LEVITICUS 12
This chapter conveys the thought of a more prolonged exercise than anything that has gone before in the book. Exercise connected with the sin-offering and the trespass-offering was gone through on the day when the sin or trespass came on the conscience of the offender. The uncleanness occasioned by touching what was defiling terminated at “even”. But here there are seven or fourteen days of uncleanness, and a prolonged period of cleansing afterwards. This indicates that we have before us here a very deep and grave lesson.
In the previous chapter we have seen a variety of unclean animals from which character was not to be taken, and which were not to be touched if the children [p. 131] of Israel were to be a holy people for God. But now the lesson is brought home that the greatest uncleanness came by the birth of a human child after the flesh. Every increase of the people was to be marked by this prolonged exercise. The uncleanness of the mother is emphasized; the lesson of the chapter is that the source is unclean. This goes to the very root of things. “Who can bring a clean man out of the unclean? Not one!” (Job 14: 4). And Bildad asks, “How should he be clean that is born of a woman?” (Job 25: 4). God would have us to recognize the moral character which attaches to us as born into this world. Before an act is done, or a word spoken, or a thought conceived in the mind, there is that brought into the world which is marked by sin. “Behold, in iniquity was I brought forth, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51: 5).
Every mother in Israel had to take up the exercise of this. God was teaching His people, and is teaching us, that that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the best bit of the flesh is unclean. There is no increase for the Israel of God apart from the recognition of this. No lesson is more needed today, even by those who profess to be the people of God. For it is widely held that man only needs suitable environment, education, and good moral influences brought to bear upon him, and he will be all right! But if the source is unclean, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh, how is that to be remedied?
Nothing is brought forth for God in this world apart from taking up this exercise. The double period for a female child is doubtless a reminder that “the woman, having been deceived, was in transgression” (1 Timothy 2: 14), but it may also suggest that when Christ is not [p. 132] distinctly in view, nor His death in its circumcision aspect, the exercises connected with learning the true character of the flesh are more prolonged. But in either case the exercise has to be gone through in its completeness. There is no cutting it short.
What is brought out in this chapter is the uncleanness of the mother, not of the child. That every child born in the natural course would be unclean is obvious; but I believe that the male child here has a typical reference to Christ. This chapter is directly linked by the Spirit of God with the incidents recorded in Luke 2 — incidents which are indelibly engraved on the affections of the saints. And there can be no doubt that circumcision on the eighth day is a figure of the death of Christ in which the flesh has been cut off under the eye of God. It is because everything connected with the order of man after the flesh is unclean that it has had to be cut off in the death of Christ. “The circumcision of the Christ” (Colossians 2: 11) is His death.
The immaculate conception of the virgin is disproved by the fact that she fulfilled the days of purifying, and brought a sin-offering according to this chapter. But of her Son it was said by the angel Gabriel, “The holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God” (Luke 1: 35). Of Him alone it could be truly and fully said, that He was “holy to the Lord”. The Child was begotten in her of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1: 18, 20), and the body in which He came was prepared of God (Hebrews 10: 5), wholly apart from any taint of sin. He was “the holy one of God” (John 6: 69). Three things are said of Him in words taught by the Holy Spirit: “Who did no sin” (1 Peter 2: 22), “Him who knew not sin” (2 Corinthians 5: 21), “In him sin is not”
([p. 133] 1 John 3: 5). I have no doubt that it is because the sinless humanity of the Lord Jesus was in the view of the Spirit of God that the uncleanness of the mother is spoken of in Leviticus 12 and not the uncleanness of the child. It is “she shall be unclean ... and the priest shall make atonement for her; and she shall be clean”.
This chapter is, in type, Israel having to learn her own uncleanness, even though in the wisdom of God’s ways and according to His promise, she gave birth to Christ, the sinless One. And if Israel is unclean humanity is unclean. It was the coming in of Christ that made manifest all the uncleanness that was there. It raised the whole question of Israel’s state and brought it to light, and she was manifested to be unclean — unfit to touch holy things, or to come into the sanctuary. The coming here of Christ made manifest as nothing had done before that His death was a necessity. “He was in the world, and the world had its being through him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not” (John 1: 10, 11). There could be no greater evidence than this of the uncleanness of man: the world did not know Him, and Israel — with the light of promises, law, and covenants — did not receive Him! The full testimony of divine goodness, relieving men of every need and pressure, had its answer at Calvary! God revealing Himself in the perfection of grace and truth brought out all the deep-rooted enmity of the human heart. There is no room for divine love or holiness in the unclean heart of man.
