February 23rd

Today's readings from the One Year Chronological Reading Plan are Leviticus 20:1-22:33.

If you're interested in reading it, Capital Crimes is a commentary on Chapter 20. Oftentimes understanding the OT is key to truly understanding the NT. In this chapter God required capital punishment for crimes that we certainly wouldn't always consider to be worthy of death (sleeping with a women during her period is a preference, but we would hardly consider it a capital crime today). But the point is that God determines what is sin and what is not. And though we do need to have a hierarchy of sins in society, to God even a "little sin" separates us from Him and His holiness.

The crimes which are declared worthy of death in Leviticus 20 are those acts which God called sin previously, and which His covenant clearly prohibited. The reason why any violation of His covenant was a capital offense was that this was God’s expressed will, the basis for His blessing or discipline, the standard for holiness. Whether or not the act appeared to have great social significance, it had great spiritual significance: it would defile the land and God’s sanctuary, thus either causing Him to depart or to drive the nation Israel from the land.

I found this commentary, Holiness: The False and The True, to be simply fascinating, as the writer explores how the way the Pharisees incorrectly viewed these 2 chapters led to their legalistic way of thinking and holier-than-thou attitudes.

The scribes and Pharisees correctly recognized that these 2 chapters were written for the priests, not the people, and they also correctly recognized that higher standards of separation were required of them as priests.

What was incorrect was their conclusion about these two facts.

They wrongly concluded that they were holier than the people.

What they should have concluded was that with their high positions as priests came greater responsibility.

From the above commentary...

To measure personal holiness in terms of ceremonial and ritual purity is a mistake. The holiness of God is to be manifested through obedience to God’s commands and by loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Remember, too, that even though a priest was ceremonially pure, he still could only approach God by means of the shed blood of an innocent and perfect sacrificial animal.

The priests were those who offered the sacrifices of the people, and thus a higher standard of conduct was essential to assure that the offerings which they sacrificed were acceptable to God (Lev 21:6). In addition, the priests were also leaders in Israel. It is my observation that leaders, in the Old Testament and the New (cf. 1 Tim 3), are required to live according to a higher standard, and for good reason. Leaders are to exemplify God’s ideals for character and conduct, not the minimum standard. To allow leaders to live according to the lowest standard, rather than according to the ideal, would be to encourage the people to live the same way, rather than to challenge them to the highest level of conduct.

The scribes and Pharisees were wrong to view themselves as the spiritual elite. If anything, the higher standards God requires for leaders should cause one to be even more sensitive to impurity and contamination in his or her life, and thus to be humbled by a position of leadership. Humility, not pride, is the mark of God’s leaders. Leviticus was written to assure a greater sensitivity toward corruption on the part of the priests, not to create a sense of pride, as though they were better because God required more of them.

Another mistake made by the Pharisees was to assume that holiness was directly equated to ceremonial rituals. Jesus taught that we are not defiled by the external, but by the internal.

Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man … That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts and fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, sensuality, envy, slander, price and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man”. Mark 7:14b-15, 20-23

From the commentary...

Our Lord taught that the emphasis should be inward and not outward, and that this was the teaching of the Law as well, but does our text in Leviticus teach this truth? I believe that it does, although this is not immediately apparent. Let me explain how and why this is so...

There is no question that Leviticus focuses on the external, ceremonial defilements. This was done so that the people of God could first understand defilement concretely, and then begin to grasp the more abstract concept of sin.

The problem with the interpretation and application of Leviticus (and the whole Law) by the scribes and Pharisees was that they did not go far enough with what was taught. They wrongly concluded that the essence of holiness was the avoidance of ceremonial defilement, rather than to see that it began with it...

Leviticus begins by defining defilement in very concrete terms, but as the Old Testament revelation unfolds, the prophets emphatically teach that God is not nearly as interested in the external ceremonial acts of men as He is in the attitudes of their hearts and the resulting righteousness that should produce love for one’s neighbor, especially the oppressed and the weak:

For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Hos 6:6

“I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”. Amos 5:21-24

The psalmists understood the need to see beyond the ceremonial and the external in the Law. Thus we read, “Oh how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day”. Ps 119:97. Seeing beyond the ceremonial and the external required the Spirit’s illumination, and thus the psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law” Ps 119:18.

Thus, finding God’s wisdom in the Law required much more than a casual or cursory reading, it required diligent study: “If you seek her as silver, And search for her as hidden treasures; Then you will discern the fear of the LORD, And discover the knowledge of God” Prov 2:4-5.

And so we see that we must search for meaning in the Old Testament Law which goes beyond the ceremonial, beyond the external and the literal to the heart of the matter. This is precisely where the scribes and Pharisees went wrong. They did not take the Law far enough. They stopped at the level of what was concrete, and did not press on to the abstract. They stopped at the external, without exploring the internal—the issues of the heart. God wrote the Law to deal with men on both levels, but primarily on the internal, rather than on the external. The scribes and Pharisees strained the “gnats” (the external outworkings of the Law), but they swallowed the “camels” (the internal implications of the Law), for which our Lord rebuked them. Neither “gnats” nor “camels” should be neglected (Matt 23:23-24). emphasis mine

Because the Pharisees concluded that avoiding defilement equated holiness, they assumed that works equaled righteousness.

From the same commentary...

Now is the time to note the phrase which is the key to the entire passage, both structurally and interpretively: “I am the LORD, who sanctifies you.”

Who is it that sanctifies the priests, who makes them holy? God said six times that He did. He set Israel apart from the nations, and He set the priests apart from the people. The Israelites did not sanctify themselves by leaving Egypt, God released them while they, at best, stood by passively, and, at worst, drug their feet, rebelling and complaining.

God commanded the priests to avoid outward defilement because they were already holy, by God’s sanctification. They were to avoid the things prohibited because these things would make them unclean, not because avoiding them would make them clean. There is a world of difference between avoiding something to keep yourself from defilement and avoiding something to make yourself holy.

Here is a key to the error of the scribes and Pharisees. They confused the cause with the effect. The cause is the holiness, the sanctification, which God has already accomplished (which is primarily inner—a matter of the heart). The effect is separation of the priests from that which defiles, so as not to contaminate and defile that which God has sanctified. This explains why our Lord persisted, in His earthly teaching, to carefully distinguish between cause and effect. Salvation—making men clean—is our Lord’s work alone. Keeping ourselves pure is our duty (enabled by the Holy Spirit), so that we do not defile what God has cleansed. We ought to keep ourselves clean, but we can never make ourselves clean. We seek to stay clean (effect) because God has made us clean (cause). The priests should avoid defilement (effect) because God had already set them apart (cause)....

The point which is made here is that holiness is not contagious, it cannot be transmitted by contact with holy things. Defilement, however, is contagious, it can be transmitted by contact with what is unholy.

The scribes and Pharisees seemed to think that they “caught” holiness by their official duties, which put them in contact with “holy” things. Defilement can be caught, and thus God warned the priests about coming into contact with the unholy. Holiness, however, only comes from God. (emphasis mine)

I don't know about you, but that was a huge eye opener for me! Fascinating.

Tomorrow's readings: Leviticus 23:1-25:23.