Audio Transcript
Welcome back! In the next two episodes, we’re going to talk about personal suffering. Suffering often feels meaningless. Suffering feels meaningless. “Feel” is the key word. But no matter how suffering feels to us, it is not meaningless. Not to Christians. That’s the topic for next Monday.
But if you’re reading with us today using the Navigator Bible Reading Plan, we’re in the thick of the second half of February with our reading of Leviticus. Leviticus is a difficult book, notorious for making many well-intentioned Bible readers give up at this time of year. But stick with it. It’s worth it. If you stick with it, tomorrow’s reading will take you to Leviticus 21:16-24. This is a difficult passage that will leave any Bible reader scratching their head and asking, “Why did God avoid disabled people in the Old Testament?” One such Bible reader is a listener named Gina.
“Hi Pastor John. I am reading Leviticus for my Bible reading plan. What confuses me is why in Leviticus 21:16-21 God would not allow the disabled to approach the altar. The tone changes dramatically in the Gospels where Jesus, the true temple, receives the blind, lame and sick into His very presence. So why would the God of the Old Testament not allow them to approach the altar? It seems sad to me and would increase their suffering. They would have felt even worse and probably experienced social marginalization as well. I am grateful for the New Testament because there are many people with disabilities. But why is there this disconnect? To what end?”
That’s a good question. Leviticus 21:16-24 talks about whether a priest who has a physical disability or deformity can enter the sanctuary and perform the priestly work. Although this is about the priests, her question is still very valid. Gina is right, in fact, if a priest who had a facial defect, or a crushed genitalia, or a wounded leg, or a bent back, or scabbed skin, was barred from some of the priestly duties, some, if not all, would probably be saddened, discouraged, or indignant. That would be a normal human response, at least in our culture. We certainly do. And I think that’s pretty basic to human nature.
“Through Jesus Christ, God has provided a way for us to attain the perfection needed to draw close to Him.”
Gina asks, “Why does God have such external restrictions on the clergy in the Old Testament, but not the same kind of restrictions in the New Testament, because we don’t envision the same exclusionary effect?” I would like to give an answer that I think respects the intent of both the Old and New Testaments, because both are the inspired Word of God, and I think what God did was right at the time and He had reasons for doing it. But such significant things have changed that it may not be right for us to do it today. But let’s look at the key passages. There are foundation clauses that help clarify the issue.
A perfect God, a spotless sanctuary
Below is Leviticus 21:16–24, with a few verses omitted. I have collapsed it so that the verses are visible.
“No man of the descendants of Aaron the priest that has a blemish shall come near to offer the food offering of the Lord; he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God, because he has a blemish…He shall not go through the veil, or come near the altar. [and our ears should perk up] He has his flaws [in order] lest he defile my sanctuary, [Yahweh] The Lord who sanctifies them.
In other words, God is saying, “I will sanctify my priests and sanctify them for my service. I have ordained that no blemished priest will defile or pollute my sanctuary. I have decreed, ordained, and determined.” In other words, God wants to make the perfection of the sanctuary symbolically and visibly evident, establishing a correlation between the transformation of the bodies and the transformation of the sanctuary. Or, to put it another way, God is asserting a correlation between the perfection of those who approach the sanctuary and the perfection of the sanctuary itself, which is a reflection of God’s own perfection.
It is quite possible that the most pious priest, or even the most humble and ugly priest, would not be offended by this divine order, but would gladly acknowledge that those who approach a perfect God deserve to be free from imperfection, both outward and inward. So in this respect, I see nothing inherently wrong with God’s commandments in the Old Testament.
Perfect holiness, abundant grace
The question is, what is its ultimate meaning, especially in relation to the changes in the New Testament? Here is my answer:
Throughout the Bible, there are two aspects of God’s nature that shape His dealings with humans. One is inaccessible holiness. This is one great truth throughout the Bible. God is holy. Sinners cannot approach God. Imperfect things cannot approach God. The wicked cannot approach God without being destroyed. So it stands to reason that only moral, mental, and physical perfection can exist before God. That means, of course, no one fits the qualifications. Not that some of these priests were perfect. The other aspect of God’s nature is an abundance of mercy and grace.
These two, then, are inaccessible holiness and an abundance of mercy and grace, which find a way to reach out to those who are physically, morally, and spiritually imperfect and to declare them perfect in Jesus Christ. But the resolution of these two aspects of God’s nature is not that the first is replaced by the second; that holiness is dulled and becomes less important because mercy is now primary. No, it doesn’t. As if the doctrine of justification by faith alone were sufficient to create new heavens and a new earth in which God is present in justified sinners without compromising His holiness. That doesn’t happen.
No, God also promises to make all things perfect before Him forever by sanctification and by recreating all that is broken – the physical aspects of the world and the moral aspects of the world. Not only justified sinners will be before God, but sin will be absent before God. No one will sin before God. There will be no moral or physical imperfections before God in the world to come.
Perfect forever
So I think God emphasized the requirement of outward perfection in the Old Testament to make it really clear that no form of imperfection will stand in His way forever, because He is that holy.
One day God is going to justify the ungodly and not only be willing to touch the leper, but actually reach out and touch the leper, not only touch the leper’s flesh Himself, but completely transform the ungodly into sinless and godly people, removing all leprosy, all disease, all disability, all impediments. So it seems to me that the Old Testament and the New Testament make both of these aspects of God’s character clear by putting the emphasis in different places.
“We need the Old Testament to remind us how holy God is, and we need the New Testament so we don’t despair.”
The Old Testament was, so to speak, standing on tiptoe, looking out into the future horizon, waiting and wondering how God could create a people where all people could come before Him with boldness. And God put such incredible limitations in the Old Testament. So, of course, the Old Testament makes this seem extremely difficult. I think that was the point. God wanted to make it seem like this could never happen. There’s no way an imperfect person could come in here. It’s never going to happen. God put such incredible limitations on it.
And the New Testament reveals the wonderful reality that God, through Jesus Christ, has provided a way for us to attain the perfection we need to approach Him now, and then He has provided sanctification, resurrection, and new physical and spiritual perfection through His Spirit in the life to come, so that we can be in His presence forever.
So, my conclusion is this: We need the Old Testament to remind us of how holy God is, and we need the New Testament to help us not lose hope that we can survive in the presence of such a holy God, much less enjoy Him forever.