Disease and Sin
J. Cumming, D. D. Leviticus 13:2-46 When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot… This great fact that a disease in the body was typical of a malady in the soul reminds us at once that there was perfect harmony between the body and the soul, between things spiritual and things temporal, between things heavenly and things earthly. There is enough of the harmony still surviving to show what and how rich it once was. The historical statement in this chapter is, that the leprosy overspread the whole body, till it became, in language used by one of the prophets, "white as snow"; the whole physical economy was infected with its deadly poison. And, in that respect, it was the type, and is indeed referred to in the New Testament as the type, of that sin which has infected the whole soul and body of mankind. Take any one faculty that is within us, and we shall find on it the great leprosy, or taint, or moral influence of sin. Man's intellect has in it still remaining energies that give token of what it once was; but it has in it also defects, and tremulousness, and weakness, and paralysis, that indicate that it is the subject of some great derangement. I need not attempt to prove that the heart also is defiled. Our blessed Lord gives the heart its faithful character when He says, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, and such like; and these are the things that defile a man." Truly, therefore, and justly did the Psalmist pray, "Create in me a clean heart, O God: renew a right spirit within me." But not only are the heart and intellect affected, as I have shown you, but the conscience also has suffered, and is poisoned by the universal disease. It is sometimes overflowed by guilty passions, it is sometimes silent when it ought to rebuke them; sometimes quiescent when it ought to assert its original authority, and sometimes the democracy of the passions rises in fierce array, dethrones the monarch that ought to govern them, and prompts man to pursue the infatuated course that leads to his ruin. And in the worst of cases this power of conscience is often perverted to the wrong side, sanctioning the sins which it ought to abhor. When the intellect that discerns, the heart that loves or hates, and the conscience that testifies what is right or wrong, are thus infected, truly may we say with Isaiah, "The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint," &c. Were the tokens and the evidences of the assertion I have made not so obvious and so numerous as they actually are, you find other proofs in the miser fixing his heart upon gold, in spite of the decisions of intellect, the better impulses of the heart, and the rebukes of conscience. You find the drunkard still indulging in his cups, notwithstanding a thousand testimonies within and without, that he is ruining soul and body. You find the Pharisee robbing widows' houses, and making long prayers for a pretence. You find the very religion of love and truth corrupted into the religion of superstition, of hate, and a lie. So depraved and fallen is man that it looks that, if he had the power, he would turn redemption itself into a nullity, or into a curse. There is, then, on all sides the evidence of some great derangement. We never can suppose we were made so. Disease seems to us natural, but it is most unnatural; error, sin, hate, all seem to us normal and ordinary, but they are really altogether the reverse. We find, on tracing the similitude between the disease which is here mentioned, that the leper had to be insulated from the rest of the world, and left by himself to get rid of the disease that thus separated him. So the sinner, in God's moral government, must be for ever separated from the communion and company of the holy, if he continue the subject of this great moral malady — sin. The leper's disease was so bad that it was incurable by human means. It is so with sin. Like the leprosy, in the next place, sin is contagious. The characteristic disease of the Israelite spread from person to person, from house to house, and throughout the whole land. And who needs to be taught that "evil communications corrupt good manners"? Who needs to learn that there is in an evil word, in a crooked course, a contagious influence that is distilled upon susceptible and sensitive and living hearts? In the ancient economy, the party to whom the leper presented himself, was not the physician, as in other diseases, but the priest. And this shows that it was a disease in some shape intimately associated with man's guilt, or with sin. A Jew of old, like a Gentile now, if taken ill, applied to the physician; but when infected with this great typical disease, he did not go to the physician, but to the priest. But, more than this, even the priest could not heal him; the priest had no prescription that could heal him, no balm that could remove it. All that he could do was to say, "You are healed," or "You are not healed," or, "You are advancing towards convalescence," or the reverse. The priest was to pronounce him clean, or to pronounce him unclean. But how much better is the economy under which we live! Our High Priest can not only pronounce us clean, but make us clean; He can not only say that we are justified, but He can justify us by His perfect righteousness, forgive us by His atoning blood, by His sanctifying Spirit, through His inspired Word. (J. Cumming, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests: WEB: "When a man shall have a rising in his body's skin, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes in the skin of his body the plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons, the priests: