Jesus is Contagiously Holy
“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead.” (Numbers 5:1–2)
When someone becomes “unclean” in the Old Testament it is a reminder to the whole community of God’s holiness and purity, and it is a reminder to them about their spiritual brokenness. To be unclean was to embody a spiritual reality, not just a physical one. If being ritually unclean was about dirt and germs, the solution would simply be a bath. But God told them to bathe and bring a sacrifice — because we’re dealing with a moral and spiritual reality, not just external dirt.
To be unclean didn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong; it meant that something was wrong with the whole world. Becoming unclean happens when you rub shoulders with death in some way, and death is the first unwelcome invader in this good world God’s made.
Have we not rubbed shoulders with death in this world? We bear the marks of it all over, even in our own bodies. That’s part of what it is to be a human in this world.
But Jesus became a human in this death-infested world, and he turned everything upside down. When Jesus encountered a leper, he did the unthinkable: he touched him. And instead of becoming unclean himself, Jesus’ own purity was contagious, and healed the leper (Mark 1:40ff)! When Jesus met the woman who had been bleeding for years, she touched Jesus’ robe. And immediately, instead of him becoming unclean, she became clean (Mark 5:33ff)!
From the cross to the grave, Jesus not only rubbed shoulders with death, but he was plunged into it. Up until that point in human history, death had engulfed everyone who it touched. But when death encountered Jesus, it could not withstand his purity, holiness, and power. Death spat Jesus out like Jonah and the fish. Because of Jesus’ powerful holiness, death could not keep him!
God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. (Acts 2:24)
The resurrection is our guarantee that death has lost its icy-grip on this world, and that Jesus can finally make us clean.
So maybe we’ve rubbed shoulders with death. But when we encounter the risen Jesus, we can actually get deeply, thoroughly clean. The purity of Jesus is far more powerful than your impurity. Not only does he move toward you in love, but he took your uncleanness and bore it “outside the camp,” so that you could be reconciled to the God who now dwells in your midst.
