The Purity Laws - What In the World?!

Come Out And Be Clean

“If a woman conceives and bears a male child she shall be unclean seven days.” Leviticus 12:2

If a person has a swelling on their skin and it is leprosy, “When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.” Leviticus 13:3
“When any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge in unclean.” Leviticus 15:1

Leviticus chapters 11-15 are commonly referred to as the Purity Laws. What in the world is this all about? This has to be the strangest portion of scripture around? Could there really be a point?

Of course, and it is a powerful one, and one that is applicable for us today.

I must be getting older because I remember things in my childhood that are so different from today. My parents used to just let me and my brother roam the neighborhood. They would tell us when to be home and if we weren’t back by then, it was trouble. But, then we did what we wanted. Most of the time it involved sports.
One Saturday we were out with a bunch of friends and made it to the local soccer field. It started pouring down rain, and we happened to have a football. We had all the ingredients for a great time. We played football for a little while in the mud, but that quickly changed to a sliding match in the mud. It ended when one of our friends slid on a rock and sliced up his knee.

So it was time to go home and we made it back to the house and were about to go inside when mom saw us. We were covered head to toe with mud. We were absolutely filthy. There was no way my mom was going to allow us dirty boys into her clean house.

Clean and unclean. That is what this section of Leviticus is about. There are a lot of details in these chapters but they are all pointing to this vivid lesson of clean and unclean. It is about separation. They were to be a clean people, not unclean. They were to separate themselves from the unclean, they were to separate themselves from the world around them.

That Saturday afternoon as me and my brother were walking home, anyone who saw us knew that we were dirty. It was plain to see, there was no mistake, the mud was clearly visible. The point of this distinction in Leviticus is similar. . If you are one of God’s people, if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, if He is your Lord, you will display a distinction from the world around you. He has made us clean, and we need to display that in our lives.

"For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”" (Leviticus 11:44-45, ESV)