Life, Leaks, and the Lordship of Christ Text: Leviticus 15:16-18
Introduction: The God Who Cares About Everything
We live in a Gnostic age. Our culture, and sadly, much of the modern church, wants to pretend that God is only interested in the "spiritual" parts of our lives. They imagine a God who cares about your prayer time, your quiet time, your soul, but who is utterly indifferent to your body, your bedroom, your business, and your budgets. This is a neat and tidy religion, and it is also a damnable heresy. It creates a false sacred/secular divide that the Bible knows nothing about.
The God of Scripture is the God who made heaven and earth. He made atoms and archangels. He made galaxies and guts. And because He made it all, He claims it all. Every square inch, every molecule, every moment is His. And this is precisely what a book like Leviticus teaches us. To the modern reader, many of these laws seem strange, arbitrary, or even embarrassing. Laws about skin diseases, mildew in the house, and, as we have in our text this morning, bodily discharges. The temptation is to skip these chapters, to regard them as part of the Old Testament's dusty attic, filled with strange relics that have no bearing on our sophisticated, New Covenant faith.
But to do this is to miss the point entirely. These laws were given to a redeemed people living in the camp of a holy God. God was dwelling in their midst, and His presence demanded a total holiness, a comprehensive purity that extended to every area of life. These ceremonial laws were not the way of salvation; they were the way of walking with the God who had already saved them. They were constant, tangible, physical reminders that sin and death affect everything. They were designed to teach Israel that the line between clean and unclean, holy and profane, life and death, runs through every aspect of human existence.
And most importantly, they were designed to make them long for a Savior. They were tutors, picture books, and object lessons pointing to the one who would come and provide a true, deep, and final cleansing. If we read Leviticus with eyes of faith, we will not see a bizarre list of rules; we will see Jesus Christ on every page.
The Text
‘Now if a man has a seminal emission, he shall bathe all his body in water and be unclean until evening. As for any garment or any leather on which there is seminal emission, it shall be washed with water and be unclean until evening. If there is a woman with whom a man lies so that there is a seminal emission, they shall both bathe in water and be unclean until evening.’
(Leviticus 15:16-18 LSB)
The Principle of Purity (v. 16-17)
We begin with the specific case of a man's seminal emission.
"‘Now if a man has a seminal emission, he shall bathe all his body in water and be unclean until evening. As for any garment or any leather on which there is seminal emission, it shall be washed with water and be unclean until evening.’" (Leviticus 15:16-17)
The first thing we must establish is that this is not a moral condemnation. The emission itself is not sinful. God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and this biological function is the means by which He ordained the fulfillment of that command. So what is the issue? The issue is not sin, but ceremonial uncleanness. The law here is making a theological point using human biology.
In the Levitical system, anything that came out of the body rendered a person temporarily unclean. Blood, pus, saliva, and here, semen. Why? Because in a world broken by sin, our bodies are subject to death and decay. These emissions are reminders that we are not as we were meant to be. They are symbols of a "leakiness" that has resulted from the fall. Life is flowing out of us. We are mortal. We are dying creatures. This particular fluid is directly connected to the source of life, the power of procreation. For it to be "spilled" or emitted was a potent symbol of life lost, or life not properly contained and channeled according to its created purpose within the covenant of marriage.
This law was a constant reminder to every Israelite man that even his most natural, God-given functions were touched by the curse of the fall. He was a leaky vessel. He could not contain his own life. This created a profound sense of need. He could not make himself clean. He had to follow God's prescribed remedy: bathing in water. And even then, the cleansing was not immediate. He remained unclean "until evening." This points to a cleansing that comes from outside of himself, and a purity that is declared by God's timing, not his own.
Notice also that the uncleanness was contagious. It was transferred to his garments and his leather goods. This is a fundamental principle of the ceremonial law: uncleanness is contagious, but holiness is not. If you touch a dead body, you become unclean. But if you touch a holy object, you do not automatically become holy. This teaches us a profound truth about our spiritual condition. Corruption spreads easily. Sin is like a virus. Holiness, on the other hand, must be imparted. It must be granted. It must be received as a gift from the Holy One Himself.
Covenantal Consequences (v. 18)
The principle is then extended to the marriage bed.
"‘If there is a woman with whom a man lies so that there is a seminal emission, they shall both bathe in water and be unclean until evening.’" (Leviticus 15:18 LSB)
Here again, we must be absolutely clear. This is not a condemnation of marital intimacy. The marriage bed is honorable and undefiled (Hebrews 13:4). This act is the beautiful, God-ordained consummation of the one-flesh union. So why does it result in ceremonial uncleanness? For the very same reason. It is a powerful, symbolic reminder that even in our most intimate, God-blessed relationships, we are still fallen creatures. Sin has touched everything.
Even in the act of procreation, the act that brings forth new life, there is a shadow of death. Every child conceived is conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5) and born into a fallen world. The very act that continues the human race also continues the line of Adam's fallen race. So, in His wisdom, God attached a temporary, ceremonial uncleanness to it. This was not to shame the husband and wife, but to teach them. It was to remind them that their ultimate hope was not in the children they could produce, but in the Child who would be produced for them, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head.
Both the man and the woman are unclean. Both must bathe. Both must wait. This puts them on equal footing before God. They are covenant partners, and they are partners in this ritual of cleansing. This taught them that their union, while a great blessing, was not ultimate. Their ultimate hope and their ultimate purity were found in God alone. It drove them outside of themselves and their marriage to seek cleansing from the Lord of the covenant.
From Leaky Vessels to Living Fountains
So what does any of this have to do with us? We are not under the ceremonial law. We do not become unclean until evening. Christ has come. As the Westminster Confession says, these ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the new testament. But that does not mean they have nothing to teach us. They are fulfilled in Christ, which means their meaning is carried up, intensified, and perfected in Him.
First, these laws teach us the pervasiveness of the fall. We are the leaky vessels. In our natural state, we are unclean, and everything we do is tainted by that uncleanness. "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery..." (Mark 7:21). Our problem is not a few external smudges; our problem is a corrupt fountain at the very core of our being.
Second, they show us the inadequacy of our own efforts to cleanse ourselves. An Israelite could wash with water, but he was still unclean until evening. The water did not make him clean; it was his obedience to God's command that led to God declaring him clean. The water was a symbol. In the same way, our efforts at self-improvement, our resolutions, our good works, cannot wash away the deep stain of our sin. We need an external, divine intervention.
And that is precisely what we have in Jesus Christ. He is the one who came to a world contaminated by sin, and instead of being made unclean by it, He made it clean. He touched lepers, and they became clean. He touched a dead girl, and she became alive. In Christ, the principle is reversed: His holiness is contagious. His life swallows up death.
The temporary bathing in the Old Covenant pointed forward to the once-for-all washing of regeneration. "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). This is not a temporary cleansing that lasts until evening. It is a permanent, definitive cleansing that makes us fit to enter the presence of the holy God forever.
The emissions that symbolized life leaking out of us are answered by the promise of Christ, who gives us life overflowing. He said, "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:38). In Adam, we are leaky vessels, unable to contain life. In Christ, we become fountains of life, overflowing with the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, we should read a passage like this not with embarrassment, but with gratitude. We should see in it the profound wisdom of God, who used the very stuff of our daily, bodily existence to teach His people deep spiritual truths. And we should rejoice that we live on this side of the cross, where the shadows have fled away. The rituals are gone because the reality has come. We are no longer unclean until evening. In Christ, we are declared clean forever. We are no longer defined by the life that leaks out, but by the eternal life that has been poured in.