TLDR – Too Long Didn’t Read Summary
In the Old Testament holiness was synonymous with physical perfection and people thought Holiness came from the outside. Many rules were created around how you could be made unholy by things like illness or disability or touching or eating or wearing the wrong thing or hanging out with the wrong people. Jesus disagreed – he said holiness comes from the inside, from our hearts, from love – and unholiness from the evil thoughts that lead us to stop loving God and other people. The key reason for all of the rules was to teach us to ‘Love our neighbour’ and to take care not to hurt others in what we do. When laws were being twisted to harm, judge or reject people they were missing the point. Food and drink and people can’t make you unholy, because nothing God made is unclean. However if you think doing something is wrong, and do it anyway – in your heart you are not loving God.
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Stage 1: Holiness comes from outside.
The Belief: “You can be made unclean by what you touch, wear or eat.”
In order to be Holy like the God you serve, the Israelites had to set themselves apart from anything impure, anything different, anything that might ‘contaminate’ them.
Leviticus is a manual of the rules and regulations the Israelites and particularly the Levi priests were to follow regarding worship and sacrifices. The book explains how to be his holy people and to worship him in a holy manner. Holiness, they believed, means to be separated from sin and set apart exclusively to the Lord for his purpose and for his glory. Spiritual holiness is symbolized by physical perfection. Therefore, the book demands perfect animals for its many sacrifices (ch. 1-7) and requires priests without deformity (ch. 8-10). Unholiness came from Childbirth recovery (ch 12); illness (ch 13-14); discharges (ch 15) — all signs of blemish (a lack of perfection). A person with a visible skin disease must be banished from the camp, just as Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. Such people can return to the camp (and therefore to God’s presence) when they are pronounced whole again by the priest’s examination. Before they can re-enter the camp, they must offer the prescribed, perfect sacrifices (symbolizing the perfect, whole sacrifice of Christ).
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Leviticus 11:44 I am the Lord your God, and you must keep yourselves holy because I am holy.
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Leviticus 21:17-20 “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles.”
Stage 2: Holiness comes from the Inside.
Jesus taught it is not the things people come in contact with on the outside that defile us and make us unclean or unholy, but the thoughts and actions that arise from inside our hearts.
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Physical Defects do not make you unholy.
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John 9:1-3 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
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Eating and drinking doesn’t affect your holiness, neither does who you hang out with.
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Matthew 11:19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
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Holiness is INSIDE and personal – What is in your heart affects your holiness
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Matthew 15 1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
… 10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
… 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
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Acts 10 – Nothing is unclean Nobody is unclean
Acts 10:9-48 Peter has a vision of a sheet descending out of heaven full of animals that have been traditionally labelled ‘unclean’ and God tells him to eat. Peter initially refuses but God chastises him with the words, “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean.” Just then some Gentiles (non-Jews) arrive at his door to learn about God. Jews and Gentiles did not mix as they were traditionally labelled ‘unclean’ but Peter realises that God is telling him it is ok to associate with these people.
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Acts 10:47 Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptised with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.
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The Weak and the Strong – Don’t quarrel over rules if God has accepted someone it is not up to us to judge them. There is no single holiness rule, it’s down to faith.
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Romans 14:1-5 1 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. 5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.
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Do everything to the Lord – Nothing is unclean – BUT if you think it is wrong and do it anyway you are disobeying God in your heart.
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Romans 14:6-14 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.
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10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat
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13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.
14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.
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Don’t distress people by doing what they think is sin and you don’t – Educate them.
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Romans 14:15-16 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.