitions and convictions. The fact that certain things were permitted and certain others prohibited as articles of food would prepare their minds for the more important prohibitions respecting their deeper spiritual life.

Section II: Uncleanness in Connection with Birth

Section II—Uncleanness in Connection with BirthLeviticus 12It is not necessary to explain in detail the various provisions for the cleansing of the young mother from the defilement contracted through the birth of her offspring. These ordinances received a beautiful illustration in the rites of purification connected with the birth of our Lord Himself, and the offering of the turtledove and the two young pigeons at the hands of His humble mother was not deemed unworthy of being fully chronicled in the story of His life. In these ordinances also there was a certain symbolical allusion to great spiritual and moral conceptions; perhaps the idea lying back of all was the radical depravity of human nature, and the transmission and taint of sin by the very law of heredity. Was not this what David meant when he cried: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalms 51:5)?

Section III: Leprosy of Person

Section III—Leprosy of PersonLev_13:1-46This was the special type of sin as separating us from God and the companionship of the holy and marking its traces even in our physical diseases and infirmities. It was the most realistic type of sin and its inherent consequences in the Old Testament.

1. It was incurable by human means, and so a type of the malignity and hopelessness of sin.
2. It excluded from the presence of God, and the fellowship of His people. The victim dwelt apart, and no man dared to touch his contaminating person. So sin inevitably separates the soul from the presence of God, and from the good and holy; and even in heaven itself the unsanctified heart would be more intolerably wretched and isolated than in the abyss of woe.
3. It was a constantly increasing sore, gradually spreading from joint to joint, and limb to limb, until the whole body became a putrefying mass and a living death. So sin is never stationary. “Evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). And there will be an eternal progression in the ages of the future, more terrific even than the developments which we have seen on earth.
4. It suggested the connection between sin and its physical consequences. It was the outward mark of the inward plague. Therefore it becomes peculiarly expressive of the meaning of disease in the economy of God’s moral government, not as the token of special punishment for special sin, but in general as the effect of sin, and the mark upon our body of our fallen state, and our separation from the perfect life of God and holiness. Consequently the healing of disease was always associated with spiritual cleansing and quickening in the ministry of Christ; and this has ever been the first principle in the scriptural experience of divine healing.
5. Leprosy was a disease involving unspeakable wretchedness, shame and misery, and looking forward to a future of hopeless despair. The very Hebrew word for leprosy means “the stroke or wound of God.” So sin involves more than we have yet seen of its fearful possibilities and issues, for it shall yet pass under the final judgment of a righteous God and be banished to its own place without alleviation or limitation of its fearful virulence and avenging.

Section IV: The Cleansing of the Leper

Section IV—The Cleansing of the LeperConviction and Confession (Leviticus 13:12-13)

