What Are We to Do With the Clean and the Unclean? PT 1

 

Intro

Fascinating studies come in all shapes and sizes, but this one has really been interesting and quite pretzel shaped. In the Churches of God we teach that the law of God still needs to be kept, but then we are accused of cherry picking which laws we keep or do not keep. The clean and unclean laws come up specifically, and I got to thinking about it. Why don't we keep those laws?  

All the physical actions and laws are there to teach us something about the spiritual realm and our walk with God. None of us keep the law perfectly and there are always new things to learn, so what's the harm in discovering that we should be keeping these things? 

At the very least, I want to know what they picture, why they were given, and what relevance they have in our lives today. They could certainly prove to be inconvenient to keep, but inconvenience is hardly an excuse to not do something God has told us to do. This study delves into the Holy Spirit necessarily because that, as it turns out, is a huge part of where these laws lead us. A while back I wrote something on the Holy Spirit, but for the life of me, I can't find it or remember the title, and this article is going to differ on some points from that one. So, if you are confused by some contradictory information, chalk it up to learning and growing more in the truth. 

We are supposed to be a Holy people to the Lord, or YHWH, if you prefer, and I think we can all agree that this is one of the main missions of our physical lives. As a priesthood and a temple all in one, this becomes a bit complicated as we will see, especially since our high priest is Jesus; quite complicated, at least where the law is concerned. One of the main issues at the heart of this discussion is the issue of clean and unclean animals. If they are merely a physical issue with merely physical restrictions, then we shouldn't have to deal with those restrictions as a spiritual people. There are plenty of unclean animals we can eat without instant death, and these are the ones most people run to when they want to eat things other than what God gave as food, but there are hundreds of animals that will cause death upon consumption. If the rules God made were arbitrary, they would not cause us death to eat, but they do. This is discussed further in the blog post titled: We've Got the Meats! 

The point of the physical ordinances, laws, and everything else included in God's system of worship is to teach us something, point to something heavenly, and something spiritual, and to ignore them is to miss out on the lessons they were given to teach, and the glimpse of heaven they were meant to convey.

Hebrews 8:5 NKJV — who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”

Hebrews 9:24 NKJV — For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;

Colossians 2:16-17 NKJV — So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.

If we don't want to miss the lessons, we should study these things, and if we truly want to learn them, there is no better way than to do them. We need to understand them before we start trying to do them, because how can we practice them if we do not understand their meaning and purpose?

That's where we will start, before we even look at a single command, we will start with their purpose and the reason they were given. Unsurprisingly, God tells us exactly what these things are supposed to teach us. 

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

Leviticus 11:47 NKJV — ‘to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, and between the animal that may be eaten and the animal that may not be eaten.’ ”

Leviticus 20:25-26 NKJV — ‘You shall therefore distinguish between clean animals and unclean, between unclean birds and clean, and you shall not make yourselves abominable by beast or by bird, or by any kind of living thing that creeps on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. ‘And you shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.

We are given these things to teach us about the Holy and Unholy, clean and unclean, and how to distinguish between them. My response is, “Duh! Obviously, but why do we need some physical things to teach us about these things? Aren't they obvious?” After some thought, I can readily see how they would be necessary even in this day and age, maybe especially in this day and age. Those who call themselves Christians seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between the Holy and Unholy and between the common and clean things in the world. 

While the rituals in the Old Testament pertained to the physical purity of those who followed God, the things they pictured were the spiritual cleansing of the conscience or heart. A real sort of purification, that as the author of Hebrews puts it, purifies the moral compass. Baptism is one of the most important decisions we will ever make as followers of God, and we can easily find it in the Old Testament. It represents the blood of Jesus and its cleansing power, just as the washings in the Old Testament were supposed to cleanse them from their uncleanness, whatever that might have been. If they sinned, they had to shed blood to cover it, but uncleanness was different than outright sin, and its purpose was different than sin. 

