Redeeming the Unclean

Matthew records several miracles that Jesus performed after the Sermon on the Mount.  Of course, Matthew acknowledges that Jesus performed many miracles and many healings (Matt 8:16), but Matthew chooses specific miracles because they affirm the Jesus supersedes Old Testament ideas of the Law.  

I think the fact that Matthew recounts Jesus healing a leper first is no accident.  The issue of leprosy is thoroughly covered in the book of Leviticus, which dedicates two whole chapters to the subject.  Lepers were the epitome of what it meant to be unclean.  Even by touching a leper, Jesus became ritualistically unclean so the fact that Jesus touches the leper to heal him is significant, especially when the next story about Jesus healing the servant of the centurion shows that Jesus could heal with a word instead of a touch. In the podcast, Unshaken, Jared Halverson gives a lovely explanation about how the ritual of cleansing of a leper from the book of Leviticus is a beautiful foreshadowing of Jesus' life and mission. (Lev 14:1-9)

In the next chapter Jesus heals a woman with an issue of blood (Matt 9:20-23).  Having an issue of blood makes a person unclean, (Leviticus 15:25).  Then Jesus goes into the house of the ruler of the synagogue, he raises his daughter from the dead by, again, touching her (Matthew 9:25).  Touching a dead body was another way to become unclean (Numbers 19:11-12). The one who touches a dead body was unclean for seven days and had to do two cleansing rituals. In each of these cases Matthew is showing us that Jesus is cleansing what the Law called unclean, without becoming unclean himself.  

There are other tangential references to unclean things in these chapters.  Jesus heals the servant of a Gentile, someone who would be considered unclean because he presumably worshiped other gods. He heals a man possessed of devils, who lived in a grave yard.  That's a double whammy reason to be considered unclean. Then the unclean spirits went into pigs, who ran into the sea and died.  There is hardly anything more unclean than a dead pig. 

John develops the idea of Jesus being able to clean the unclean when he recounts Jesus' discourse on the Living Water (John 7: 37).  Jesus says that out of him will flow living water.  John is also the gospel writer that mentions that when the Romans pierced Jesus' side with a spear, water literally came out (John 19:34). Living water was flowing water, like a stream or a river.  According to the Mosaic Law, in the most serious cases, people who were unclean were commanded to wash themselves with living water. When Jesus says that living water comes from him, he is saying that he, through his atoning sacrifice, is the way that we can be cleaned. 

This all goes back to the idea that Jesus didn't come into the world to heal people of their physical challenges.  He did heal many, but his main purpose was to save their souls from hell through the atonement.  His atonement was the great cleansing event that all the Mosaic Law foreshadows.