What Kind of Love is This?

Every year it happens. I'm reading through the Bible and I get to Leviticus and find two chapters talking about leprosy. I have to admit it's hard to read about this skin disease. The word pictures of an infection that appears deeper than the skin is a hard one to look at. And so, this is where a lot of people who thought they would read through the Bible decide that maybe there is a better use of their time.

Why is so much space given to how to deal with this dread disease? I believe it is because when we look closer we realize that this disease that begins by attacking the joints and bones before it is ever seen in the skin is a picture of sin. Just like leprosy, sin has a deforming effect on man who was made in the image of God.

In time leprosy takes away the ability to feel pain. You might think this is a good thing, but without being able to feel pain someone with leprosy can't feel when what they are holding is burning their hand. Sin has the same effect: it silences the conscious. Because leprosy is so contagious it eventually brings isolation. Sin is also contagious; spreading like an untreated infection it destroys it's victim and eventually isolates them from friends and families.

In Biblical times there was no cure for leprosy unless God intervened. This year while reading Leviticus I began to weep. I saw Jesus more clearly than I'd ever seen Him before. I saw that He who knew no sin had become sin so that I might become the righteousness of God in Him. I think for the first time I understood the words of Isaiah a little more clearly.

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; He was despised and we didn't value Him. Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced because of our transgression, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds. We all went astray like sheep; we have all turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished Him for the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53).

What kind of love is this that would cause the perfect, holy Son of God to leave His place in heaven and come to earth to touch a leprous sinner?! How could the Father bear to give His only son to bear the shame and bring the cure for those deformed by sin?! Why! would He lavished His love on us and wash us with the blood of His own son so that we could become His children?! What kind of love is this?