Clean Vs Unclean

They, and us, are supposed to be a holy people taken out of all the peoples and separated to God. A royal priesthood called by His name, which is significant, because according to the old priestly law, only Levites could become priests, and they could not also be kings. Jesus is a King and our high priest, the captain of our order, and He changed the priestly law to make this possible. We find this well documented in Hebrews as clearly as it can possibly be. Jesus took the place of all blood sacrifices, and stands as our captain at the right hand of the Father making constant intercession for us. The question of sacrifices is easily answered, but the question of washings is really only partially answered. 

1 Peter 2:9 NKJV — But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

We keep coming back to this concept of being a holy people to God, and for good reason. This is what God gave as the crux of the matter back in Leviticus when He briefly explained the purpose of the clean and unclean laws. Now, the food laws were a little different, but we'll get to that in a bit. God chose us out of all the people on Earth. Out of all the people He has called who have responded, He chose us. Not because we are special, but because it was His good pleasure to do so. Now that we have been chosen, we are a special people and a holy nation. 

Deuteronomy 14:1-2 NKJV — “You are the children of the LORD your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead. “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Just like the original Israelites, we have been set apart from all the other people in the world! Pretty amazing, right? 

Tying the clean and unclean concept together with us being set apart from all other people creates a bit of discomfort for us, however, because it leads to a place where, by necessity, and following the trail of logic, we must refer to those who are not set apart as unclean. If we are clean, they must be unclean. Something inside recoils against doing this, especially in the light of world events and the way we are conditioned by the world's Christianity to view other people. 

Everyone is special, everyone is good, and we must not say anything negative about anyone. God and the New Testament authors would not agree with this statement, however, and the chances are they would be somewhat taken aback by the fact that we would say those God has declared set apart as nothing special. General equality, in other words. 

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 NKJV — Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will dwell in them

And walk among them.

I will be their God,

And they shall be My people.” Therefore

“Come out from among them

And be separate, says the Lord.

Do not touch what is unclean,

And I will receive you.” “I will be a Father to you,

And you shall be My sons and daughters,

Says the LORD Almighty.”

1 Corinthians 6:15-20 NKJV — Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

James 4:4 NKJV — Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

How can God call someone unclean?!

Isn't that unfair and cruel?!

Well, hold on a moment before you run off half cocked. What makes someone unclean? What makes someone set apart? 

Earlier, we briefly mentioned a moral compass, and another way the Bible talks about this item is through the heart. Our heart, or our conscience, the bit of us that makes choices and directs our morality, is very messed up and damaged when we start out on life's road.  Our ability to find moral North is broken, and so we wander around with our own sense of morality until someone cleans us up and repairs our compass. Our corrupt moral compass has to be fixed by somebody, and it has to be cleaned up. 

Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV — “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

We all start our journey from this position of moral dirtiness, and with a broken compass. If we have good parents, they do a great job of doing the initial repairs that need to be made, but they can't do the one thing that needs to be done for it to work exactly the way it is supposed to. It is missing an essential piece, for one thing, and for another, it is still dirty. We are all lost to one degree or another, and it is from this place that God reaches out and calls us to Him. We desperately need that missing piece that He has to offer, and we desperately need the cleaning He is going to give our moral compass.

Hebrews 10:22 NKJV — let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Titus 1:15 NKJV — To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.

1 Peter 3:16 NKJV — having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.

Conscience, by the way, is the word the translators used, but it refers to our moral compass. What I'm getting to here is that we all start out unclean, and the uncleanness I'm referring to is the corruption and stain of sin on our moral compass. We all start out unclean and somehow, in order to draw near to God and follow His way, we have to get this compass fixed and cleaned up. In the time of the Levites, physical uncleanness was corrected by washing in water, which is a type of baptism. We also find our spiritual uncleanness taken care of in exactly the same way.

1 Peter 3:21 NKJV — There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the [answer] (Earnest seeking) of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Baptism is the ceremony that we go through to symbolize the cleansing of this uncleanness, and it is made possible by the blood of our savior. We also get the missing piece installed, and the down-payment of a future inheritance. This is the bit that sets us apart from all other peoples of the world and makes us special. I'm referring to the Holy Spirit which we receive as part of the conversion process and baptismal ceremony. When we recognize our lost and broken state, we turn back to God, the Father and the Son, and they give us something very special indeed—they give us a piece of themselves. 

