by Angus Harley

So, you’re walking along the street and you see a giant gob on the ground. Yuuuuk!! I’m not a big fan of a tobacco chewer spitting into an empty water bottle on a plane. Occasionally in soccer, a very sore loser will show his contempt for another player by spitting in his face. Chaos ensues on-field; the fans go crazy. All kinds of bacteria are in our spit, say the medical experts. Spitting is real nasty! 

Yet, Jesus, our amazing Lord and Savior, repeatedly used his own spit to heal (Mark 7:33; 8:23; John 9:6)! As some say, ‘What the?’ Why? Why not just touch with the hand, or speak a word? Why use one’s own spit? Isn’t this uncalled for, over the top, and pointless, not to mention gross and filthy? 

However, his use of spit is itself a true wonder, a thing to glory in! And not simply because it was one means to the end of healing. The secret lies in the spit itself.  The article will explain why this use of spit was a real wonder, which magnifies the cross and the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Missing the wonder

Mark 8:22ff. says:

22 And they came to Bethsaida. And they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him. 23 Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around.” 25 Then again He laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly. 26 And He sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

I could have gone with looking at Mark 7, but we’ll focus on Mark 8. It’s a pity that many comments on Mark 8:22-28 ignore the spitting element, choosing to focus on the two stages of the man being healed. Another group reach into Rabbinic and Roman sources and cite instances where people were healed through spit. Spittle was healing, in other words. Others say Jesus did not conform to the normal perceptions of the kingdom of God, so he used spit; for as the Messiah, the kingdom of God would break the mold of the old views of God’s kingdom. Another view is that Jesus could do as he pleased for he was God, so he used spit.

The above views might have elements of truth to them, but they are difficult to reconcile with Mark and the other spit verses. There is no need to reach back into Rabbinic Judaism and Roman sources to explain Mark 8:22ff.. We will see shortly that this passage relies on the OT as a background very heavily. Good points are that Jesus was God, and that the Messianic kingdom of God did not conform to the Jewish way of thinking (which is, in itself, a reminder not to rely on Rabbinic sources!). To default to Jesus’ divinity, however, misses the point of his use of spit; for as the Messiah, he was using spit to identify with sinners. Sadly, those who ignore, minimize, or explain away, the spit element are bypassing the wondrous significance of Jesus’ use of spit.

So, what’s it all about, then? Why spit? Sometimes to appreciate something, we need to get into nitty gritty details that are not so pleasant. To appreciate the wonder of Jesus’ using spit, we need to paint a dark and grim biblical portrait of spitting.

Unsandaled!

The first place we need to go to is the Mosaic Law. In Leviticus 15:8, it does not expressly forbid spitting on someone, although it does say that a man with an unclean discharge who spits on someone clean renders that person unclean. It is probably the case that, because spittle is a bodily fluid coming from the unclean person, if it touches anyone it renders that person unclean, too.

Deuteronomy 25:9 is especially of interest because it is again from the Law and gives a clear instance of someone spitting in another’s face:

5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. 6 The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel 7 However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled. (Deut.25:5-9)

There is nothing healing, conciliatory, or positive about spitting, here. The rebellious brother-in-law is marked as “Unsandaled”, spat upon, which is the equivalent to a form of being cursed. Note, too, that his line is Unsandaled or cursed. 

The same ‘mark of the cursed’ theology is in Job:

“ “But He has made me a byword of the people,
And I am one at whom men spit” ” (Job 17:6);

“ “They abhor me and stand aloof from me,
And they do not refrain from spitting at my face”” (Job 30:10).

Infamously, our Lord was subjected to the accursed nature of spitting (Matt.26:67; 27:30; Luke 18:2):

” “I gave My back to those who strike Me, And My cheeks to those who pluck out the beard; I did not cover My face from humiliation and spitting”” (Isa.50:6); 

“They will mock Him and spit on Him, and scourge Him and kill Him, and three days later He will rise again”” (Mark 10:34); 

“”Some began to spit at Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him with their fists, and to say to Him, “Prophesy!” And the officers received Him with slaps in the face”” (Mark 14:65);

” “They kept beating His head with a reed, and spitting on Him, and kneeling and bowing before Him”” (Mark 15:19).

