Skin Diseases, Discharges, and the Wasting Sickness of Sin

            The Christian reader, especially after so many centuries, must surely scratch his head in bewilderment over aspects of Leviticus.  What do childbirth, skin diseases, ‘discharges,’ and menstruation have to do with one another?  Why do we care about them?

            I feel a little repetitious here, but two things help us sort through this regulation.  First, Israel was to be God’s treasured possession (Ex. 19:5).  The old King James Version translated that Israel would be God’s peculiar treasure.  That may actually help.  Israel was to be unique among the peoples of the earth, because she was uniquely the Lord’s.  So, the Law’s almost obsessive concerns are indications of the detail with which that particularity was marked off.

            Second, I noted a few days ago that the Law is concerned with issues of life and death.  Discharges of blood—even from something as blessed as childbirth, deep skin diseases, menstruation—they all look like symptoms of death.  Death is the consequence of sin; God’s holy people are to be characterized by His holiness; therefore anything that reminds of death doesn’t fit with them.

            There is a deeper thought here, too.  Sin is not just skin deep.  Sin is not a discharge that defiles for a moment and gets healed.  Sin is a wasting disease that corrupts the very character of humanity and leads us inexorably to death.  The very detailed regulations about dealing with these things help us see that sin is not easy thing to handle:  it is even harder than keeping straight on all the Levitical practices.  Indeed, it’s impossible to remove all the corruptions of sin.  So, the Levitical practices again pull the Christian ahead to Jesus, who alone is clean, who alone is spotless, who alone is deathless, and they pull us ahead to the fact that He died anyhow to heal the uncleanness that so burdens our race.

Updated from 2/2/2011