Lord, I Need You: The Need to Be Holy (Leviticus 20:22-26)

“Where You are, Lord, I am free. Holiness is Christ in me.” – Matt Maher 🤍

Dear stained soul,

Does the guilt in your conscience discomforts your essence? Do you think you’re unforgivable? To get past your vice, are you unable?

We all fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). The ever good news is Christ forgives, blots out all sin, and renews us amazingly. Once we’re His, we’re called to be holy.

My previous epistle’s subtitle is “Set Apart from the Mundane.” Holy means exactly that. I presented how sins are taken away in Old Testament times and closed by saying that Jesus is the ultimate atonement. Now, we’ll see what holiness practically was.

Leviticus 20:22-26 (NASB)

²² ‘You are therefore to keep all My statutes and all My ordinances, and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not vomit you out. ²³ Furthermore, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I am going to drive out before you, because they did all these things; therefore I have felt disgust for them. ²⁴ So I have said to you, “You are to take possession of their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the Lord your God, who has singled you out from the peoples. ²⁵ You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird, or by anything that crawls on the ground, which I have distinguished for you as unclean. ²⁶ So you are to be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy; and I have singled you out from the peoples to be Mine.

I’d like to start with the last verse because it has the word “holy” and is the key verse of our passage. The original Hebrew word for “holy” is קָדוֹשׁ (qadosh), and in this verse, it means “separate from human infirmity, impurity, and sin” (Bible Hub).

We know infirmity as sickness, and the book of Leviticus has a chapter and a half on leprosy. It starts on chapter 13. Different kinds of leprous disease are described and pronounced unclean. That’s where impurity comes in. Sin is also involved, but symbolically only. These unclean skin diseases are a picture of sin as it is deeper than what's seen on the surface, it spreads, it destroys, and it will eventually kill you (Jones). Other illnesses with laws in the book are the chronic discharges in chapter 15, which also make the person unclean.

Our text mentions that the Israelites must not make themselves detestable by unclean animals. Leviticus 11 details which animals are clean and unclean. They are not to eat or touch the carcasses of unclean animals. In the New Testament, God tells Peter through a vision that all animals are clean. “What God has cleansed you must not call common (Acts 10:15, NJKV).” In other words, mundane, “of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one (Oxford University Press).” The distinction between animals was for the people’s health, especially in their time when they don’t have today’s food safety techniques (Got Questions Ministries, 2022).

Peter's vision of animals on a blanket in heaven (portrayed in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp)

But look at what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic right now. The very likely culprit are bats through another animal (Kunzmann, 2021). Leviticus 11:19 includes the bat. There are people who eat bats, and we are not to judge them. Romans 14 is a chapter that talks about principles of conscience, particularly with eating. Paul writes, “Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the person who eats and causes offense (Romans 14:20, NASB).” The following verse, 21, says that it’s wrong when we do anything that causes our neighbor to stumble.

That’s the holiness we need to have within, to not intend trouble, to live apart from sin. Infirmity and uncleanness are just physical defects. To eternal death is where our soul our moral flaws subject. Jesus saves from this. He gives us holiness that’s His.

He cleanses us from sin that we may enter our promised land, heaven, that we may be with Him forever. Today’s passage opens with God commanding His people to follow the law so that they won’t be thrown out of their land of milk and honey. What Christ did on the cross fulfilled the law. Obeying doesn’t admit us to heaven; it's believing. Our faith is what makes us live by His law of love. Obedience is the result and not the way in. Our actions will be aligned according to what is right once we have given our lives to God. Through the Bible, we get to know what's right and wrong, and more importantly, we get to know Jesus. It's only in having Him as our Lord and Savior that renews us and makes us righteous.

Our God is holy, so we too must be. Jesus fulfilled the whole law, so in God’s eyes we’re without flaw. Let’s live by His Spirit continually that we may be His salt and light to the worldly.

With love,

Celina <3

References

Bible Hub. (n.d.). Strong's Hebrew: 6918. קָדוֹשׁ (qadosh) -- sacred, holy. Retrieved from BibleHub.com: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6918.htm

Got Questions Ministries. (2022, January 4). What made some animals clean and others unclean (Genesis 7)? Retrieved from GotQuestions.org: https://www.gotquestions.org/animals-clean-unclean.html

Jones, P. (n.d.). Leviticus 13. Leviticus | Holy. Westminster, California, United States of America: Through the Word.

Kunzmann, K. (2021, March 29). WHO, China Report Suggests COVID-19 Passed From Bats to Humans Through Another Animal. Retrieved from ContagionLive.com: https://www.contagionlive.com/view/who-china-report-covid-19-passed-bats-humans-animal

Oxford University Press. (n.d.). MUNDANE English Definition and Meaning. Retrieved from Lexico.com: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/mundane

Next: Adore and Tremble: An Overview of God’s Judgment on Israel (Leviticus 26:14-22)

Previous: Holy, Holy, Holy: Set Apart from the Mundane (Leviticus 16:15-16, 20-22)

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