Keeping Faith In-Between Times
Our spiritual history reveals that we are nothing if not a forgetful people. We forgot our God's commands and made a golden calf to worship; we forgot Jesus' promised resurrection and fled when He was betrayed. We need reminders of our relationship with God and of His covenant with us. One of the most powerful reminders of God's covenant comes when we follow our Rabbi in the practice of holiness.
Being holy, meaning "set apart", was an essential aspect of the Old Covenant. In fact, the purpose of the Old Covenant, other than preparing us for the Messiah, was to make our ancestors a holy people. In Exodus 19:5-6, as God speaks through Moses to the people of Israel, He says, "Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."
The laws of the Old Covenant are many and various, regulating every aspect of the life of the people of Israel. And yet, far from being a burden, these very laws were God's gift to His people; for it was through obedience to God's commandments that His people were to be set apart from the rest of the world. Jesus, our Rabbi, perfectly kept the Law; but He also revealed that practicing holiness means being set apart for the purpose of entering in.
Dust of the Rabbi: Covenant Reminder - Practice Holiness
Many modern readers of the Old Testament divide the commandments in the Torah into two sections: moral laws and ritual laws. However, the Bible itself makes no such distinction. The purpose of both the moral commands and the "ritual" commands is the same - to make the people of Israel "holy" or set apart from the other people and nations of the world. These commands were a constant reminder to the Jews (including Jesus) that every aspect of their lives was part of their covenant relationship with the Lord, from worship to sex to money to clothing to food to daily work. We also need these reminders, for it is too easy for modern Christians to create a false separation between the "moral" and the "ritual."
Jesus Himself kept both the moral and ritual laws, but often used the holiness laws to reveal that true holiness comes from a relationship with Him rather than obedience to rules. This passage in Matthew 9:18-25 is an excellent example. Both the story of the woman with a discharge (Leviticus 15:19-20, 25) and the story of the dead daughter (Numbers 19:11-13) are instances where, under the Torah, Jesus would have been "ritually unclean" (for touching a bleeding woman and a dead body). Amazingly, instead of Jesus becoming unclean by touching them, they become clean by touching Him - even if it requires that they come back to life!
Jesus does not remove God's authority over our lives; rather, He gives meaning and purpose to our holiness. We practice holiness in our lives so that we can share it with those who need it most. In the Old Testament, uncleanness is a communicable disease. In the New Testament, cleanness is catching. Are you living the life of faith with enough holiness that you are infectious to those around you?
Extras:
Jesus does alter some of the Old Testament laws. For example, in Mark 7:14-23 Jesus explicitly frees us from obeying the Old Covenant's laws about dietary restrictions. However, this is not to suggest that what we eat does not relate to our life of faith! For the Christian, holiness means not avoiding "unclean" animals, but rather considering what we eat, where it comes from, how it is produced/raised, what it's effect on the earth and on other people is, etc. Consuming so much beef that rain forests must be clear cut (thereby damaging the air we breathe), using massive industrial farming that pushes small farmers out of business and utilizes dangerous chemicals, horrific mistreatment of livestock - are not these issues that we Christians should consider as part of our holiness each time we sit down to eat? Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our freedom from the Law's commandments is the false distinction we imagine between the parts of our lives that are relevant to God and those that are irrelevant. In Christ's kingdom, every aspect of our life is part of our relationship with God.