1. The inspection and discrimination of the victim. He must be brought to the priest, who alone could pass judgment upon the case. So Christ alone can be the true judge of sin. If the plague was working secretly or in spots, the leper was pronounced unclean. But if the plague was exposed and the leprosy covered all his person, it was a singular provision of the Mosaic law that he might be pronounced clean. This was designed to teach us that conviction and confession of sin bring immediate forgiveness, but if it is hidden it involves inevitable condemnation. The moment the tax collector cries, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” the Savior declares, “This man… went home justified before God” (Luke 18:13-14). The moment Job exclaims, “I despise myself” (Job 42:6), the Lord pronounces him righteous. “Only acknowledge your guilt” (Jeremiah 3:13), He cries. Stand like the ancient leper who was required to cry, “Unclean! Unclean!” (Leviticus 13:45), and “the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Seeking the Savior (Leviticus 14:2)
2. The leper must be brought unto the priest. He perhaps was not able to go without help, perhaps would not have gone if he had not been kindly led. So God brings us to Himself, sometimes directly, as He called Philip and Saul, by His Holy Spirit and His sovereign grace, and sometimes through the instrumentality of Christian friends. Seeking the Lost (Leviticus 14:3)
3. The priest next goes out to meet the leper outside the camp. What a lovely picture of the Savior as He stoops to the sinner’s lowest level and meets him on his own plane of unworthiness and helplessness. So we read in the Gospels that Jesus put forth His hand and touched the shrinking leper, and said: “I am willing,… Be clean” (Mark 1:41). We have a Great High Priest who “is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness” (Hebrews 5:2). No man need say in his heart, “‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or Who will descend into the deep?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart’” (Romans 10:6-8). We do not need to work ourselves up to a point of special consecration or feeling in order to receive the divine blessing; we have only to turn to God where we are and put ourselves at once into His all-sufficient hands. He sees the first movement of our heart toward Him and comes to meet us. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son” (Luke 15:20). So the Savior is already moving toward the sinner with all the tenderness of His welcoming love. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Leviticus 19:10). Death and Resurrection (Leviticus 14:4-7)
4. The next step in the cleansing of the leper was the selection of two birds, one of which was sacrificed and the other sprinkled with its blood and set free in the open field, as a type of the twofold fact of Christ’s death and resurrection. The slain bird set forth His crucifixion and the loosed one His resurrection. This is the basis of every sinner’s cleansing. “The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7); and His blood means His life shed for us and imparted to us. These two birds also imply our death and resurrection with Christ. The first prefigures our old life yielded up to Christ; the second, our new life springing forth into freedom, emancipated from the power and the penalty of sin, and like the liberated bird soaring and singing in the light of heaven. It will be noticed here that at this stage the priest is to “pronounce him clean” (Leviticus 14:7)—the sinner’s justification in contrast with his sanctification next described. Separation (Leviticus 14:8-9)
5. The next stage is the actual working out of all this in the leper’s experience. First his person and his garments must be completely washed, denoting the putting off of all the filthiness of the flesh, both in his nature and in his deeds. This was followed by the shaving of his entire body, even to the hair of his eyebrows. Everything that could be a figure of the old life was cut off and laid aside in entire self-renunciation. Consecration (Leviticus 14:14)
6. The next act is full of beautiful significance. It is the thought already expressed in the consecration of the priest; his right ear, hand and foot were touched with the blood of the sacrifice as a symbol of their complete redemption and dedication to God. The ear represents our receptive faculties, the hand our active faculties and powers, and the foot our habits and walk. All these are thus redeemed and consecrated by the recognition of Christ’s death for us, and the communication of His life to us. The Spirits Anointing (Leviticus 14:15-17)
7. The final act in this beautiful ceremony was the baptism of these same three members with the holy oil of anointing. This was significant of the Holy Spirit, by whom we become possessed when we have made the consecration already described. The Spirit of God now takes possession of our ears, our hands and our feet, and controls and endues them with His abiding presence and power. The Fullness of the Spirit (Leviticus 14:18) Then “the rest of the oil” was poured upon the leper’s head, implying that even after the Holy Spirit has fully possessed us there is an infinite reserve still awaiting us, and that all His immeasurable fullness also belongs to us. How much the rest of the oil means only eternity can show. Poured on the head, of course it overflowed to the rest of the body. Perhaps it implied that the sinner’s head needed a fuller baptism than any other part of his being, to keep his own reasoning suppressed and his busy brain pervaded and possessed only by the Holy Spirit.

Section V: Mildew of Garments

Section V—Mildew of GarmentsLev_13:47-59As leprosy of person refers to the depravity of our nature and personality, mildew of garments has respect to the sinfulness of our acts and habits of life. Clothing in the Old Testament is a figure of the conduct and conversation of man. The word habit itself originally meant a robe. It still describes a kind of costume, and by figurative application, also, the course of one’s life. Not only are we intrinsically depraved, but the whole course of our life has been sinful. Referring to both these facts, the prophet with intense vividness declares, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). The only remedy for mildew of garments was to wash them, and, if this failed, to burn them altogether. There are some habits of life which are not essentially evil, but which can be cleansed and truly consecrated; there are others, however, which can only be wholly renounced and destroyed. No one but the priest could detect the degree of the plague or apply the true remedy; so the Lord Jesus Christ alone can cleanse our ways, as well as purify our hearts.

Section VI: Mildew of House

Section VI—Mildew of HouseLev_14:33-53The house represents the Church of God, and the teaching is that even Christ’s own spiritual temple needs to be guarded from the taint of sin. How true this is will be quickly seen if we but remember the sad and solemn story of the Christian centuries. How quickly the eyes of the Great High Priest detected, even in the seven churches of Asia, already the taint of awful mildew; and how soon it spread until Christendom was a corrupt mass of spiritual loathsomeness and disease. The remedy was to be adapted to the degree of the contamination. In some cases it might be cleansed without the destruction of the house, but where it had spread into the very walls and timbers the building must be torn down and carried away bodily and destroyed. So in the Church of God there are evils which are only superficial and confined to the few, and may be healed by faithful discipline; but there are others which become intrinsic and essential, and for which God’s only remedy is the dissolution of the very system which bears His name by unhallowed claim. Hence He says of some of the apostolic churches, “If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (Revelation 2:5). But concerning the others He decrees, “I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). And of the great ecclesiastical system which has become an apostasy and an antichrist, He declares that “the Lord Jesus will overthrow [the lawless one] with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Section VII: Personal Uncleanness of the Flesh

Section VII—Personal Uncleanness of the Flesh Leviticus 15:1-33This chapter refers to a number of personal and physical defilements, all of which refer to the necessity of our bodies being sanctified and preserved in sacredness and purity in all their members, as the temples of God and the instruments of His service.