The ideas I'm going to introduce might challenge your theology a bit, but just hang in there to the end before you make a decision. These ideas certainly challenged my theology at first, but that's good since learning and growing are positive things, and getting to the truth of things is essential. For a long time I believed the Holy Spirit to simply be the power of God, but it was pointed out by a man of God that this traditional understanding greatly limits the Holy Spirit and really doesn't mesh with what scripture has to say on the topic. Likewise, so too does viewing the Holy Spirit as a person; in fact, viewing the Holy Spirit as something distinct and separate from the Father and Son limits what it actually is. 

Many times throughout the Bible various attributes of God are personified; many attributes in general are personified, actually. Wisdom and foolishness, for example, but as we well know, these are not actual beings but attributes given personalities to better enable us to understand their function. The Holy Spirit as it is described is similar to this, but it can be a hazard to describe it like this in a way because we tend to think of it as something altogether distinct from God, and this is a grave error. Leaving the whole discussion of whether or not the Holy Spirit is a person off the table, we can get right into furthering our understanding of what it actually is. If you are interested in reading more about the personhood of the Holy Spirit, there's a great article by Brett Gray on the topic. The Truth About the Holy Spirit

For now, let's get right into it!

A Matter of the Spirit

John 14:16-17 NKJV — “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

   

If we know anything about Greek, we know that the pronoun's gender has to agree with the gender of the noun. It's part of the structure of the language and it doesn't tell us anything about what the Holy Spirit does, or what it is. “It” is just as correct as “he” or “she;” more correct actually in this particular context and reading in the English language. 

The important takeaways from this are that this thing comes from the Father, it is with them, and it will be in them in the future. One might ask why it wasn't in them now, but as we will read, it could not come to them until Jesus left. 

John 16:7 NKJV — “Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.

So far, this spirit emanates from the Father, it cannot come while Jesus is still on the Earth, and He will send it to them once He gets back to His Father. It seems pretty straightforward at this point, and the rest of the verses I am going to present don't add a lot of new information to this basic premise. The spirit is sent in Jesus name, but it comes from the Father, though in a few places we see that it is the Spirit of Jesus that is part of it as well. 

Philippians 1:19 NKJV — For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,

Earlier I alluded to getting into trouble by making distinctions where none can be made, but there is an important distinction to draw here. The spirit that comes from the Father bears witness of Jesus as the Son of God because no ordinary person can bear witness of Himself. Jesus bore witness of Himself (not being an ordinary person) and of the Father, and now the Father by the giving of His spirit bears witness of His Son. Jesus had two important witnesses, then. John the Baptist also bore witness of Him before He came, and the Father gave witness of Him while He was on Earth and after He left. This is perfect because He needed two witnesses in order to be confirmed. 

John 8:17-18 NKJV — “It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. “I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me.”

Fine and dandy so far, but we have an issue here because other things are attributed to the Spirit that the Father does not do, and Jesus does do. Being our one intercessor for example, is a position that belongs only to Jesus. He earned that role by dying for our sins, and there can be no other intercessor.  

Romans 8:9-10 NKJV — But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

1 Timothy 2:5 NKJV — For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,

We cannot argue with this scripture, but it would appear that according to the Trinity doctrine, or even the power doctrine, that some other scriptures would try to contradict these statements. 

Romans 8:26 NKJV — Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Romans 8:34 NKJV — Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who (also, even) makes intercession for us.

If Jesus intercedes on our behalf, and that belongs to Him alone, then what do we make of this Spirit thing? How can it also intercede if it did not die for our sins as Jesus did?

The simple answer is that it did indeed die for our sins, because the spirit is Christ and it is the Father. It is both of them: what they are composed of and what they are! It is what they are made of and it is what holds our entire world together. It is far more than just power; it is the incredible infinite intelligence of the Ones who made us. The spirit is not a separate being because it is the Father and the Son. Again, it is what they are composed of and what we will one day be made of, so when Jesus said the Father would send His spirit to us, He was literally sending a piece of Himself into our hearts, and when Jesus’ spirit is in us, He is literally living as a piece of Himself inside of us. 

