Leviticus 14:1-32 speaks of the necessary requirements and ceremonial laws surrounding the cleansing of a person with a skin disease. While much is made of the role of the priest in the process, the one to be cleansed is not without certain duties as well (verses 8-10: washing clothes, shaving, bathing, bringing the appropriate offerings). This seems to highlight the shared responsibility of the sanctification process. I say sanctification as opposed to salvation because, as verse 3 notes, the person who would be taking part in the cleansing process outlined, has already been healed while they have yet to be cleansed/pronounced clean differentiating between the two. Only God can heal us but we have the privilege of taking part (however small) in our cleansing, even if it’s just submitting to the process.
*I’m adding a quote here that was sent to me via text a week or so after I published this post. With all the cleansing going on throughout Leviticus, the issue was still on the forefront of my mind as I continued to work my way through the book and I felt like God was speaking to me through it:
“Because God gave, so we give. Because God cleanses, so we do, too. Because God loves, we do as well. It is duty and obedience, but it is also joyful imitation.” -Simply Convivial
“You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did…As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”
James 2:20-22, 26 NIV
Our actions or works are what animates and makes useful the body (signifying faith). It doesn’t make the body a body (if we have/had faith it is either currently active or not but the fact that it exists attests to the fact that at one point it was/came into being), it just “completes” the body in the sense that it utilizes it for the purpose for which it was created: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10 ESV