What Are We to Do With the Clean and the Unclean? PT 2

 

In part one we covered the idea that it is the Spirit of God that sets us apart as a people and purifies our hearts. After all, God cannot dwell with sin, and if He is to dwell in our hearts, some major house cleaning needs to take place. Before our conversion process starts it can well be said, Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV — “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

The whole point of conversion, however, is to change this to a false statement. We are to be given a new heart, a circumcised heart, and most importantly, a clean heart. This vital process is symbolized in the Passover and the days of Unleavened bread, which is why we do it every year. It reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing and what God is doing for us, which brings us to an interesting thought. If it is all about the spiritual now, and the physical doesn't matter, then there should be no more lessons that we can draw from doing the physical things. 

The fact remains, however, that we are still in physical bodies with only a down payment of our inheritance from God. We only have a small portion of the Spirit that He will give us when He returns at the end of the age, and physical actions still help us remember everything we are supposed to and call to mind the teachings they are supposed to convey when we practice them. As we saw in the previous post, this failure to convey the teachings as well as a failure to keep the Holy Days God had set apart was a major failing of the priesthood in Israel. In fact, they had a complete breakdown of the process that was supposed to teach the Israelites to discern between the clean and the unclean. As the new priesthood, we are supposed to be filling this role.

Hebrews 5:12 NKJV — For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

What are we supposed to be teaching? I mean, really. “The difference between the clean and the unclean” isn't really an answer, and though “discernment” comes closer to the mark, it still doesn't answer the question. That's the purpose of part two: answering this question to the best of the information given in the Bible.

Priests need a temple to serve at and they have one. Keeping in mind that this new priestly order does not depend upon physical lineage, neither does the temple rely upon physical brick and stone: it is a spiritual temple and a spiritual priesthood. 

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 ESV — Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Ephesians 2:19-22 ESV — So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

1 Peter 2:4-5 ESV — As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 6:16 ESV — What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

Already, we see a distinction between the people of God and everyone else. Not just anyone can become a priest or a part of this new system but only those who have a piece of the living God in them. They must have a clean heart put within them, and this is the result of choosing God and being baptized. As we covered in the prior post, baptism is a ritual washing, or, shall we say, ritual washings were a type of baptism. The people of the New Testament weren't foreigners to baptism by any means,  but what was new was the laying on of hands for the receipt of the Holy Spirit. 

A Watery Grave

As for baptism, we are already finding that physical ritual has not passed into oblivion because we still have physical bodies. With all its spiritual meaning, baptism is still a physical act and ritual that cannot be entirely spiritualized. You must literally go under the water to be baptized, and you must have hands laid on you to receive the Holy Spirit. This is not a difficult concept to grasp, but its implications go much further than baptism. 

If the most spiritual of experiences, that of baptism, still requires a physical process, then might not other things that we dismiss as part of the old physical system also still be in force? 

A novel idea for some, less of a novel idea for others, but either way, it holds some difficult potential if we follow it to its natural conclusion. The temple is both spiritual and physical in the body of Christ, and we ourselves are not fully spirit yet, but neither are we fully physical. some things have been replaced by the ultimate picture they pointed to, and some things definitely haven't. Animal sacrifices, for instance, were all pointing to the one sacrifice that Jesus would offer for all time so we don't need to kill an animal anymore, but we still offer sacrifices and offerings. They are all still physical and partly spiritual as well. 

Offerings of the lips, our time, our money, contrite hearts, and our very lives are all things that we offer to God. We are to be living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God, meaning we live as a set apart people, clean and separate from the unclean. Have sacrifices really been done away with and become wholly spiritual then? 

Not hardly. All those things, while deeply spiritual, are at the same time still physical things that we have to do before God. Just saying that we “believe” is not enough to satisfy our physical condition. If you have “faith” then you act on your beliefs. It is as simple as that, and it is this vital concept that the author of Hebrews endeavored to get across in his eleventh chapter. He gives hoards of examples from the Old Testament of people who had great faith, tremendous faith, faith that we would love to have ourselves, and they all have one thing in common: they demonstrated their belief by obeying God. By doing what He said to do they showed that their belief was actually belief and not just a warm fuzzy feeling they would get when the preaching was fire on a Sabbath morning. 

True belief is obeying God and doing what He says, even as true love of God is keeping His commandments.

John 14:23 KJV — Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

 

Even here we find that these experiences often seen as strictly spiritual still have a physical element. Should we be surprised? 

We are still physical beings, so as long as that continues to be the case, there is going to be an aspect of our walk with God that is still physical. When we apply these concepts to the Sabbath and Holy Days we find that while they have a spiritual element, they are also still deeply physical, and because we are also physical, keeping them teaches us a tremendous amount about their meaning and the spiritual elements they picture. There is no reason to dismiss them simply because they are physical, for we are physical. We easily carry this forward into other things quickly dismissed by most Christians, especially into the camp that says, “The law is spiritual and written on our hearts and minds now!” 

