• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Sermo Humilis

Humble Speech

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / The Life and Times of Jesus / Jesus, Makes Clean

Jesus, Makes Clean

February 16, 2020 By David Trounce 4 Comments

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

#36 Jesus, Makes Clean - The Life and Times of Jesus

All societies have categories for labelling clean from unclean. These are moral categories that determine whether you are in or out of that particular society. In our culture, getting drunk with your makes or picking up a random girl in a bar gets a round of applause in some circles.

Meanwhile, if you’re spotted putting your empty milk bottle into the wrong colour bin, you are out! You are chastised, mocked and considered an outcast.

The world has these categories because it was created by God who is righteous and holy. A God who makes distinctions between right and wrong, pure and impure, clean and unclean, truth and a lie, beauty and ugliness, and so on.

We honour God when we acknowledge and uphold His categories and his definitions. We dishonour Him when we substitute His categories for our own. As someone once said, the battle in our culture is over the dictionary.

The occasion in Mark 5:21 of the woman with a bleed and the death of a little girl in Mark 5:35, not only highlight the separation we experience on account of our uncleanness (a metaphor for sin) but also highlights the true way of reconciliation.

The arrival of Jesus into this world means that God has not left us in our uncleanness. He has made a way to atone for sin so that we can be reconciled. In the Gospel, our hands are washed and we welcomed back to the dinner table in His house.

The woman with the bleed and the dead girl both follow the same theme and are linked to the circumstance of the demoniac among the tombs in the previous event.

Like the demoniac, both these women represent an unclean, and therefore outcast and isolated society. Their circumstances also resemble Israel in that they are both unclean and both are associated with the number twelve. It seems no accident that Mark knew – and wanted us to know – that the bleed had been going on for 12 years and that the deceased girl was twelve years old. Twelve being shorthand for Israel and later the Apostles (cf. Ezekiel 16; Mark. 6:7).

Cleanliness under the Old Covenant was a way to define community. Like all communities ever,  the regulations let you know who was in and who was out.

Here in Mark, we meet two women who are excluded from that Covenant Community.


On the move?
This article can also be seen and heard on Youtube

An issue of blood made you unclean. It put you outside the community. Anything and anyone you touched become unclean.

This meant you could not participate in regular festivals and family gatherings. Death, which itself means separation was also a thing unclean. To touch a dead body made you unclean as well.

In this way, uncleanness had a knock-on effect and mirrors the nature of sin. Like a disease, it gets into everything and on account of it, people are separated from God.

But throughout the Old Testament, a way of atonement and a process of reconciliation was offered.

Because these categories are inescapable, we seek a substitute to atone for our uncleanness. We impose fines on one another as a way of punishing the “evil-doer” as defined by the standards of the culture in which we live.

For example, if you throw rubbish out of your car window you are punished or fined. By analogy, you become unclean. You are a marked man. You might even lose your license and so lose much of your freedom to enjoy the community.

Pay the fine and you are reconciled. You are free to move about in your community again.

Like the two women in these events, we are an unclean society and we are powerless to do anything about it. Our sin pollutes everything.

In order to be clean, we need a Mediator, a Priest. Someone who can lay His hand on both God and Man. And that is what Jesus does.

In the Gospel, He lays a hand on you, and you lay your hands on Him.

By coming in to contact with Jesus you are made clean. He becomes a scapegoat. He takes away your uncleanness, your filth, your shame.

He washes you and sprinkles your conscience with clean water.

This is the message of the Gospel that Jesus came to preach and practise in His healing of these two women. And the message is not, “clean up your act and join Me”, it’s”Join Me and you’ll be clean.”

Related...

Jesus, Warning
Jesus, A Friend in High Places
Jesus, The Battle for Mercy
Jesus, Look and Live

Filed Under: The Life and Times of Jesus Tagged With: Blood, Clean, Life

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. AvatarTara Brown says

    February 17, 2020 at 11:25 am

    Thank you. xx

    Reply
    • AvatarDavid Trounce says

      February 17, 2020 at 2:24 pm

      No worries, Tara.

      Reply
  2. AvatarDanuta says

    February 17, 2020 at 12:34 pm

    Thanks David.

    Reply
    • AvatarDavid Trounce says

      February 17, 2020 at 2:24 pm

      My pleasure!. Thanks, Danuta.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Sermo Humilis

For the love of all things true, beautiful and good.


Welcome to Sermo Humilis, a digital home for biblical discipleship and cultural Christianity. A few new thoughts every week.

Please remember to like, subscribe and share. It really helps me out.

Subscribe for Weekly Updates

As per our Privacy Policy, we will never hand your information to a third party.

please check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Categories

  • Life in Christendom
  • Just a Thought
  • Who we Are Instead

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Series

Sidebar - Jesus Through all of Life Series Sidebar Series - The Life and Times of Jesus Sidebar Series - Proverbs - Let the Lady Speak Sidebar - Marriage Preparation Series

The Most Popular Guff

Euthanasia – Thinking through our Response

  Euthanasia, like abortion, has long been forgotten as a

That the World May See

Hope is energising and is the result of a hopeful vision. Without

The Onlookers

The Gospels are full of accounts of Jesus teaching, healing and giving

Chained to the Things We Love

People have some odd ideas about hell. They picture little devils

7 Weeks before Marriage – Your Redemption

Any man who gives himself to his wife and thinks that he has done his

A Little Amalekite, Here and There

We spend a lot of time on the big sins. We worry over them, sometimes

Faith Flicks and Frog Skins

This time of year always brings a flurry of faith flicks on which to

See and Hear

On the move? Weekly content can also be seen and heard via Youtube.

Topics

Beauty Children Comfort Creation Death Earth Eternity Evangelism Faith Fear Fellowship Food Forgiveness Gospel Grace Grief Guilt Heaven Holiness Jesus Joy Judgement Kingdom Law Life Love Marriage Mercy Money Prayer Redemption Rest Resurrection Sabbath Sacrifice Salvation Service Sheep Sin Slavery Suffering Truth Victory Weakness Wisdom

Footer

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe to Sermo Humilis

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Copyright © 2021 · Sermo Humilis

John Piper - A Hallway of Mirrors