Purity laws included not eating unclean animals (Leviticus 11), not eating or touching dead animals (Leviticus 11:29-31), quarantining mothers after childbirth and menstruating women (Leviticus 12:2; 15:19-24), and men with an abnormal discharge (Leviticus 15:2-15).
In the New Testament Jesus cleansed many people of their diseases, even touching some who had leprosy while healing them. When certain Pharisees criticized the disciples for not performing ritual washing up to the elbows before eating, Jesus told them that it was not much use being fastidiously clean on the outside but dirty on the inside.
Luke 11:38-41 When the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that He had not first ceremonially washed before the meal. But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness. You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.”
They were known to give gifts to the poor but with fanfare. Jesus warns that their charity was from an unclean heart and they needed to be unclean inside. The same goes for religious acts. It’s no good performing an outward ritual purity washing when the heart is dirty.
In regard to clean and unclean meats, some have thought these were health laws, and they may have been in part. However, Peter’s vision highlights a different approach to dietary laws.
Acts 10:14-15, 28 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” … And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.
Many Christians now eat pork and shellfish, believing that because the gentiles are now acceptable to God, so previously unholy foods are now clean to eat. However, it is still unwise to eat food that died of itself, and most doctors would advise no sex for quite a number of weeks after childbirth.
It is the Church that must be made clean and cleansing comes through the word. Hearing the Bible preached and reading our Bibles at home is like taking a cleansing bath.
Ephesians 5:25-27 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
We are also cleansed through the blood of the Lamb. The spirit of the purity laws is summed up in the soul cleansing blood of Jesus.
Hebrews 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
In one way or another purity laws picture what only heaven can do, build a church that is holy and blameless.