John 14:23 NKJV — Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

Jesus told us this before the spirit was ever sent to be in us. He is offering something altogether incredible to us as the children of God: the indwelling of the Father and the Son. Indeed, it is not incorrect to say the spirit is God, because it is. You cannot separate it out as a distinct being anymore than you can separate our skeletons out as people distinct from ourselves. The spirit is the Father and the Son, two beings existing together eternally as God, and when they give us their spirit they are giving us a piece of themselves, literally coming to live inside our hearts, because we are the temple of God. 

2 Corinthians 6:16 NKJV — And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will dwell in them

And walk among them.

I will be their God,

And they shall be My people.”

In general in the New Testament when the apostles are speaking of the spirit unless they make a distinction, it refers to both the Father and the Son, specifically, their unity. This also explains why the Spirit could not come until after Jesus had returned to the Father. It's because He was an essential part of it! It could not come without His contribution. 

Rejecting the Holy Spirit by calling it an unclean spirit or a false spirit rejects this unity of the Father and Son and is essentially turning your back on God. Jesus said blasphemy against Himself and His Father would be forgiven, but blasphemy of their spirit would not be forgiven. Rejecting their spirit as unclean is the one thing that can't be forgiven, and we see this in the Old Testament when king Saul rejected God's spirit and it became corrupted or unclean. it is better to never have had His spirit than to have it and lose it. 

Why I am so adamant is that the fact that it is a piece of God and not merely power is the way it is described and interacted with in the Bible gives great clarity on the matter of clean and unclean. It wasn't just something like electricity, it had sentience, which naturally leads to the conclusion that it is part of God Himself. This conclusion is aided quite well by the clarification that Luke adds to his story of the Holy Spirit forbidding the Apostles to speak in Asia. The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus are the same thing!

Acts 16:6-7 ESV — And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by (or “in”) the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

My explanation above doesn't pretend to fully understand what is essentially an infinite set of beings by a finite mind. That would simply be ludicrous. Based on the information given, it is the best explanation I have at this time, and it fits quite well with the subject at hand. The spirit of God is both the Father and Son working together, their unity, and a piece of Themselves that they give to us; essentially living inside of us as Their temple as the Bible says.  

After baptism, we receive this spirit, this piece of God, and it corrects our moral compass. We've had a cleaning and a repair, and we are given a tool to calibrate our compass and keep it up to date. The Bible is an essential tool if we are going to make sure our compass is still pointing to the true North. This piece of God we are given is what marks us and sets us apart from all the nations around us, from all the people around us. 

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 NKJV — Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Ezekiel 20:16 NKJV — “because they despised My judgments and did not walk in My statutes, but profaned My Sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols.

Keeping the Sabbaths is a sign of this seal, and a sign of being completely set apart to God. Now we are clean, and those who are outside are unclean, but we can get dirty again, we can become unclean again. In the Old Testament there were many things they went through as a part of everyday life that could render them unclean, but there were also things they were not supposed to do that could make them unclean. In our world today there are lots of things that can make us spiritually unclean if we touch them mentally. Movies, books, music, activities, thoughts, etc. are all examples of things that have a type that can make us spiritually unclean if we partake of them. We wash the stain of them away through reading the word of God, and the indwelling of the Father and Son.

Galatians 5:19-25 NKJV — Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Galatians 5:16 NKJV — I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Again, the ritual washings they did to remove the uncleanness in the Old Testament were a type of baptism, and they were overseen in most cases by a priest, or the offerings that went along with the washing. Most every case of uncleanness required an animal sacrifice even though it wasn't exactly a sin to be unclean. There were certain types of uncleanness that were sins, but not in general. 

A New Priesthood

The teaching of distinguishing between the clean and unclean, and the oversight and administration of these regulations fell to the priesthood. To reiterate, the purpose of these laws in the first place was to teach the people how to distinguish between what was holy and what was not holy, what was clean and what was not clean, and God took it very seriously. 

Ezekiel 22:26 NKJV — “Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

The priesthood and the Levites mainly functioned as teachers and judges outside of temple service, which at any given time encompassed most of the priesthood and Levites. By far the most important role they had was to teach the laws and statutes of God, but they repeatedly failed in this vital task. With a lack of instruction in the correct way of doing things, the people fell away again and again. Most of the backsliding the nation did was a direct consequence of a failed priesthood, and therein lies the weakness of the law: humans. Humans as priests, especially High priests were abject failures the majority of the time. They failed to properly instruct the people of God, and thus, the people without proper instruction would reject God and turn to idols.

