Read Time: 7 minutes2 Kings 5
Naaman is a great man — captain of the Syrian host, honorable, mighty — but he was a leper. The “but” undoes everything; under the medals and the victories is an unclean disease no rank can cure. Even his name mocks him: Naaman is pleasantness, beauty — and the flesh he carries gives his name the lie. The greatest man in Syria carries the one thing his greatness cannot touch — and the cure comes to him through the smallest voice in his house, a captive Israelite girl who tells of a prophet in Samaria. Grace travels from a slave-child to a general.
His healing is a lesson in humbling before it is a lesson in cleansing. Elisha will not even come out, but sends word: Go and wash in Jordan seven times. Naaman rages — he expected a ceremony, a wave of the hand, the clean rivers of Damascus, not this muddy little Jordan and this insulting simplicity. The proud man almost forfeits his cure because it is too plain — but his servants reason with him: if the prophet had asked some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather Wash, and be clean. He goes down, dips seven times, and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
The washing is a gospel in figure, for leprosy is the very emblem of sin in the flesh: hereditary, carried in the blood from birth, a living death in the members (1 Tim 5:6) that the prettiest newborn already bears unseen until it surfaces in the signs of Leviticus 13. The unclean is made clean not by works of greatness but by humble obedience to the simple word — the Gentile leper, cleansed by going down seven times into Jordan and coming up with the flesh of a child, is the very pattern of baptism, the going-down and coming-up that washes the defiled nature. And Naaman’s confession is the firstfruits of the nations: Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel — the cleansing Jesus himself would name (Luke 4:27) as the sign that grace overleaps unbelieving Israel to a Gentile, the general confessing the God of the little captive maid.
Then the dark shadow: Gehazi, the prophet’s own servant, runs after Naaman for the silver and raiment Elisha refused, and lies to get them. What free grace gave to the Gentile, greed tries to sell — and Naaman’s leprosy, washed away in Jordan, settles on Gehazi and his seed for ever. The Gentile goes home clean; the servant who turned grace into gain goes out white as snow with the disease the Gentile lost. The leprous general is cleansed by going down seven times into Jordan and confesses the God of Israel; the servant who would sell the grace inherits the leper’s disease.
Lamentations 1
The book of tears opens — its very name in the Hebrew is Eykah, “Alas! How!”, the wailing cry of grief — over the emptied city, and the first word is a sob: How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! Jerusalem, once a queen among the nations, sits alone as a widow weeping in the night — she weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her. The figure outlived the prophet: when Rome finished the work six centuries later, Vespasian struck a coin showing Judaea as a woman sitting alone beneath a palm tree — the conqueror reaching, without knowing it, for Jeremiah’s own image. The allies she courted have become her enemies; the worshippers are gone from her feasts; the roads to Zion mourn because no one comes to the appointed gatherings.
The lament does not blame Yahweh; it confesses the cause. Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment. The desolate city owns that her ruin is the harvest of her own sin, not the failure of her God — the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions. This is the right voice of grief: not bitterness against God, but honest confession that turns the mourning toward repentance rather than rebellion.
And out of the rubble rises a cry that has echoed down the centuries: Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. The suffering city calls to every passer-by to look at her grief — and the words have long been heard on the lips of a greater Sufferer, the Man of sorrows acquainted with grief, who bore outside the same city a sorrow none passing by would see. The lament of Zion becomes, in the canon’s long reading, the lament of the one who wept over her and was wounded for the transgressions she confesses.
The chapter ends still in the depths, with no resolution yet — for these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water — and a plea that the enemies’ day of reckoning come as hers has. Lamentations does not rush to comfort; it sits in the ashes and weeps honestly before God — its first four laments marshalled acrostic, letter by letter through the alphabet, until the last breaks the pattern as the measured grief finally overflows its mould. And the spirit of it will be Israel’s own again in the day of Jacob’s trouble, when the nation, brought to the dust by the last great move against her, weeps as the widowed city wept and turns at length to the One she pierced. There is a place for grief that does not pretend, that confesses the sin, looks for no false consolation, and waits — and the book gives that grief its full, unhurried voice. The widowed city weeps alone, confesses that Yahweh is righteous, and cries to every passer-by: is it nothing to you?
1 Corinthians 14
Paul applies the love of chapter 13 to the disordered assembly, and the rule that follows from love is edification. Follow after love, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy — for the tongue-speaker, however gifted, builds only himself, while the prophet builds the whole gathering. Prophecy speaks to edification, and exhortation, and comfort (v.3) — to build a dwelling, to call one alongside for help, to speak near and tender as a parent to a child. The measure of a gift in the assembly is not how impressive it is but how much it builds others up — let all things be done unto edifying. Love, not display, decides what is welcome.
So he ranks plain understanding above showy ecstasy. I had rather speak five words with my understanding… than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. A trumpet that gives an uncertain sound prepares no one for battle; words easy to be understood are better than a flood of unintelligible ones, for ye shall speak into the air. The gift that cannot be understood cannot edify, and edification is the whole point — even the unbeliever who wanders in should be reached, convinced, his heart laid bare, so that he falls down and reports that God is in you of a truth.
The governing principle is given in one line that reaches far past tongues: God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the ecclesias of the saints. The character of God himself is order and peace, and the assembly is to mirror it — gifts exercised by course, one at a time, weighed and not chaotic, for ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. The Spirit who gives the gifts is not a Spirit of disorder, and a meeting in confusion misrepresents the God it gathers to worship.
So the chapter closes on the rule that has guided the ecclesia ever since: Let all things be done decently and in order. The headship and order Paul named earlier work themselves out here in the conduct of the gathering — each in place, each gift weighed by whether it builds, the whole meeting marked by the peace of God rather than the noise of self-display. Decency and order are not the enemies of the Spirit but the very shape of his work, because the God of the assembly is the God of peace. Follow love and seek to build others, for God is not the author of confusion but of peace — let all be done decently and in order.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day — and the month — close on cleansing, honest grief, and the ordered, loving body. Naaman the Gentile leper goes down seven times into Jordan and comes up clean, confessing the God of Israel; the widowed city sits in the ashes and weeps, confessing that Yahweh is righteous; and Paul calls the assembly to follow love and do all things for edification, in the order and peace of God. A Gentile cleansed of the leprosy that figures sin in the flesh, a city grieving honestly over its sin, and a body ordered by love — these gather up the month’s long themes: grace to the nations, the harvest of disobedience, and the building of the one body of Christ.
And the readings turn, each in its way, on humility before God. Naaman must swallow his pride and go down into the muddy Jordan before the simple word can cleanse the disease bred in his flesh; Jerusalem must own that her ruin is her own rebellion, not God’s failure, before her grief can turn toward hope; the Corinthians must lay down the display of their gifts and seek only to build others up. The proud general almost forfeits his cure; the servant who sold the grace inherits the disease; the showy tongue-speaker edifies no one. In every case the way up is down — the humble obedience that washes, the honest confession that grieves rightly, the love that builds rather than displays.
So the month ends asking for the cleansed flesh of a child, the honest tear, and the ordered love of the body. Go down where the word sends you, however plain and humbling it seems, for wash, and be clean is still the gospel’s simple command, and the flesh comes back like a little child’s to those who obey it. When grief comes, grieve honestly before God — confess that he is righteous, look for no false comfort, and let the lament turn you toward him rather than against him. And in the body of Christ, follow love and do all to edifying, for the God you gather to is not the author of confusion but of peace. Go down and be washed like a child, grieve honestly and own that he is righteous, and let love order the body — for the God of the assembly is the God of peace.