%20NEW.jpg)
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Why Holiness Matters with Dr Michael Allen
In this episode, Nate Claiborne talks with Michael Allen about the significance of holiness, not just as a theme in Leviticus, but as an important emphasis in the New Testament as well. They examine concept of holiness that threads through the sacrificial practices and the moral teachings of the holiness code. By shedding light on how these seemingly distinct sections of Leviticus are unified under the theme of holiness, they aim to deepen your understanding of what it means to live a holy life both as individuals and as a community.
The central focus is on a pivotal moment in Leviticus 10, a passage that’s been interpreted as thematic for the entire book. Here, they explore how Leviticus offers comprehensive answers to the nature of holiness, which Paul picks up on later in his letter to Timothy. Seeing the connections here allows us to understand the continuing importance of a book like Leviticus and to discover how a richer grasp of the holy can significantly impact our personal and communal life today.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, Nate Claiborne, and today I am with Michael.
Speaker 2:Allen. How are we doing, Mike? I'm doing great. We're on the other side of a storm, that's right. The sun is back out and we're continuing our journey through.
Speaker 1:Leviticus, that's right. Something like fall at least Florida fall is kind of in the air, that's right, enjoy it while it's here.
Speaker 1:About halfway through Leviticus. If folks have listened to the podcast so far this season last episode we had Damian talking with Dr Jay Sklar just getting into some of the details of Leviticus, and Mike, you and I have talked about strategies for reading Leviticus. We did that back in the spring, but today we're doing more of a big picture, kind of zoom out a little bit. We've had several weeks of focused on specific chapters, talking about sacrifices. This past Sunday Jason preached kind of the pivot in some sense, where it's finishing out the sacrificial section consecration of the priests and then we get to Leviticus, chapter 10. He kind of started us in that and that's kind of where we're landing today to just focus in on a verse there and then zoom out a little bit. So what are we going to look at today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you mentioned how there's a pivot point and this is something we'd mentioned in our first episode the idea that Leviticus does seem to come in two parts.
Speaker 2:This cultic, sacrificial direction on the one hand that sure sounds like it's for the professionals, mainly Yep and then this moral teaching, the so-called holiness code, that seems to address how all of us, personally and socially, lead lives of holiness. And on the face of it, you might think, well, that's a weird stitching together of two very different things and it's appropriate that we register a different feel to the text beginning and end. But I actually think there is a common theme, and it's one we do well to pay careful attention to, and the theme really is holiness. That, in and through the cultic and sacrificial teaching of the first part and then, obviously, through the holiness code, there really is this concern about how the Lord is holy and his people, therefore, are to be holy. Lord is holy and his people, therefore, are to be holy, and that's a term that is really familiar but familiar doesn't always mean that we perceive it faithfully or helpfully, does it?
Speaker 1:It feels like it is one of those Christian terms that I can use it in a sentence, but if you pressed me for a definition it'd be a little trickier to do that, and then my definition might not match your definition, and then you just get a whole bunch of different, not opinions, but something close to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I suspect we would allude to some common verbiage, some phrases and texts from scripture. But each of us also would have sort of bound up in that social mores from the religious community we've grown up in or from the resources we've relied on. We would have a whole lot of other amalgamations, not just biblical teaching, and that's understandable, but that also can be a real potential weakness. And so we do want to ask what does the Bible say and what does the Bible emphasize when the Bible talks about the holy? And fortunately Leviticus is the long answer to that question Later prophets and later apostles and Jesus himself, they'll be able to point back and to reference the holy or holiness, because in this text, across all its chapters, you really do have this careful definitional work being done, giving us a sense of what's at the core of the holy life or the holy person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good and I think we've talked in a lot of different ways about how people don't skip over Leviticus. But it's not a book people linger in and some of that might explain the disconnect of we know how to use this word. We're familiar with it in other contexts of scripture, but really having a robust definition of it can be kind of elusive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, to help us sort of appreciate this, what I'd love to do is draw attention to one passage here, at a pivot point in chapter 10, where holiness is addressed in a way that interpreters have suggested is really thematic for the whole book, that somehow this is just antiquated and sort of exotically interesting Old Testament teaching. We could see a similar emphasis in one New Testament passage in 1 Timothy, 4. So the passage in Leviticus I'd love to briefly read is in Leviticus 10, verse 10. And the Lord here is speaking to Aaron. This is just on the other side of Aaron's sons, nadab and Abihu, having been punished for their sin. And the Lord is addressing their father again at this point and he gives him something of a mandate or a calling for not just Aaron but the Aaronic priests in the years ahead. He says in verse 10, you are to distinguish between the holy and the common and between the unclean and the clean, and you're to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses. So there's going to be this instructional program that's going to carry on year after year, generation after generation. And verse 10 gives sort of its central element here Two distinctions Between the unclean and the clean and between the common and the holy, and I think, if we're honest, this is where a lot of people's view of holiness is not wrong but insufficient, because we can easily think that those two distinctions mean exactly the same thing.
