“Then the priest shall consider: and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague: it is all turned white: he is clean.” (Leviticus 13:13)
This Scripture alone should verify to doctors that the law came from God, the Creator. This Scripture puzzled me for a long time. Why would a priest consider a leper clean who had white lesions covering the whole body? One has to be a doctor or have studied medicine to understand this. Which is why I believe that this Scripture alone would testify to an unbelieving doctor that only the Creator at that time would know that white lesions meant the lesions were healed. In easy terms we non-medical people can understand what happens when healing occurs is that red blood cells help create collagen, which are tough, white fibers that form the foundation for new tissue. The wound starts to fill in with new tissue, called granulation tissue. It is healed. In the days of Moses there was no medical training to know this. But our Creator knows. And He put it in His law so that the priests would know when the leprosy was healed.
That’s the natural and medical side of this Scripture. But as I have often said, the incidents in the Old Testament symbolize and represent what was to come in the new covenant or the spiritual. A leper is unclean physically and a sinner is spiritually unclean. Isaiah wrote that we are all as an unclean thing. (Isaiah 64:6) And like the chaff that the wind blows away, the sinner is blown away as nothing, unimportant waste. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6) Paul wrote that our sinful life before Jesus was unclean and iniquity upon iniquity. “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” (Romans 6:19) Sinners sin because they have no strength to avoid it. They are bound in the kingdom of sin and darkness. They are blinded to the Truth that will set them free. “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2Corinthians 4:3-4) They are blind and cannot see the Truth. But Jesus judges the Pharisees because they said they could see. “Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” (John 9:41) The Pharisees were saying they were not blind and could see the Truth. Their rejection of Jesus was not because they didn’t believe Him but because they knew Who He was and rejected Him.
In the same manner. A sinner who says he is righteous is still a sinner. He hasn’t recognized that he is full of sin. Either one is clean, or one is not. But it’s only the Blood of the Lamb that cleanses from all iniquity and makes one clean. “This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1John 1:5-8)
We cannot be partially light and partially darkness. We cannot be righteous and sometimes not. That is like the leper with white lesions and raw lesions. He is still unclean. We were totally unclean and because of Jesus, we have been cleansed thoroughly and completely of all darkness and all sin past, present and future. We are like the leper covered completely with white lesions. We do not continue sinning but may “fall” into sin. This is the flesh manifesting itself. We repent of it, confess it and leave it forever because the Holy Spirit deals with it. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1John 1:9) To continue to sin in the manner we have failed is dangerous. “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” (Hebrews 10:26-27)
Like the leper covered with white lesions, who was clean, we have been cleansed completely by the Blood of the Lamb. We are healed. There is still no righteousness in us, except the righteousness of Jesus. Only in Jesus are we declared righteous. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
(Rom 3:21-26) The righteousness of God is on all that believe and who have faith in Jesus. The Lord is just and justifies us because we believe in Jesus.
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