“Why was a leper covered in leprosy pronounced clean?”

July/August 2020 – Grace & Truth Magazine

QUESTION: In Leviticus 13:12-13, why was the leper pronounced clean when his entire body was covered with leprosy, when someone with less leprosy was unclean? How did the individual Levitical priest and the leper himself feel about it?

ANSWER: Leprosy in God’s Word is always a picture of sin. Men may try to cover up their sins, but they cannot rid themselves of them. It was understood in Bible times that only God could cure leprosy (2 Ki. 5:7); and we know that only God can forgive sins (Mk. 2:7). The Lord Jesus, who was both God and Man in one, did both when He was here on earth.

An Israelite who was suspected of having leprosy had to be checked by a priest. God gave careful directions as to what the priest was to look for to make sure the individual had leprosy and not some other skin disease. The person diagnosed with leprosy had to live outside the camp of Israel. When people passed by, he was to call out, “Unclean! Unclean!” (Lev. 13:45 NKJV), for anyone touching him would also become unclean.

What may seem paradoxical, or contradictory, is that God said that if a person became completely covered with leprosy, from head to toe, such a person was to be pronounced clean. We have no record in Scripture of this ever happening. However, we are reminded “whatever things were written before were written for our learning” (Rom. 15:4) and “all these things happened to them as examples [or types], and they were written for our admonition” (1 Cor. 10:11). So, what are we to learn from this seemingly strange instruction God gave Israel?

No matter what a person may have done to bandage, medicate or cover his leprosy to keep others from knowing, it was still present and would grow worse. Ultimately, the individual would die from it or related complications. Likewise, people often try to cover up or smooth over their sin, doing anything they can think of to try to improve their image, or they may deny or minimize their sin. They may speak of “white lies” or “little sins,” say they “didn’t do it on purpose,” or compare themselves with others who are more wicked or flamboyant with their sin. None of this, however, takes away their guilt before God. They will one day have to face God who is absolutely holy. One “little sin” in His eyes is worse than the Holocaust – during which 6 million Jews and 5 million others were killed – or similar events are in our eyes.

When a person was completely covered with leprosy, he could not hide it. His condition was fully out in the open, and God said he was clean. This can be viewed as a type of a sinner giving up all his futile attempts to deny his sin or to rid himself of it by his own works – an individual who in repentance confesses that he is a guilty hell-deserving sinner. Such a one, God in His great mercy will forgive. He can do this righteously because of what His Son has done in dying on the cross at Calvary. For such a person, a new life has begun.

How would the leper, totally covered with leprosy now pronounced clean, feel? We have no case to which to refer, but we see Naaman and some of the lepers the Lord healed during the years of His ministry on earth thankful and worshiping or desiring to worship.

How would the priest have felt? God does not tell us, but we can perceive that he may have marveled at the strange but wonderful ways of God. Other lepers too might have gazed in wonder, for all their efforts to improve themselves or to hide their condition were without positive effect.

Whatever people may have thought in such a situation makes no difference, so God does not tell us about what people thought. His word is what counts. When He says a person is clean, this is a fact because God has spoken. Our feelings, ideas, and reasonings make no difference; they cannot be depended on. They cannot change what God says. We do well simply to accept what God says, for He is God; and being God, He is sovereign, and all that He says or does is right. We rejoice in what He tells us in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Answered by Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.