that you may distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean,
Leviticus 10:10

The Old Testament law was very particular about human contact with what is unclean. Many things were declared unclean. We’ll not go into those details just now. What is in the scope of our consideration is the fact that a person that was ceremonially clean became unclean by merely touching what is unclean. The rule was quite simple. What was unclean defiled what was clean. The converse was not true, however. What was clean did not purify what was unclean.

My go-to example is simple. Throw a small cup of pure water into a mud puddle what happens? The pure water cannot clean up the mud puddle. Rather, the mud puddle swallows up the clean water making it part of the mud.

According to God’s Law the same is true spiritually. Christians are easily corrupted by contact with the world, but the world is not made holy by contact with Christian.

There is one exception. Jesus. He touched people who were “unclean” and His touch healed then and made them pure and undefiled. Why? Because Jesus is so incredibly Holy that He reverses the natural order.

There was a popular Christian song a few years that caught this truth with a wonderfully simple lyric:

He touched me, Oh He touched me, And oh the joy that floods my soul!
Something happened and now I know, He touched me and made me whole.