Speaker 2:In other words, being holy means not being unclean. Yeah, but actually what we see here is there's one distinction within which there's still another distinction. We are called first to cleanness as opposed to uncleanness, but then there's a distinction between clean realities whether we're talking about clothing or spaces, or days or persons and we are called to holy cleanness as opposed to merely common cleanness. And appreciating that the holy adds something to the clean is really crucial here. It really underlines the idea that holiness is not just the absence of sin, it's the presence of devotion to the Lord. It's something positive, not merely the absence or negation of something wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when it's maybe in my understanding it's probably helpful to distinguish here too. Yeah, when it's it's maybe in my understanding it's probably helpful to distinguish here too, that clean. It does have elements of hygiene associated with it, but you're really thinking of being complete, or at least being functional, being ordered. So it has a whole range of things. It's not just that oh, there's dirt on that. It's not clean, it's, there's something more to it. And so you're, you're, you're helping us see that common things can either be clean or unclean. Holy things can't be divided in that same way.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and perhaps an analogy helps.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, I could have you over to my house, say, on two occasions, and on one occasion we're going to sit in the backyard on the porch, I'm going to grill burgers, and you're not going to be shocked if I hand you a paper plate with a hamburger, with some fruit, with some french fries on it.
Speaker 2:It fits the circumstance. On the other hand, we might have an occasion where we're celebrating some particular moment. It could be a big birthday, it might be somebody's upcoming wedding, and if I'm hosting a dinner, you'll probably expect a different setup and we'll be at the dining room table and my best plateware, my best silverware, is going to be used. And you would be shocked if I use the paper plates when we're all dressed up in our finest. We know there are different occasions of the common and the special, but in both cases we expect cleanness, wholeness, right? It's not only on the celebratory and festive occasion that you expect a clean plate. Even when we're using paper plates out on my back porch, you still expect me to hand you a clean plate, right?
Speaker 1:These are left over from the last party. Yeah, you're going to look at me awry if it's looking scraped up and sort of sprayed on.
Speaker 2:We expect cleanliness as a basic sort of baseline parameter. We appreciate that there's a distinction, nonetheless, between common and specially devoted times, things, places and persons. Devoted times, things, places and persons. And what we see here is God, through Aaron, inviting us not merely to the baseline reality of being made clean and whole, but to this higher notion of being specially devoted to the Lord.
Speaker 2:And it's important to remember, leviticus is very much a midpoint for the Pentateuch, and the Pentateuch really is going to end with this great call in Deuteronomy 6. You know, hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. You shall therefore love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and strength In that great call. It's a reminder that all of us, every facet of us to its fullest, is meant not merely to be turned from sin but to be given over in loving devotion to God Almighty. And that's very much what Leviticus 10.10 is signaling in its own tone and way. This idea, yes, we're to turn from other things, from things that would render us being incapable of being in the Lord's presence, but we're further to incline ourselves to devote ourselves to the Lord specially.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like there's a two-step process that's happening here of they need to follow all these regulations for the sacrifices, they need to follow all of these regulations for behavior so that they would be clean rather than unclean. But then the purpose of being clean is to then be set apart for special service to the Lord, not just to revel in. Oh, we're not unclean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And we can, of course, again think, well, okay, this is really fascinating stuff and I'm glad Aaron got some instruction, because apparently his sons were not doing so well and so they sorted things out and that's great. Historically, we can easily think this is still cultic and sacrificial and very antique and and not terribly applicable to Christians.
Speaker 1:This side of the coming of Jesus Christ, right I mean we think of even the stuff we've been through up to this point. It's like, well, it's good that we understand what these sacrifices were for, but I'm glad I don't have to bring an animal with me to church every Sunday to make my own sacrifice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that's there and then. This is here and now.
Speaker 2:I think if we actually look at the New Testament in light of this basic distinction that God calls us to both cleanness and holiness, we can actually see the apostles call us to this in our own day. So in 1 Timothy 4, paul the apostle is speaking to a younger pastor, timothy, serving the church in Ephesus, and Ephesus at this point is a pretty happy place. I mean, when Paul writes the letter to the Ephesians, it's the only letter where there's not yet a crisis to be addressed. But in 1 Timothy 4, paul speaks ahead and he warns about a danger coming, and this is what he says in those first six verses. He says Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teaching of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth, for everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving, for it's made holy by the word of God and prayer. So Paul's warning about what we might call a Gnostic danger coming up, this idea that there are going to be folks who come and it sounds like they're not going to be sincere, they're going to be working their own agenda, but apparently they're going to be tempting. And what might be tempting to some there in Ephesus some that Timothy pastors is this idea that they're going to say serious spirituality involves giving up food and drink and sex and marriage, and for a lot of reasons you can see how that might sound appealing to Christians. It sounds close enough to the truth and there's enough verses that if you take them out of context you might think this is the way of the Spirit and walking in step with the Spirit.
