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August 6 - August 20, 2020
Moreover, behind all our perverse behaviour lies a far more scandalous and sinister crime: the dethroning of God.
Although atonement secures peace with God, it does not remove the stain of sin.
Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician.
No matter how much we may wish to forget past actions, our consciences do not let us rest in peace.
By consuming holy meat the people also become holy.
If eating holy meat sanctifies the ancient Israelites, the New Testament equivalent is the Lord’s Supper.
Each of the three elements of the Passover ritual contributes in a different way towards making people holy.
Like the original Passover sacrifice, his death atones for the sin of the people, his blood purifies and cleanses, and those who eat his body at the Lord’s Supper share in his holy nature.
All believers are saints, because each has been made holy by Christ.
New Testament writers present sanctification not as a process that occurs after justification but as something that coincides with justification.16 This view of sanctification is very much in keeping with the idea that the followers of Jesus form the temple of God. If they are corporately to be the dwelling place of God, they need to be holy.
Our hope rests not on what we can do to please God, but rather on what the Lamb has done for us.
By way of reflecting this, the book of Leviticus draws attention to three related categories: holy, clean/pure and unclean/impure. The existence of these three distinct categories is reflected in the layout of the Israelite camp. At the heart of the camp stands the tabernacle courtyard, a holy area. The rest of the camp is viewed as clean, and everywhere outside the camp is unclean.3 This same threefold pattern is mirrored in the status of the people linked to each region. The priests are holy, the Israelites clean, and the non-Israelites unclean.
These observations demonstrate that the book of Leviticus envisages a world in which people and places have differing degrees of holiness.
From these observations, it is apparent that holiness and uncleanness form a spectrum of closely associated categories. On the one side is holiness, in the middle cleanness and on the other side uncleanness (see the figure below).
For the ancient Israelites every person, object, place and period of time could be located somewhere on this holiness-to-uncleanness spectrum.
Holiness is the result of divine activity: it is God who sanctifies. This is reflected in the refrain ‘I am the LORD who sanctifies you’
Those made holy by God are expected to remain holy by doing nothing that will compromise their special status
While holiness comes from God, uncleanness emanates from the powers diametrically opposed to God.
First, certain forms of uncleanness or impurity arise as a natural consequence of being human.
Secondly, there are other forms of uncleanness that human beings have the power to control.
To be holy is to live in a way that reflects the moral perfection of God; it is to live a life marked by love, purity and righteousness, these being the three most important hallmarks of perfect behaviour.
Since the Holy of Holies is a microcosm of the cosmos, the presence of the Decalogue within the ark underlines that God is the one who determines the moral order of the universe.15
the Old Testament repeatedly draws attention to the failure of the Israelites to live according to these standards.
In the light of this, the book of Ezekiel looks forward to a time when God will put his Spirit within his people, transforming their hearts and enabling them to live by God’s statues:
Holiness of life is to be the ambition of every believer.
As God’s presence made the tabernacle holy, so too the presence of the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers as they become part of the temple of God.
While the moral order associated with the Old Testament tabernacle and temple continues unaltered into the New Testament temple, regulations associated with the Levitical priesthood become redundant.
The reference here to ‘a change in the law’ indicates that the regulations associated with the Levitical priesthood were no longer in force once the church became the new temple of God.
As Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9–16 indicates, the clean and unclean foods were intended to distinguish Jews from Gentiles.
A natural extension of the belief that God is holy is the idea that holiness means wholeness or perfection. To be holy is to be unblemished or unmarred; it is to be complete, perfect, whole.
Everything associated with the tabernacle is part of a grand visual illustration. The Israelites viewed the Holy of Holies as a mini-cosmos. As a model of the earth the arrangements for the tabernacle reflect what the earth will be like as God’s dwelling place. This is true regarding the instructions for the priesthood. Those who would dwell in God’s presence must be perfect, without defects of any kind.
Implicit in all of this is the expectation that the future restoration of human beings to a holy state on a renewed earth will be accompanied by a restoration of our bodies to full capacity and strength. We shall be made whole physically, as well as morally. These instructions regarding the priests remind us that holiness and wholeness go together. To be holy is to be whole.
When Jesus heals, it is not just simply about showing off his divine power, like a magician, in order to impress and win converts. Rather, it is about restoring people to the holy status Adam and Eve enjoyed before sinning.19
Holiness and wholeness go together.
No one will grow frail by becoming old in the New Jerusalem. Citizens of the new earth will experience and enjoy both wholeness of body and longevity of life. They will have a quality of life unrestricted by disability or disease. To live in the New Jerusalem is to experience life in all its fullness and vitality. It is to live as one has never lived before. It is to be in the prime of life, for the whole of one’s life.23
While every inhabitant of the present earth is subject to the effects of an environment cursed by God, the Bible contains various passages that anticipate a time when the natural order will be wonderfully transformed.
All of these passages describing a transformed environment look forward to a time when nature and humanity will be in harmony as God originally intended.
In the last days, the nations will flock to Jerusalem to learn about Yahweh and his ways (Is. 2:2–3; cf. Zech. 8:20–23; Mic. 4:1–2). As they come, they bring the scattered children of Israel with them (Is. 60:2–9). In an amazing reversal, the nations submit to Israel (v. 14), bring their wealth into the city (vv. 11–22) and join in the worship of Yahweh, whose people they have now become. Thus the prophet’s admonition, ‘Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth’ (Is. 45:22), is fulfilled. Significantly, this ingathering of Gentiles is depicted as an eschatological event, effected by
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The theme of God’s temple-city being filled with different nations and peoples continues through into the New Testament.
If our Christian hope involves sharing the New Jerusalem with people from every nation, this should have a profound influence on how we view people from other nations and races. We ought to respect foreigners and distance ourselves from xenophobic attitudes. Racism should have no place in the Christian church. In line with this, the aspirations of the church should never be equated with those of a political cause or party that promotes national self-interest. Whatever sense of patriotism we may have, it must never cause us to despise or hate those from other nations.
By drawing attention to the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, John’s vision of the New Jerusalem emphasizes the intimate relationship and continuity that exist between them. Both Old Testament tribes and New Testament apostles contribute to the construction of the New Jerusalem.
although the New Testament introduces important new developments, these build upon what is revealed in the Old Testament. We cannot understand the New Testament church, founded by the apostles of Jesus, without seeing how it links to the beliefs and practices of Old Testament Israel.
As our study has revealed, the New Jerusalem is a natural extension of all that has been revealed in the rest of the Bible. We have traced its origins back to the opening chapters of Genesis. At that stage God created human beings in his image in order that they would fill the earth and extend the boundaries of Eden to encompass the whole earth. Although Adam and Eve’s rebellion endangered this project, God has graciously sought to rescue human beings from Satan’s control in order to bring to completion his plan for the world. The New Jerusalem marks the triumphal conclusion of this process.
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As we have noted, the whole of the Bible provides a basis for believing that after death we shall eventually dwell in the New Jerusalem. This hope is vital. It brings us comfort and reassurance in the face of death. It helps us deal with the trauma of losing a loved one. It is a rock to cling to in the midst of life’s severest storms.
the book of Revelation as a whole provides visions of not one city, but two.
Whereas the New Jerusalem lies in the future and will be a city built by God,1 Babylon already exists.
We have to choose between being a citizen of this world’s godless Babylon or a citizen of God’s future New Jerusalem.
John vividly contrasts the faithlessness of the former with the faithfulness of the latter.
The portrait of Babylon as a prostitute, who entices men to commit adultery, clearly builds on these Old Testament passages that associate the attraction of evil with faithlessness towards God.
