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Making the Unclean Clean - Luke 5:13
Making the Unclean Clean - Luke 5:13
Many things would make a person ‘unclean’ under the Old Testament law. “Unclean” appears some 128 times in the book of Leviticus! “Unclean” is not to be understood as ‘sinful’. Such was not a MORAL condition, but a condition that rendered a person or thing ‘unacceptable’. The people were to avoid anything and everything that God pronounced as unclean.
So, what if clean touches unclean? This question was answered in Haggai 2:11-14! IF the unclean touches the holy (clean), BOTH ARE THEN UNCLEAN.
YET, with Jesus, the opposite happens. The leper is unclean, Jesus is the Holy one of Israel. When the leper asks to ‘be cleansed’, Jesus TOUCHES HIM. THEN Jesus commands the man to go and make an offering for your cleansing, just as Moses commanded, as a testimony (witness) to them. Jesus can make the unholy holy. Jesus can make the unclean clean. Jesus can make the unrighteous righteous. Jesus can make the guilty to be FORGIVEN.
While we can not SEE ‘forgiveness’, one could see that a leper had been cleansed and was free from such disease. That which we CAN see become the witness and testimony of the power of Jesus in dealing with that which we can NOT see!
Jesus is the way: the way BACK TO GOD. Jesus is the ONLY way back to God: “Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
This man was unclean, came to Jesus for cleansing, and went away clean and ‘acceptable’. We, as sinners, come to Jesus and He takes away our sins, making us acceptable. Have you come to Jesus?
Hugh DeLong