Speaker 2:And so Paul's. He's taking this seriously as a real threat that could lead people away, but he's not taking it seriously as a valid claim, and he offers an argument against it. He says look, god created these things. They're to be received with thanksgiving. In other words, they're clean, not unclean. But notice, that's not where he stops. He isn't content to say, hey, god made food and drink, sex and marriage were God's idea. Therefore, no problem.
Speaker 2:He presses on there and he says they're not to be rejected if they're received with thanksgiving, for they are made holy by the word of God in prayer. In other words, though the things in themselves are not sinful and unclean, they still need to be made holy or sanctified. And they are made holy by being received as the gifts of God, in gratitude, as being directed by the word of God in its teaching and in being really sort of taken up in the receptive posture of prayer. As the children of God, we lead lives as beings who need food and drink and enjoy them. We lead lives as those who are called to marriage in so many cases, and are going to be able to enjoy that calling, not simply by avoiding sin, but by pursuing holiness in how we eat and drink, holiness in how we live married and sexual lives. This is another reminder that we're called not merely to avoiding sin, but to pursuing devotion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. That's a really significant distinction, it seems like, because it would be easy to look at some of these things and say, well, gluttony is a problem, therefore we need to curb eating, as opposed to yeah, gluttony is a problem, but that's also potentially solved a much better way. By the way, that you reorient yourself to the food that you're eating and it's received with Thanksgiving, and we could say I would yourself to the food that you're eating and it's received with thanksgiving, and we could see I would apply to the other things as well yeah, and you know, I think in lots of ways we can say we often reduce the pursuit of christian growth and faithfulness as though we're we're playing a game of risk management and we're simply trying to avoid sin.
Speaker 2:We view ourselves and others often predominantly by what we're tempted by. That's evil, and so we're trying to basically game out and manipulate. How can I avoid undue trial and temptation? How can I experience accountability and so forth such that I don't go the sinful way? That's not wrong, that's just insufficient right. What we see here is there's a positive vision. God wants us to take joy in being devoted to him. God wants us to have purpose, to take joy in being devoted to him. God wants us to have purpose, not merely concern about faltering, but purpose in actually walking after the ways of the Lord. And so there is what we might call a remarkable positive vision of Christian growth. Here there's a parallel.
Speaker 2:Back in the 1990s a number of psychologists observed that thus far in the 20th century, for all its growth in discussion of psychological realities in various waves of scholarship and theoretical analysis, it was all focused predominantly on disorder. Where are ways we go awry and how do we understand that? Sort of the hymnal was a diagnostic manual of disorder, and psychologists said we need a positive vision, and so they began speaking of so-called positive psychology. What goes into a life that's healthy and well-lived, to a life that's healthy and well-lived, I think in an analogous fashion, we often simply reduce the notion of holiness to trying to avoid disorders, sin, temptation, evil and corruption. That's a crucial part of our experience, because as individual persons and as a society, you know, we can say with Scripture I'm a man of unclean lips and I come from a people of unclean lips, and that's true.