The regime of the Mosaic Law,  life in Job’s day, Romans at the time of Christ- all shared the perspective that spitting on someone was expressive of disgust, uncleanness, disdain, and even of cursing.

So that we have no doubt as to the nastiness of being spat on, listen to what Yahweh himself says of it:

“But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp, and afterward she may be received again” ” (Num.12:14).

Yahweh is referring to Miriam’s horrible behavior toward Moses, and Yahweh’s discipline of her. Her evil behavior merited she be kicked out of the camp of Israel for seven days. This is the kind of treatment afforded lepers and other ‘unclean’ Jews. She was, for a brief moment in her life, effectively Unsandaled and spat on, rendered ‘unclean’ and unworthy to be part of Israel. 

What’s the lesson we learn here? Spiitting on someone is ‘no beuno’, for it marks out the one spat upon as unclean, or accursed and ‘Unsandaled’ (see Rev.3:16). 

The curse of the cross!

It is impossible to run from this evidence, or to cover it up, when it comes to Jesus. Every time Jesus used spit to heal someone, he deliberately rendered that person unclean by the standards of Moses’ Law. Moreover, the fact that Jesus was going out of his way to spit on someone’s face, and touched his own spittle, made him complicit in this act of making someone unclean by the standard of Moses’ Law. Even more importantly, he was effectively rendering himself as ‘unclean’. 

Now, let’s take this fact and program it into our assessment. Is it not then true that healing came through a state of uncleanness? The exact opposite process of the Mosaic Law, we should note. Jesus embraced the ‘nasty’ factor to bring healing. 

Does this remind the reader of anything? What was the cross, after all, but the terminal point of Jesus’ obedience to the Father, and yet the very height of the state of accursedness according to the Mosaic Law. Read Paul:

“For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” (Gal.3:10);  

“13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us— 14 for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree -in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”” (Gal.3:13-14).

The curse of the Law is removed how? By Jesus going to the cross to be accursed according to the Law! Spiritual healing was therefore through the Accursed One. Paul says, again:

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor.5:21); 

“3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom.8:3-4)

Jesus was not sinful, nor could he sin. Yet, he identified not only ‘with’ sinners, but was identified ‘as’ a sinner. Again, not because he was so. As the hymn-writer famously states, “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.” He ‘became sin’ for us! John Owen, the great theologian from the past, wrote a book named, The Death of Death. What was its premise? It was that by dying on the cross, by bearing death for us, Jesus defeated death, killed it, as far as his own were concerned. There is, brothers and sisters, no more a potent feature of the nastiness of the power of sin, of the presence of spiritual ‘uncleanness’, than death itself (Gen.2:17; Rom.5:12; 1 Cor.15:56).

So, the wonderful truth is that, Jesus’ acts of using spit dramatized, on the fleshly and physical level, his spiritual work to come on the cross. He took his own spit, applied it physically, rendering himself unclean by the standards of the Mosaic Law, and simultaneously making the other person unclean by the same Law. Nonetheless, that unclean, ‘Unsandaled’-like, condition was used to bring physical healing. Just as Jesus used vile spit to bring healing, so he used vile death to bring spiritual healing and eternal life. Hallelujah, what a wondrous Savior!

‘But wait a minute, he was God, and couldn’t be ‘unclean’ ‘

Many will not accept the above interpretation on the basis that it  ignores that he was God and couldn’t be unclean. 

You will notice in all the above Pauline verses, although Jesus’ divinity is implied (he was without sin), it is not Paul’s go-to reason for explaining the cross. Indeed, Jesus’ sinlessness is necessarily stated to show that he was unique: an Accursed One who didn’t merit to be so because he was sinlness, nor could he sin. Yet, there is no doubting that he was accursed for us:

“45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” ” (Matt.27:45-46).

