“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” [Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NLT)]
The book of Leviticus outlined several things that could make someone ceremonially or ritually unclean. These things included bodily discharges, touching a corpse, and skin infections, as well as contact with any unclean person or thing. By Jesus’ day, even entering a Gentile’s home made someone unclean. Anything and anyone an unclean person touched became unclean and, anyone who touched them or what they touched also became unclean.
People deemed unclean were barred from participating in worship, offering sacrifices, and having access to the Temple. Because ritual impurity was contagious, anyone unclean had to remain separated from the community. Purification ceremonies were required before returning to a state of ritual cleanness and they varied with the severity of the uncleanness. Because uncleanness could come from normal bodily functions or factors beyond their control, even devout Jews became unclean at some time. Nevertheless, people didn’t deliberately put themselves in situations that would make them unclean. Jesus was the exception to the rule!
Along with their miraculous restoration, the three people Jesus healed in Mark 5 have something else in common—their ritual uncleanness. Living among the dead in the burial caves made the demoniac unclean. Since pigs fed on the hillside near him, he also was unclean because of contact with them. Considering the demoniac’s wild behavior, he probably was soiled by his or the pigs’ feces or urine which also made him ritually unclean (as well as filthy). Jesus, however, didn’t see an unclean Gentile demoniac; he saw a child of God who desperately needed to be freed from Satan’s control!
While Jesus was on the way to Jairus’ home to heal the man’s daughter, He was approached by a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Because her bodily discharge made her ritually unclean, she was a pariah who shouldn’t have been out in public. Just by touching Jesus’ robe, she would have passed her uncleanness to Him but, rather than rebuke the woman for her action, He called her “Daughter,” commended her faith, and healed her.
While Jesus was speaking to the bleeding woman, messengers arrived to tell Jairus his daughter was dead. Undeterred, Jesus continued to the man’s home and went into the room where the dead girl lay. Even though He could raise the dead with just a word (as He did with Lazarus), Jesus deliberately held the child’s hand before telling her to get up. Although having direct contact with a corpse made Him ritually unclean, the moment He took her hand, she transformed from an unclean dead body into a living child.
Those weren’t the only times Jesus put His concern for people before ritual purity. He offered to go to the Roman centurion’s home to heal the man’s servant even though entering a Gentile’s home would make him ceremonially unclean. When Jesus returned to the Gerasenes, he had no qualms about laying hands on a Gentile deaf man. Perhaps the most shocking of Jesus’ actions is found in Mark 1 when a leper kneeling before Him asked to be made clean. In an amazing display of compassion, Jesus deliberately reached out and touched the man to heal him. Rather than being made unclean by the leper, the leper was made clean by Jesus’ touch!
Ritual impurity made people unfit to be in the presence of God. Although many of the things Jesus did would have made a normal Israelite impure, we never read of Him undergoing any sort of purification ritual. Jesus, however, wasn’t an ordinary Israelite. He didn’t need to be purified to enter into the presence of God; He was God! Rather than becoming polluted by touching the unclean, Jesus transformed their impurity to purity because His holiness was contagious! In the New Covenant, people’s purity no longer depends on external regulations; it now depends on the cleansing power of Jesus Christ. His purity is greater than our impurity! Thank you, Lord.
So then, my brothers and sisters, we have boldness to go into the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus. He has inaugurated a brand new, living path through the curtain (that is, his earthly body). We have a high priest who is over God’s house. Let us therefore come to worship, with a true heart, in complete assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. [Hebrews 10:19-22 (NTE)]
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In his letter to the Galatians, Paul refutes the message of those who preached that adherence to Jewish laws was required of all believers. His are harsh judgmental words from a man who never even walked with Jesus on earth. Why was Paul’s Gospel the definitive one rather than the one the Galatians heard preached by the Judaizers? For the first two chapters of his letter, Paul explains the source of his apostolic authority.
Of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, thirteen are attributed to the Apostle Paul. We know he wrote another letter to the Corinthians and the prolific letter writer probably wrote letters to believers in places like Damascus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, but these thirteen are all that remain. Considering Nero’s persecution of Christians, the violence during the Jewish revolt, and Domitian’s persecution of Jews and Christians, all of which happened before the end of the 1st century, it’s a wonder that any of Paul’s letters survived! God, however, saw to it that these thirteen ”God-breathed” epistles were preserved and became part of the Christian canon.
Whenever we play Yahtzee, my younger grands blow on the dice to ensure their good luck. Like Yahtzee, life often seems a game of chance where sometimes we’re lucky and sometimes we’re not. Luck, however, has nothing to do with it. For example, King Ahab seemed to have incredibly bad luck when a soldier randomly shot an arrow and accidently hit him right between the joints of his armor. In spite of appearances, however, that wasn’t because of Ahab’s bad luck. Before going into battle, God had pronounced the evil king’s doom through His prophet Micaiah.
By now, the visiting family has returned home; the jelly beans, Peeps, and chocolate eggs have been eaten; the Easter lily has wilted; the baskets and bunny décor are back in their boxes; and the hardboiled eggs are long gone. While Easter has been put away for another year, its message didn’t end with the resurrection.
There is a fancy term for how God the Son, Jesus, took on human form and yet remained God: hypostatic union. Sounding like why my socks cling to my t-shirts in the dryer, knowing the term doesn’t help us understand it. I’m not sure anyone can wholly comprehend how Jesus always existed and yet was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Mary, and became man. When pondering Christ’s incarnation, I can’t help but think of an old ad for Certs Mints. Since they were both a breath mint and a candy mint, their commercials ended with the catch phrase: “Certs is two, two, two mints in one!” Fully man and fully God at the same time, Jesus, like Certs, had two distinct natures in one.
Devotions of the Heart 