Links for today’s readings:
Read: Leviticus 20 Listen: (4:18) Read: Acts 16 Listen: (5:53)
Scripture Focus: Leviticus 20:7
Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God.
Reflection: Our Role in Holiness
By Erin Newton
What part do we play in holiness? As Christians, we are accustomed to crediting our holiness to the work of Christ imparted to us in faith. Are we holy in and of ourselves? No.
“Consecrate yourselves,” Leviticus 20 says. Consecration means devoting oneself to God. It is the act of separating oneself from that which is “secular.”
Child sacrifice, sexual license, and dietary restrictions—these three categories include the death penalty as a result in most cases. And these practices reflected the culture around them. God, here, describes ways to be different and be devoted.
From the way they worshiped to their intimate relations to the foods they consumed—in short, every part of life was to be consecrated to God.
Consecrating everything would be a lot easier with a long list of do’s and don’ts. Or so we think. The list here is lengthy but not comprehensive.
On top of that, some laws were seemingly rejected with Christ. Separate clean and unclean food? God tells Peter, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10.15). The death penalty for adulterers? Even Jesus sends the crowd away and raises no stone against the woman in John 8.
Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but he certainly understood its purpose better than we do. “Be holy” appears throughout Leviticus, nestled among commandments. It serves as a prelude to the whole litany of commands in chapter 19. It is the core truth among a myriad of rules.
We still live under the call, “Be holy as God is holy” (1 Peter 1.16), but we don’t have to worry about eating ham or keeping a pet lizard. Those rules are easily dismissed today. Yet we shudder at the mention of child sacrifice or many of the sexual practices listed in Leviticus 20.
How, in the twenty-first century, do we consecrate ourselves to God? Sometimes we’d like to reduce our faith down to a laundry list of do’s and don’ts, especially if we can check boxes and point out others’ shortcomings. But no list in the universe would be adequate to achieve our own feeble participation in holiness. In a pursuit of consecrating ourselves via ticking boxes, we’ve merely adopted legalism as our plan of salvation.
As we learn to consecrate our lives in a modern world, may we pray for wisdom to know the difference between being devoted and being legalistic.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
With my whole heart I seek you; let me not stray from your commandments. — Psalm 119.10
– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.
Read more: Testify to Ultimate Healing
Christ touches us before we are healed, while we are sinners, while we are his enemies. He does not inspect us for righteousness, but imputes it to us.
Read more: The Sojourn of Sanctification
Sin’s chains are struck from our hands in an instant, but it takes time…for the chains of an enslaved mindset to be melted from our hearts.