The tragic failings of the old order highlight the importance of proper teaching and instruction in the congregations today, but that isn't quite the point I'm getting to here. Human high priests failed at their most important job, so a change had to be made so that it would be done differently in the future.

Ezekiel 44:23-24 ESV — They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean. In a dispute, they shall act as judges, and they shall judge it according to my judgments. They shall keep my laws and my statutes in all my appointed feasts, and they shall keep my Sabbaths holy.

In order for this change to be able to take place the human element had to be mitigated as much as possible, and the priesthood had to be removed from the line of Aaron. The High priesthood was given to our savior Jesus Christ as He replaced the old priestly order that had existed in the time of Moses. Something that had only existed once in all of history returned at that point: a royal priest. A priest who was also a king was forbidden by God, but Jesus, even though He wasn't of the Levitical line, was able to become both King of Kings and our High priest. How could this happen?

Hebrews 7:11-28 NLT [11] So if the priesthood of Levi, on which the law was based (or which the law established), could have achieved the perfection God intended, why did God need to establish a different priesthood, with a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of the order of Levi and Aaron? 

[12] And if the priesthood is changed, the law must also be changed to permit it. 

[13] For the priest we are talking about belongs to a different tribe, whose members have never served at the altar as priests. 

[14] What I mean is, our Lord came from the tribe of Judah, and Moses never mentioned priests coming from that tribe.  

[15] This change has been made very clear since a different priest, who is like Melchizedek, has appeared. 

[16] Jesus became a priest, not by meeting the physical requirement of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. 

[17] And the psalmist pointed this out when he prophesied, “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” 

[18] Yes, the old requirement about the priesthood was set aside because it was weak and useless. 

[19] For the law never made anything perfect. But now we have confidence in a better hope, through which we draw near to God. 

[20] This new system was established with a solemn oath. Aaron’s descendants became priests without such an oath, 

[21] but there was an oath regarding Jesus. For God said to him, “The Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow: ‘You are a priest forever.’” 

[22] Because of this oath, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God. 

[23] There were many priests under the old system, for death prevented them from remaining in office. 

[24] But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. 

[25] Therefore he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf. 

[26] He is the kind of high priest we need because he is holy and blameless, unstained by sin. He has been set apart from sinners and has been given the highest place of honor in heaven. 

[27] Unlike those other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins first and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all when he offered himself as the sacrifice for the people’s sins. 

[28] The law appointed high priests who were limited by human weakness. But after the law was given, God appointed his Son with an oath, and his Son has been made the perfect High Priest forever.

The law regarding the priestly line had to be changed to allow Christ to take over the role of High priest. That is the only way it could happen! The human weakness that corrupted the priesthood was removed from the equation and replaced with one who would never die, who never had to offer sacrifices for His own sins, and who offered all sacrifices for our sins as well. This change in the priestly law established a new priesthood, a new order, and a new set of laws regarding the priesthood. Kings can be priests, and such is our future. We are a Holy people set apart to God, and we are part of this new priestly order. 

1 Peter 2:9 NKJV — But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

Thus, the burden of instruction in righteousness falls to us, the people of God, as a spiritual nation of royal priests. All of the warnings that were given to the priests, all of the responsibilities that they were supposed to execute fall to us. It would be really helpful if we had a book to do all this teaching from, and indeed we do. 

2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV — All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

We are responsible for teaching the ways of God, especially the difference between the clean and the unclean to all of His people, present and future. We can easily see how this applies in spiritual uncleanness and discernment, though perhaps not so readily in the direct correlation between the physical and the spiritual. We understand the idea that we are supposed to have a clean heart, a clean moral compass, but how does this correlate with the physical body and regulations? What are we to do with the clean and the unclean?

These are the questions I want to answer, and I will, just not in this post. It's gone on long enough, and it has proved a far larger topic than I realized when I first began studying it. Until next time, my friends! 

To be continued…