If that were the case, then they would not violate the law! They would keep it perfectly, but that doesn't seem to be the way things happen. We can usually remember the law because it is written in our hearts, and that helps to make good choices about what we will and will not do. The heart-writing is also the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God that dwells within us directing us how we should make our decisions. Once again, the spiritual blends with the physical out of necessity because we are still physical. Our hearts may have been made clean, but we can easily get them dirty again. 

If sacrifices, Holy Days, and various other laws still have a physical aspect to them, what of the other regulations? 

These laws were specifically given so that we could live as a Holy people before God. A people set apart from all other nations and creeds. We no longer become part of a physical nation of Israel but we become part of a spiritual nation that Israel will one day be grafted back into. We can't be born into this nation the same way they were in a physical nation. We get our citizenship through the blood of Jesus and keep it through the way we conduct our lives. 

The Right Way

As a spiritual nation, we have a certain way we are supposed to be living. Our job is to teach others to be able to distinguish between the right way and the wrong way, between the things that are clean and the things that are unclean, and, as we have seen, this doesn't just apply spiritually. The spiritual aspect is the most important part, but we will miss it if we don't also practice the physical part. Just as, even if you don't lust after someone who is not your wife, it's kinda ruined if you go and sleep with her. You don't get to the spiritual aspect of the law without first understanding and keeping the physical aspects. Thus, it is called a tutor leading us to Christ in the New Testament, and we are still supposed to separate from what is unclean.

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.”

We are supposed to live separate lives from those walking in the world, and this is where those laws become spiritual matters. We'll dig into this more in a bit, but for the moment, we are going to get into the physical laws themselves. 

We've already covered the fact that we still have physical rituals and laws that need to be kept physically; the question now is, which ones?

There are quite a few after all, and many seem impossible to keep in our modern context. The clean and unclean meat laws seem trite, and the Feast days are seen as impossible to keep without a temple. 

As we established in the previous post, we are the temple! This isn't a cute phrase that really doesn't mean anything. It's not a metaphor! We are literally the temple of the Holy Spirit, of the Father and Son, and Jesus is the cornerstone of this building! His shed blood is what this temple is built upon. We have a temple and we will never have another physical temple like the Israelites did. In spite of this lack of a brick-and-mortar temple, we see all nations coming up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles in the millennium. I spent so much time in the previous post establishing the fact that we are the temple of God because it is vital for us to be able to understand this fact before we can go on to understand the laws we are given in the Old Testament. We must recognize that we still have a temple and a priesthood if we are to fully understand what we are given in the Old Testament.

When we grasp this concept, it's easy to see that the Feasts can still easily be kept. We don't have to travel to some singular place which is the only place God has set His name. He set His name among us, wherever two or three of us are gathered in His name, that's where He is.

Matthew 18:20 ESV — For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

2 Corinthians 6:16 ESV — What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

Ephesians 2:19-22 ESV — So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Wherever we are is the place God has set His name, and in the future, that will be in the new Jerusalem. At this time, it's wherever we gather, which means the temple is wherever we are too. It's not just the Feast days that play into this interesting correlation; the sacrifices, the washings, everything depended on there being a temple. Take baptism for example: ceremonial washings were a type of baptism, and baptism is a type of baptism by the Holy Spirit which is the very essence of God. Now, as a ceremonial washing, it should be performed at the temple, but there isn't a brick-and-mortar temple in existence any longer, rather, it is the far greater temple composed of the Holy Spirit that we come to to perform this ceremony. We gather together and thus, we form the temple of God.

In concept this is pretty straightforward, but what does this spiritual temple look like in practice?

The Feast days are taken care of, but there are other aspects that go along with the observance of these days that don't easily get explained just by discussing the concept of a spiritual temple. There are the sacrifices, the little temple rituals, and again, the clean and unclean meats.

The Meat Is Clean! Or Is It?

We'll start with the clean and unclean meats because they are a little easier to understand than the other things we'll discuss. The laws governing which meats could be eaten, unlike the other cleanliness laws, were not to teach the Israelites about distinguishing between clean and unclean things in general like a lot of the laws, rather, they were to teach them about the animals God had designated clean or unclean. The animals themselves were clean or unclean just as the people were, and as a Holy people, they and us could not partake of the animals that were unclean. It's the same concept that is contained in this little ordinance.

Deuteronomy 14:21 NKJV — “You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

The concept is carried over into Leviticus where we see that we are supposed to distinguish between the clean and unclean animal.