“And on the eighth day shall the flesh of his foreskin be circumcised”. This is a figure of the death of Christ as that in which the flesh is absolutely cut off for God. (See “An Outline of Genesis”, chapter 17.) “The eighth day” coming in after the “seven days” of uncleanness suggests how God has taken account of the uncleanness of the flesh, and has provided for “the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of the Christ” (Colossians 2: 11.). The eighth day stands in relation to the preceding seven, but it has in view the bringing in for God of that which is wholly apart from the uncleanness of the flesh.
The death of the sinless Son of God made resurrection a necessity “inasmuch as it was not possible that he should be held by its power”. He could not be left in death. The flesh, with all its uncleanness, has been cut off in His death, but the very fact that it was done in His death has rendered resurrection inevitable. Man — in the Person of Jesus — lives apart from all the uncleanness of the flesh, which was judged and cut off vicariously in His death, and He is now for ever beyond death. The circumcision of His death — necessary on account of what flesh was — necessitates resurrection because of what He was. If we think of the uncleanness of the flesh being cut off in His death, through grace, we are reminded at the same moment of the unsullied purity in which He lives to God as the Risen One. The eighth day covers both in type: it gives us the circumcision aspect of the death of Christ, but it teaches us also that the death of Christ involves resurrection. It involves that man shall be with God eternally apart from uncleanness, apart from sin and death, in suitability to all that God is, and that for His pleasure.
The “seven days” give us the uncleanness of humanity as demonstrated by the coming in of Christ. The “eighth” day gives us, in type, the cutting off of [p. 135] unclean flesh in the death of Christ, and an entirely new place for man in the eternal purity of resurrection. It speaks of something for God, as we see in type in Exodus 22: 30. “Seven days shall it be with its dam: on the eighth day thou shalt give it me”. The eighth day is the day of completed cleansing for the leper (Leviticus 14), for the one who has a flux (Leviticus 15), and for the defiled Nazarite (Numbers 6). Attention has often been called to the fact that the numerical value of the letters of the Name JESUS is 888. It is the intensification of all that the number eight stands for in Scripture. It is in relation to the previous seven in two senses. Seven may be viewed — as in the woman’s seven days of uncleanness — as the perfect disclosure of the fallen state of humanity. This has been met and cut off in the death of Jesus for the glory of God, so that men may be blessed according to the holy worth of Jesus — Jehovah the Saviour. Or the seven days may be viewed as the complete manifestation of the personal perfection of Jesus in all His moral glory and beauty as the Holy One of God brought out in life and in death. There could be but one answer to that — resurrection. Man in the Person of Jesus is now for ever apart from sin, and beyond death, for God’s eternal satisfaction and delight, and the blessing of God for men is according to what He is. Everything for God is thus placed on the footing of what Christ is, and nothing depends on what man is according to the flesh.
But though God has reached this absolutely in all its completeness and value so that nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it, it is a very deep and serious lesson for man to learn. Hence the thirty-three or sixty-six days come in — a prolonged [p. 136] exercise on the human side. It is for us, of course, not measured by days or weeks but by soul exercise. The prolonged period is spoken of here as “the days of her cleansing”; it is thus morally contrasted with the days of uncleanness.
We learn the uncleanness of the flesh by its entire lack of appreciation of Christ, by its utter refusal of Him. I find that my flesh does not want Christ; it prefers every vanity of this world to Christ; and if brought face to face with Him so as to be tested fully it hates Him. This is a very searching and humbling lesson. Then we learn that in His death unclean flesh was cut off in holy judgment; He bore its just condemnation. Thus in the light of Christ and of His death one learns to judge oneself. We see that what we are by nature and according to flesh is morally corrupt; it is to be judged, refused, and hated, not gratified. The soul in this exercise is learning to be morally separate from what is of the flesh; it is going through the days of cleansing.
The latter part of Romans 7 shows a process of self-discovery under law, but self-discovery in presence of Christ is an even deeper lesson; it is an intensified exercise. But it is accompanied by a precious and subduing sense of grace, for the One in whose presence all my uncleanness is exposed is my Saviour; He has died for me, and in Him God’s thoughts of infinite grace toward me are set forth. If I am all wrong, He is all that is precious and acceptable to God, and all that He is, is for me.
