The Leper's Cleansing and Our Salvation

By Matthew Emadi

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

This brief article will explore the biblical-theological significance of the leper’s cleansing.

Leprosy, the Priesthood, and the Need for Cleansing

The focus of Mark 1:40–45 is on cleansing, not healing, though the two are related. The words “clean” or “cleanse” appear four times in the span of five verses (vv. 40, 41, 42, 44). Leprosy, which refers to various skin diseases in the Old Testament (Lev. 13), rendered people ritually unclean according to the Mosaic law. Anyone who touched a leper would’ve also become ceremonially unclean (see vv. 45–46).

As a matter of uncleanness, leprosy’s significance is more theological and symbolic than biological and medicinal. Lepers needed a priest to pronounce them clean, not a doctor to prescribe them medicine. According to Leviticus 14:19, the priest had to offer a “sin offering” to “make atonement” for the leper as part of the leper’s cleansing process. Without the sin offering, the leper would remain unfit to worship God at the tabernacle. He was cut off from God’s presence—a dead man walking, much like Adam outside the garden.

Mark recorded the miracle of the leper’s cleansing because he wanted us to see that Jesus is a superior priest who offers a cleansing that runs deeper than the skin.

Leprosy as Exile and Death

The Old Testament associates leprosy with death. When Aaron and Miriam sinned against Moses, God struck Miriam with leprosy (Num. 12:1–15). She became as “one dead” and as a stillborn infant (v. 12). Lepers were to assume a posture of mourning—as though they were mourning the dead—by wearing torn clothes, letting their hair hang loose, and covering their upper lip as they cried out “Unclean, unclean” (Lev. 13:45; cf. 10:6; Ezek. 24:17, 22–23).

They lived outside the camp in their leprous condition, where they experienced their own deathlike exile, cut off from God’s life-giving presence. As a symbol of death, leprosy was also associated with Egypt. God afflicted the Egyptians with boils when Pharaoh refused to let Israel go (Ex. 9:8–12)

God delivered his people out of the tomb of Egypt through blood (Passover) and water (sea) and brought them to his life-giving presence at Sinai to make them a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). A cleansed leper followed the same exodus movement from the place of death outside the camp to life with God in Israel’s camp after being sprinkled with blood and oil and washed with water (Lev. 14:1–14).

As part of his cleansing, a leper was restored to the covenant community the same way that priests were consecrated to God.

Leper’s Exodus and Ours

The leper in Mark 1:40–45 is a man under the sentence of death and a symbol of exile. He has Egypt’s disease. He’s a microcosm of Israel. Israel may have been in the land when Jesus came to them, but they remained in spiritual exile, alienated from God. They needed deliverance not from the bondage of Egypt or Rome but from the tyranny of sin, Satan, and death.

Far from being merely a man with an awful skin condition that we don’t have to worry about thanks to modern medicine, the leper is a mirror to our own plight. The leper reminds us we too must cry out to Jesus for cleansing from sin’s defilement and the sentence of death. The good news of the gospel is that what Jesus said to the leper, he says to everyone who comes to him in faith: “I will; be clean.”

Article excerpts taken from The Gospel Coalition (U.S. Edition). Read the full resource here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ article/lepers-cleansing-our-salvation/