Leviticus 11:46-47 ESV — This is the law about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten.

I want to point out that when God delivers these laws He does so saying, “Be holy as I am holy.” These aren't some arbitrary rules that God meted out, they are directly related to the Holiness of God Himself.

Leviticus 11:44-45 ESV — For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

Leviticus 19:1-37 NKJV — And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. ‘Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God. ‘Do not turn to idols, nor make for yourselves molded gods: I am the LORD your God. ‘And if you offer a sacrifice of a peace offering to the LORD, you shall offer it of your own free will. ‘It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, and on the next day. And if any remains until the third day, it shall be burned in the fire. ‘And if it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination. It shall not be accepted. ‘Therefore everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned the hallowed offering of the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from his people. ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. ‘And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the LORD your God. ‘You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. ‘And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. ‘You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning. ‘You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am the LORD. ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. ‘You shall not go about as a talebearer among your people; nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. ‘You shall keep My statutes. You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you. ‘Whoever lies carnally with a woman who is betrothed to a man as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor given her freedom, for this there shall be scourging; but they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. ‘And he shall bring his trespass offering to the LORD, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, a ram as a trespass offering. ‘The priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed. And the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven him. ‘When you come into the land, and have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as uncircumcised. Three years it shall be as uncircumcised to you. It shall not be eaten. ‘But in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, a praise to the LORD. ‘And in the fifth year you may eat its fruit, that it may yield to you its increase: I am the LORD your God. ‘You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor shall you practice divination or soothsaying. ‘You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard. ‘You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the LORD. ‘Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of wickedness. ‘You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the LORD. ‘Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God. ‘You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the LORD. ‘And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. ‘The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. ‘You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. ‘Therefore you shall observe all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them: I am the LORD.’ ”

The point of everything contained in the scriptures above is, as it says in the first verse, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”

Everything that follows that statement is directly tied to living a holy life and conducting ourselves in a holy manner even as our Father in heaven is holy. It is part of the covenant that Israel made to be a special people to God, and it is in a lot of ways the same for us, but there are some things in there that we aren't in a position to follow. So it would appear, anyway. 

A Holy People

The main point we can settle is that the food laws directly relate to being a holy people to God, a people set apart from the pagans, those who are unclean in the world around us. In fact, clean and unclean food is used to represent people in the New Testament. Peter had a problem, don't you know, and his problem was the Gentiles, the non-Jews running around loose. Peter had grown up in a society where non-Jews, even if they converted, were still second-class citizens. In a quite literal sense, they were considered to be unclean. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, the dividing wall of Jewish tradition was broken down and all people had an equal opportunity for cleansing salvation, but Peter hadn't quite grasped this detail yet. So, God gave Him a vision using clean and unclean meat to illustrate it. 

Acts 10:15-16 ESV — And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.

Later, Peter explains this vision by saying the following.

Acts 10:28 ESV — And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.

It wasn't against God's law to associate with converted gentiles, it was a Jewish law. God nipped that in the bud, and demonstrated that all men were equal in the salvation Jesus offered through His sacrifice. Anyone who is converted has the same standing regardless of physical ancestry, but there is still a type of person who is unclean, and as we discussed in the previous post, that's anyone who is unconverted. 

1 Corinthians 15:33-34 NKJV — Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.

Malachi 3:18 NKJV — Then you shall again discern

Between the righteous and the wicked,

Between one who serves God

And one who does not serve Him.

Proverbs 15:8-9 NKJV — The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD,

But the prayer of the upright is His delight. The way of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD,

But He loves him who follows righteousness.

Matthew 13:49 NKJV — “So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just,

1 John 3:10 NKJV — In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.

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.

1 John 2:15-17 NKJV — Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

We are not supposed to be joined with the unclean or the unconverted. As a clean people we are supposed to stay separate from the unclean, but that doesn't mean we have nothing to do with them. We are supposed to be converting them, after all. We can bring in spiritual uncleanness here to help us understand the topic a bit better. We cannot form covenants like that of marriage with people who are not converted and expect to remain clean. It's just not possible. It's trying to live two lives, two ways of doing things; enjoying the wrong things of the world and at the same time still trying to follow God. We don't marry, form deep relationships, or marry those who are not converted if we are trying to follow God. 

Understanding that God created animals that are good for food and animals that aren't isn't too difficult to understand, and neither is the concept of converted vs unconverted, which is why I started with those. They have a clear spiritual application in addition to their physical one. The others we will discuss have a far more difficult premise to understand, and they will take quite some time to get through in any adequate manner. We are a holy people to God, a people set apart, and we are supposed to live like it. We are supposed to be holy even as God is holy. Until next time my friends!

To be continued…