In the midst of this entire disease issue, I have been using the time to finish writing my newest book The Gospel of Life and Immortality which I am now revising and hope to publish later this year. While doing some scriptural study, I was reminded of a very interesting parallel between the Old and New Testaments addressing how we manage those who are sick and “unclean” versus healthy and “clean,” and I want to explore the implications of what that means for us today—specifically the idea stated in Exodus 22:27, that “Whatever touches . . . the flesh will become holy.”
Leviticus 11:311-35 says, “Of all those that move along the ground, these are unclean for you. Whoever touches them when they are dead will be unclean till evening. When one of them dies and falls on something, that article, whatever its use, will be unclean, whether it is made of wood, cloth, hide or sackcloth. Put it in water; it will be unclean till evening, and then it will be clean. If one of them falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot. Any food you are allowed to eat that has come into contact with water from any such pot is unclean, and any liquid that is drunk from such a pot is unclean. Anything that one of their carcasses falls on becomes unclean; an oven or cooking pot must be broken up. They are unclean, and you are to regard them as unclean.”
This passage is one of many that explains how things that are unclean make almost everything else they come in contact with unclean. If you read Levitical Law from an infection-control perspective it is actually incredibly pragmatic and would help a large group of people living closely together maintain better health and sanitation. However, the underlying thing it points to is that unclean things make clean things dirty. If we look elsewhere in the Old Testament we see an interesting contrast when dealing with sin offerings. Exodus 22:24b-27 says:
The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron and his sons: ‘These are the regulations for the sin offering: The sin offering is to be slaughtered before the Lord in the place the burnt offering is slaughtered; it is most holy. The priest who offers it shall eat it; it is to be eaten in the sanctuary area, in the courtyard of the tent of meeting. Whatever touches any of the flesh will become holy, and if any of the blood is spattered on a garment, you must wash it in the sanctuary area.
I want to draw special attention to the last sentence (v27) that says “Whatever touches any of the flesh will become holy.” What we need to note here is that sin offerings remove and/or cover over sin. While something might normally be unclean, if anything touches the flesh of a sin sacrifice, the item becomes holy. This is a foreshadowing of the New Testament gift we receive in Christ which he demonstrated with the lepers, where those who come in contact with Jesus are made clean, well, and whole. We see this in Matthew 8:1-3 (also in Mark 1:40-42 and Luke 5:12-13) where it says:
When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.
In this verse, the unclean man comes to the clean man seeking to be cleansed—but there is more to it than that. Jesus was our sin offering as well, and we see that in this passage when Jesus touched the man, his flesh touched the leper’s, the unclean man became clean. The Old Covenant lived under the law where unclean things dirtied everything else around them, but the New Covenant reality is that clean things cleanse everything around them. Whatever touches the flesh will become holy, clean, well, and put in right standing and alignment.
I realize that there are many different opinions floating around the church world these days having to do with sickness and disease, but I think it is important that we refocus on the truth that is presented to us in the Bible. Romans 6:33 tells us that the payment we receive for sin is death. Sickness is just a manifestation of death at work in our bodies. Jesus as the blood sacrifice once for all sin has already touched our lives and He has declared us clean, whole, righteous, and pure with no sin or blemish or stain upon us. The gift of righteousness we receive in Christ Jesus brings us life that destroys the power of sickness that seeks to work death in our bodies. While the Old Covenant reality is that sickness would make the healthy sick, the new way of Christ is that wherever we go, it is our job to destroy sickness and make the sick healthy and whole again.
I think it is time the Body of Christ reframes our perspective and realigns again with who Christ has declared us to be: clean-makers, righteous ones who destroy sin, and that whatever touches our flesh becomes clean. In a world where a six-foot distance separating humans from one another, we need to be reminded that we carry within us the power of Christ to destroy disease. The world has cowed many in the Church into bowing to the power of disease when in fact the opposite needs to occur: disease bowing to the power of Christ in us, the Church. As we go about our daily lives, I encourage each one of us to truly consider where we stand in our own hearts on this matter. Do we actually expect the things we touch to become clean? Or are we constantly on the alert to keep everything outside of us from defiling us? I believe that as we each become more aware of the reality that in Christ we can cleanse the world around us of sickness and disease we will actually experience it regularly—and this is what God has already purchased for us in Christ! May we all step into a greater understanding of the power to redeem, heal, and restore that Jesus has bestowed upon us all!