Speaker 2:So we need to be candid and honest, and that doesn't go away when you're a Christian. But that's not all we should say. We should also say God's calling us, and still calling us in Christ, to a life of devotion, to a life of love, to a life that is genuinely marked by holiness, not merely sinlessness, and we'll never reach that completely, but we really are given the great gift, the side of the resurrection in, as Eugene Peterson would put it, practicing resurrection and pursuing holiness and growing up in Christ in every way. And so we want to be very clear about that full vision of holiness, and that's why, of course, leviticus has to talk about both atonement and other offerings, has to talk about both atonement and other offerings that give the full range of holiness to us, as well as a moral life, not merely of what we avoid but what we give ourselves to, and so we can see holiness in all its elements really being implicit across the whole of Leviticus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and some of it. As you're talking there, I'm thinking like, well, yeah, that really cuts against the common notion that submitting yourself to holiness means just having no fun in life. Would you cut out all the things that might be fun just because those could go off the rails and we need to pursue holiness. So we're going to do this, but we're not going to spend too much time in our sermon series. But it's instructive that the latter parts of Leviticus are outlining all the feasts and the festivals and the celebrations. Parts of Leviticus are outlining all the feasts and the festivals and the celebrations, and it's not just this life of come, make your sacrifices and make sure you don't sin, and that'll make you holy. It's, yeah, a holy people lives a certain type of way and it is being fully human and joyful, and but it's doing it in a certain orientation.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you could say that every week, as a community, we at New City, like so many Christians before us and around us across the globe, we experience this in that every week, before we hear God's word, we confess our sins together and we turn from the uncleanness, from the sin and from the corruption that each of us struggles with and all of us bear together. And then, on the far side of hearing God's word and of Christ ministering to us, we're, week by week, invited to the table, and there really is that positive vision as well of how we're called to the devotion of dependence and the provision of God's presence. And so we do get a rich experience of holiness in both its respects, even in the rhythms of our weekly liturgy, which hopefully set the sort of rhythms of each of our days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think we use the language of we're called together to be formed and we're formed to be sent, and so there's this formative element that is happening every Sunday at Sunday worship for a purpose that's outside of our Sunday worship gathering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so folks will realize that we typically whichever of us is preaching we follow by prompting reflection, and I think one thing that we could all be reflecting on as we listen our way through and, hopefully, are reading up on Leviticus this fall together would be reflecting on the question to what extent is my pursuit of holiness predominantly running away from sin and to what extent do I need to further think of running, by God's grace, toward a life that he describes, a life of devotion, of love, of fullness and of mission, of love, of fullness and of mission. And we can use that as a basic rubric, day by day, week by week, season by season, for self-assessment and hopefully inviting the Lord to make clear to us where we need to give thanks for growth that's happened where we need to confess and repent forward and where we would prayerfully long to see God grow, each of us personally and all of us as a congregation and people.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, that even underscores we could have gone to a different place in Paul and just the way he talks about put off, put on. You can't just put off avoiding sin, you're going to put on something else. You can't just put off avoiding sin, you're going to put on something else. And so you could just pursue the put on element of that of pursuing holiness, and that will force you to put off these other things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so if folks want to meditate on that, they could not only be reading the second half of Leviticus, they could also be looking at Colossians 3, at Ephesians 4 and 5, at Galatians 5 and 6, at these texts where Paul does invite that double movement that you suggested of putting off what's old, putting on what's new and what belongs to us in Christ. Those will each be texts that will give us plenty to provoke prayerful, repentant, hopeful thought about what lies ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, yeah, spending time in the second half of Leviticus, those chapters in Paul you mentioned. You've written on these topics as well. I think you've been drawing on that as you've been talking here. I don't. If people really want to, they can dig into your sanctification book. We can put a link to that in the show notes. Are there other resources that you might recommend?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for the true glutton, they can read my big book creatively titled Sanctification. For folks who want something a little more humane, you could read my colleague Sinclair Ferguson's little book Devoted to God. Oh yeah, and it's a wonderful sketch of biblical holiness and in particular this idea of devotion to the Lord being set apart, the basic meaning of holiness being set apart specifically to God.
Speaker 1:We've talked about this this whole time and I think I wanted to underscore that as we end and I keep saying underscore, but that's fine the the devotion element. So when we think of being set apart or devoted to, I think having we might have a cleaner definition, no pun intended, of devotion. When you think about being devoted to someone or something, it's like okay, well, even if I can't define that in so many words, I feel like I have an intuitive understanding of that and so linking that with holiness keeps holiness from being this general Christian concept that I could give. I could say, oh, I mean set apart, but then not have a clear sense of what does that actually mean? Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you want it to be set apart in a way that's obviously not unclean, not besmirched or corrupted. But you also want to be set apart in a way that's conducive and fitting to something you know. You think about equipment you might need or clothing you might need for various tasks. If you're going for a long hike, yes, you want shoes that are whole, they're clean, but if you're going for a long hike, you don't want just any whole shoes. Flip-flops won't do. Even sneakers probably aren't up to the task. You want some boots that are appropriate. If you're playing golf, a particular shot demands not merely a club that's intact, that's uncorrupted. You need the club that's actually fit for just that swing, just that particular kind of shot. So each of us in so many ways knows the importance of avoiding corruption on the one hand, but also having right fit or something that's set apart for a particular task and occasion on the other. And those are the two basic ways we can understand holiness here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good and I appreciate you taking time to talk us through these things, looking forward to second half of Leviticus kind of. I mean, yeah, we're right. We're right at the pivot point. So the rest of our time this fall with Leviticus and really meditating on some of these deep truths and having a greater understanding of holiness. So any final words for us, mike.
Speaker 2:No, we've. We're at a pivot point, but we've still got the majority of the series to come, so lots still ahead. That's exciting and wonderful. Um, we've covered so many big ideas, but I think people find that as much as they prayerfully prepare to hear and as much as they follow up by meditatively searching out the scriptures Leviticus itself, but also later apostles reflecting back on it I think we'll all find there's so much more for us to wonder over and to rejoice in.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll look forward to that.