There is a difference between being crucified with Christ and being circumcised in Him. Being crucified with Him refers to the place which we take up in the world — a place of reproach and contempt. But [p. 137] circumcision is what the world cannot take account of at all; it is the death of Christ as known in the heart and spirit of the believer, and taken account of by God. The believer who has come to it has no confidence in the flesh; he is morally clear of it in his spirit with God.
If souls are not in the light of Christ, and of what has been effected in His death, their exercises in relation to self-discovery will be prolonged and intensely painful. This is intimated, perhaps, in the much longer period of cleansing for a female child. There is something wrought of God subjectively — the female would typify this — but Christ is not clearly and fully in the soul’s view. This probably sets forth typically the exercises of the remnant of Israel when God begins to work in them. They will fear God and love His law, and follow after righteousness, without having — at any rate in the early stages of their exercise — any clear light as to Christ, or as to what is connected with the eighth day. Their deep and prolonged exercise appears in many of the Psalms and in the Prophets — a sense of sin and an earnest looking to God for His salvation, but no clear light, as yet, with regard to Christ. The latter-day exercises of the remnant will be bitter and prolonged, but they will learn thereby that “all flesh is grass”. They will be humbled by the consideration of their individual and national history — the law broken, the promises despised, the idolatry, the rejection of their Messiah, the refusal of Him who spoke from heaven. But the moment will come when they will see that all this, which is the evidence of their state in flesh, has been dealt with and judged in the death of their Messiah. He has made it all His own in wondrous grace that they [p. 138] might be relieved of it, and be able to bless themselves in Him (Psalm 72: 17). When their exercises have reached a suitable point the light of Christ and of His death will break in upon their souls through the prophetic word, and they will learn to take their place with God on the ground of what He is, and of His death. The days of their cleansing will then be fulfilled. They will learn to part company with all that they are in their natural uncleanness, and to be with God on the ground of the Lamb of the burnt-offering, and the Turtle-dove of the sin-offering.
Something analogous to this is often found in souls today. They have exercises which are the fruit of mercy and of divine working in them. They have desires God-ward, and they learn painfully their uncleanness bit by bit, first at one point and then at another, and go on for years without getting clear. Such prolonged exercises are very common under defective teaching, and where souls have not the ministry of Christ, or, at any rate, not what might be called an “eighth day” ministry. They are not cleansed from their uncleanness, though learning it, and learning to abhor themselves. They are not in liberty with God, and are not really in the truth and blessing of Christ.
It is important to see that “the fulness of the time” has come (Galatians 4: 4). It is really the time of the Male Child and the “eighth day”. Simeon received the holy Child into his arms and blessed God (Luke 2: 28). He realized the exercise the Child’s mother would have to go through, and how the Child would be “for a sign spoken against”, and that “even a sword shall go through thine own soul; so that the thoughts may be revealed from many hearts”. All this was connected with the laying bare of man’s uncleanness. But to Simeon He was God’s salvation, “prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel”. Everything was there in Him for God’s pleasure and man’s blessing. We have individually to learn this. None of us can touch holy things or come into the sanctuary until we have learned it.
The fulfilment of the period of cleansing is marked by bringing “a yearling lamb for a burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin-offering”. The soul takes its place consciously with God apart from the uncleanness of the flesh, on the ground of Christ, and of His death in burnt-offering and sin-offering character. It is worth while to go through much exercise to reach that — to see in any measure the marvellous triumph that has been effected by God’s salvation through grace. We have to learn the necessity for severance from all that we were morally as of natural generation, but God’s salvation has transferred us from the uncleanness of nature to the perfection and blessedness of Christ, and has given us capacity, by the renewing of the Holy Spirit, to touch holy things and to enter the sanctuary. We can be with God in holy freedom, apart from the uncleanness of nature. Is it not a “great salvation”? Let us take heed that we do not neglect it, for the people of God may neglect the great salvation as well as the openly ungodly.
If we truly take up the exercise of Leviticus 12 we shall be preserved from leprosy as seen in chapters 13, 14. A man judging himself in the light of Christ would never become a leper. Leprosy is constitutional, and comes of what is unclean; but if the unclean [p. 140] source is judged, and that judgment is spiritually maintained, there will be no leprosy. If the lesson of chapter 12 is not learned with God there may be an outbreak of the will of the flesh which exposes what the fallen nature really is, and it may for a time become characteristic of one of the people of God.
The answer to every exercise is Christ. Israel will find it to be so, and we have to learn it also. The more distinctly our souls are in the light of Christ the more easily and quickly we learn our lessons. Anything brought forth which is true increase in the Israel of God will be accompanied by such exercises as are indicated here.