Jesus is being put outside the camp, as it were (Heb.13:11-13), and as such dies the death of an Unsandaled One, the Accursed One, the Unclean One- all for our sake! 

If Jesus were to have bypassed identification with uncleanness by playing ‘the Son of God card’, he would have, then, rendered his own service to the Father useless (see Matt.4:1-11). It would be tantamount to giving into the temptation of Satan to turn the stones into bread, or even to avoid the cross itself. 

The truth is that, every time Jesus touched a leper, or someone with body puss issuing from them, or used spit, he was acting as the Man for us, the Mediator between God and men, to identify as the Unclean One for  the unclean (see Rom.5:15; 1 Tim.2:5). Jesus entire ministry, from the first moment, its inception,  was cruciform in nature. Every word, every thing he did, anticipated the victory and life of the cross. 

‘Hang on a sec, Jesus kept the Mosaic Law perfectly’

This is perhaps the most common argument against my view. Yet, Jesus did not come to keep Moses’ Law. He, instead, bore its curse on the cross, and throughout his life demonstrated the cruciform nature of his own obedience. 

Look at Mark 8 again. Jesus performs miracles. The start is about him feeding thousands. Then he deals with Pharisees who demanded signs from Jesus. They wanted Jesus to ‘prove’ his bona fides. They were entirely clueless as to the purpose of his miracles and signs, and they expected  him to conform to their religion. Jesus goes on to warn his disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. The disciples completely misinterpret his meaning and do not understand what he’s getting at. It is then that Jesus performs his miracle of healing the blind man with his spit. Yet, notice how he has to sternly express to the healed man not to go into his village to tell everyone that he was healed, but to go straight home. Why would Jesus do this? Again, because even those whom he healed didn’t really understand why he healed them. Now we come to the whole point of his healing, of the miracle of the bread and fish, and the other miracle of curing the man of his blindness. For in vv27-33, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah, but, more to the point, he maintains that the entire reason for his ministry is to go to the cross. Peter, influenced by Satan, rebukes Jesus for his ‘foolishness’. Only for Jesus to severely chastise Peter for being controlled at that point by Satan. It was always about the cross: the bread and fish, his teaching, and the healing of the blind man. There’s no life without feeding on the One who will die for us; there is no spiritual healing, or spiritual sight, except through the crucified Christ; and the only true teaching is that which leads to the cross. Moses had his day, the Law its time; but now it was the time of the Christ and his crucicentric teaching and Gospel. And to seal this cruciform life and obedience of Jesus- a life and obedience that led to the cross- he concludes by challenging his own disciples as to the true nature of discipleship: it is denying oneself and taking up one’s cross. The disciple, in other words, must follow his Master. The Master’s way was that of the cross- even before the actual cross- the disciple of the Master follows the same route, walking in his Master’s footsteps, as much as a disciple of the Christ can. It was, in other words, brother and sister, never about Moses’ Law, but always about the cross!

By the way, it is probably the case that the reason for Jesus healing the blind man in stages is, as some have noted, to illustrate the changing perspectives of the Christ. For prior to the cross, Jesus’ disciples and those whom he healed only opaquely ‘got’ him, barely understanding him as the Christ. It was not until after his death and resurrection, and upon the blessing of the gift of the Spirit to the assembly, that his disciples properly ‘saw’ who he was, and who  and what real disciples of the Christ were; only after Pentecost did they truly appreciate the cruciform nature of his entire and whole life (not just the cross) as the source of their spiritual sight, and the spring of his disciples’ cruciform obedience.

Jesus therefore constantly, and sometimes flagrantly, violated Moses’ teaching and rules. Why? Because he was illustrating his cross and the victory of salvation by absorbing the curse. He identifies not with the Law, but with its curse. That is the reason he was “born under the Law” (Gal.4:4; 3:13).

The wonder of Jesus’ use of spit is that he dramatizes the cross to come, for the Clean One becomes ‘as’ the Unclean One for our sake, identifying with our curse to bring eternal life to us. Oh wondrous spit!