Passage Read: Leviticus 11-14
Meditation Verses: 11:44-45
Thought
These uncleanness instructions, for the most part, are health and safety kinds of things, not sin issues. Things regarding mold and infectious diseases, unsafe meats and insects and sea creatures. There may not be an obvious safety issue, but ultimately all these distinctions are to be made for the sake of holiness. Holiness is not just a spiritual quality or state. It is also an aspect of our physical condition. Touching animals that died of disease or have been dead for an unknown period of time, touching certain animals or insects, having certain diseases or recovering from pregnancy, or being exposed to mold or mildew, any of these things make us impure and unholy before the Lord and potentially harmful to others. We should want to be very careful how we handle them and who we expose to our uncleanness. These are not sin issues; it's not like the person who is unclean or comes across something that makes them unclean is evil and has done wrong--unless they have no compassion on their fellow man to protect them from likewise becoming unclean. They are not the thing to be despised, but there is something about the thing that makes them unclean that should cause them to want to protect others and to protect God from being affected. It is an expression of loving a neighbor above ourselves. We are supposed to be holy because the Lord is holy. Yet it is to the Lord we are to go to clarify whether we are unclean and to gain cleansing. The priest must examine certain diseases and cases of mold to determine whether it is a matter of uncleanness or not. He is continually exposed to uncleanness or cases of potential uncleanness, yet he is not to fear or avoid them. God is not Himself afraid of these things, because He is greater than these things and they cannot make Him unclean. Instead, He drives uncleanness away, so Jesus could touch the leper and make him clean without fear of being contaminated.
Application
But that doesn't mean I can live in squalor and disease. We do live in a world corrupted and diseased by sin and the curse. There is no changing that until God cleanses everything with fire and remakes it all. God the Father cannot and will not come to dwell on this earth until He makes it new. But the Son can, has and will again live upon this present earth. I do dwell here and have been cleansed in some respects, but I still fall prey to disease and other forms of uncleanness. But as a child of God, redeemed by Christ, I should have new boldness to wade into the filth and bring healing and cleansing in whatever ways I can, whether that's improvements in personal hygiene or medicine or repentance and righteous living. I should care about improving the quality of life of those around me and the healthiness of the conditions in which others live. How we live is connected to our holiness. If I live in physical disorder and uncleanness, then I surely also live in spiritual and moral disorder and uncleanness. If I work at cleansing my life from sin, I will also be concerned about cleansing my environment and living conditions of unhealthy practices and influences. Unfortunately, the reverse is not automatically true: If I care about the cleanliness and orderliness of my physical environment, I will not necessarily also be concerned about the cleanliness and orderliness of my moral and spiritual environment. We all recognize our physical existence, but we do not all accept the existence of the spiritual. Ultimately, the spiritual must come first and be primary. If what matters most to an unbeliever or a believer is his material health, orderliness and cleanliness, he is primarily carnal, fleshly and worldly. But a believer who truly loves God desires to purify his life from all ungodly influences, that will extend to the environment in which he lives and will produce a concern for the health of others, especially their spiritual health. There seems to be some truth to the idea that "cleanliness is next to godliness." But godliness must be first and foremost, or else everything is out of balance, with an unhealthy emphasis on the material. "Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things." I should be eager to cleanse my environment and to bring healthy practices to others, but out of an overriding concern for their spiritual condition and mine.