This chapter is all about the dreadful disease called leprosy. Some folks, of late years, think they have found a cure for it, but it doesn’t seem as though they were very sure about it. It was the worst sickness that anyone could have in “those hot Eastern countries, and no one ever was cured by the doctors they had, nor do I think that anyone who really had a bad case of leprosy, ever has been cured by any doctor.
So we can understand why God chose leprosy when He wanted to tell us how bad a disease sin is; how hateful to Him, and to those who know what it is, and have been freed from it, and how incurable, except we go to the Great Physician.
Sin is something that is “deeper than the skin” (verse 3), and though the poor man who had the disease might not think he had it; or might try to believe that it was not really leprosy, he was not the judge; he had to be brought before the priest (who represented God), and the priest would say whether the man was a leper or not. If he was not sure, the man was shut up for a week, or even for two weeks until it was plain to the priest what the disease was.
If God had left it to us to decide whether we were sinners or not, most of us would have decided that we were not very bad sinners, but God, has not left the matter for us to decide. His sentence is, “All have sinned.” Rom. 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23).
If you will open your Bibles at Isaiah, first chapter, and read it through, you will see in verses 5 and 6 how He speaks about sinners as He sees them.
The many details in this chapter let us know too, that nothing that looked like leprosy, however small it might be at the first, was passed by. Nothing that looks like sin in a Christian does God pass by; and if we belong to the Lord, we ought to be very careful about our own ways, and who we keep company with. The first Psalm begins with,
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of shiners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”
Verses 12 and 13 seem different, but are really not. If leprosy covered all the skin, from head to foot, wherever the priest looked, it meant that the disease was all out—it was not working any more. So it is, when a sinner has owned to God all that has been at work in him—sin against God—he is forgiven. Has my reader been forgiven? (Luke 7:47, 48, 5047Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. 48And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. (Luke 7:47‑48)
50And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace. (Luke 7:50)).