6.23.26 – Did Yeshua Ever Become Unclean? Part 1

 Continuing our thoughts on the death of Yeshua and the idea of purity flowing out of Him, this week's study comes from a question. The individual who asked understands what I was saying about Yeshua and holiness flowing out—there is always a "but." But how can we say that Yeshua was never made impure? How is this possible?

You could argue that He was a flesh-and-blood human being living under the Torah. He touched the dead. He stood next to people who were unclean. He spent His days surrounded by exactly the conditions that Leviticus says transmit impurity everywhere. So, if we take His humanity seriously—and we should—then He contracted impurity the way any of us would. And if He did, surely He went to the temple and, through the Torah's instruction, would have undergone the purification process necessary to walk into holy space. It is a good question, right?

And guess what? We are not going to get an answer to it today—not a final one. This is the beginning of another series on impurity. Who is excited?

We are going to wrestle through some considerations today, but the answer truly will only be found when our Messiah comes and explains it all. That great escape clause: when you do not know the answer to a question, you simply defer it to Messiah.

But before you decide that not having an answer makes the whole thing pointless, I am going to tell you exactly why ending without a verdict on this is okay. This is a very Jewish way to study: ask a real question, enter through the text, chase it to find the answer, and come out on the other side. Sometimes we have the issue tied up; a lot of times we do not. Because the goal is not to win an argument. The goal is to read the Gospel with a curiosity you may not have previously brought to your reading, and to come away seeing how much is actually going on beneath the surface. By the end of this week, I want you to walk away not necessarily with an answer, but with a better question—and the fun of having done a deep dive without requiring total closure.

We already know the machinery from our work on the forces of death and impurity: impurity is bound up with death, corpses, disease, and the loss of lifeblood. Impurity moves—it travels from the unclean to the clean by contact. That is the nature of impurity: you touch the source, and you carry it away with you.

Now think of some of the places Yeshua actually spent His time. He takes the hand of a dead girl. He touches the funeral bier. He stands at the mouth of the tomb where Lazarus has been for four days—long enough that his sister Martha mentions the smell. This is definitely a corpse. There is a woman who has bled for twelve years, and she pushes through the packed crowd and touches His garment. By law, everyone she interacted with and touched became impure. So at the moment she touches Him, He should become unclean. A man with biblical leprosy—by law, he should have been outside the camp somewhere, calling out "unclean" as he knelt in front of the leper. Yet Yeshua reaches out His hand and touches him.

So by the plain mechanics of the law, every one of those encounters should leave Yeshua impure. But here is what we have already said, and it does not happen that way. Actually, the dead girl wakes up. The man on the funeral bier sits up and speaks. Lazarus walks out of the tomb. The woman is healed in an instant, and Mark tells us Yeshua felt the power go out from Him. The man's leprosy leaves him—he is clean. In every one of those cases, impurity should flow from the source out, the way it always does—from the dead and the diseased to the living and the well. But in every case, it goes the other way: life, healing, and cleansing pouring out of Yeshua. So we have this opposite flow.

But regardless, the question remains: Did Yeshua become impure? The easy answer—and what has been said for a whole lot of years, and I think the answer in the minds of most people—is: "He did not care about all that stuff. Give me a break. Haven't you read the Gospel? He came to get rid of all that. And by the way, He is the Son of God—why would you even ask that question?"

We are going to move past that dismissal for a ton of reasons that you can work out on your own, given what we know about Yeshua, the temple, Judaism, and Torah. But in a way, we will actually come back around to it at the very end.

So let us consider some unique things about impurity in Jewish thought. We did not actually cover this in detail during the past twelve weeks, but there are examples of some holy things that cannot become impure—holy things that impurity cannot overcome. You bring impurity near, and nothing transfers. So for now, I want to show you two of them, and then we will look at Yeshua again through this lens.

When we get done, our goal is to magnify our Savior greater than ever before!

What are your thoughts?

Shalom!!
Alan