The Principle Task of the Christian Priesthood (Part II)
How modern believers are bringing sin into the Church by failing to discern the clean from the unclean
This newsletter is part II of a two-part series on the modern Church’s failure to represent God aright by discerning clean from unclean practices. Part I can be found here.
The newsletter before you is the most important we have published to date. It represents a pivot point in the case we have been building.
In recent letters, we have used a key incident in the life of Moses (see here and here) and the example of the Levitical priesthood (see here) to explore two topics in great detail: (1) the holiness of God and (2) our calling as God’s people to be holy as He is holy (Leviticus 11:44, 11:45, 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16). We will wrap up our study of the second topic in the present newsletter before switching gears toward the end.
The reason we have gone to such great lengths in emphasizing these subjects is because, despite their critical importance, today’s Christians are simply not being taught these things anymore. God, we are told (either implicitly or explicitly), is less uptight than He was in former days thanks to a covenant of grace that drastically lowered the bar for acceptable behavior among His people.
Because of this mindset, believers nowadays are practicing things that no Christian should be caught dead doing, and they are doing so without even giving their actions a second thought.
Can we all agree that the world is being held captive to do the will of the deceptive, seducing spirits that now possess it (1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 2:26)? If so, then we need to get wise to the fact that these same spirits are exerting their influences in the lives of Christians, blinding us to our own deceptive, self-destructive deals with the Devil. We are bringing God’s judgment on both ourselves and our nation and we are not even aware that we are doing it! If we do not snap out of the spell we are under, and fast, then we are in deep trouble. If we claim to have received Christ as Savior but reject Him as Lord by insisting that we can remain in the sins we will be pointing out below, then what further sacrifice for sin remains for us (Hebrews 10:26, 27)?
After applying the principles of the priesthood to today’s believers, this piece will turn to identify what we are calling the Top Seven “Christian” Practices That Are Bringing God’s Judgment on the American Church, which we will tackle in turn in future installments of this newsletter (see the “Seven practices bringing God’s judgment” section below, which we are also publishing simultaneously with this piece as a separate, stand alone piece here). We are sounding the alarm on these unclean practices and our message is loud and clear:
REPENT!
In putting our finger on these issues, it is not our goal to start a fight or to merely make you feel bad about yourself. These are serious times we are living in! We can no longer afford to keep silent just to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. We cannot continue shouting “Peace, peace!” when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14b). We feel duty-bound to perform the loving, but hard task of warning our fellow Christians of what we believe to be our fatal blind spots as a people. If we in the Church refuse to admit the role we are playing in contributing to the decline all around us, and do not correct course immediately, then it may be too late for us.
A fork in the road is before us now. One way is narrow, one broad, one heavily trafficked, one often terribly lonely, one easy, one impossible apart from God, one leads to life, the other, to death (Matthew 7:13, 14). As for us, we say “Choose life, that you and your children might live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19b:).
Father, as zealous priests, give us the courage to stand for your honor and avert the plagues besetting us, your compromised people (Numbers 25:1-3). Pierce our hearts with the sword of Your word (Luke 2:35; Acts 2:37; Hebrews 4:12; Revelation 19:15) and call us back to You, our first love (Revelation 2:4, 5). For Jesus’ sake, amen.
“A royal priesthood, a holy nation”
We know from the lives of Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, as well as many others in scripture, that the priestly task of representing God is a weighty, even risky responsibility. It is a perilous priesthood that God has called us to.
And yet God never intended the duties of a priest to be confined exclusively to one small group of people. All believers are called to live out a priest-like calling before God. Protestants refer to this concept as “The priesthood of all believers” and it is taught in the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation.
At creation, God gave Adam priestly duties to perform in God’s original temple, the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2).
When God established the Old Covenant with the Hebrew people, He called them to be a unique priestly nation that would minister to the whole world (Exodus 19:5, 6a, emphasis mine):
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
After Christ instituted the New Covenant, the Apostle Peter applied the very same description that God had earlier used for the nation of Israel to the gentile believers in his day (1 Peter 2:5, 9, emphasis mine):
“you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. […] you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
This theme is picked up at the end of the Bible in the revelation given to the Apostle John, where he tells us of the song the twenty-four elders sing in God’s throne room in heaven (Revelation 5:9b, 10, emphasis mine):
“Worthy are You to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain, and by Your blood You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
In spite of this high calling, most Christians in America today live indistinguishably from their unbelieving neighbors. Our lives contain a toxic mixture of clean and unclean ideas, speech, and habits. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6a).
It is only by accepting what God accepts and rejecting what He rejects that Christians can fulfill their calling to be a holy people that leads the world into true worship of the true and living God—only a holy people can point an unholy world to a holy God (Deuteronomy 4:5-8; Ezekiel 37:24, 27, 28).
As we have seen, there is a steep price for offering unauthorized sacrifices to God: “let us offer to God acceptable worship, with fear and reverence, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28b, 29). If the ultimate act of worship is to offer up our very lives to God as holy, living sacrifices (Romans 12:1), then we must purge them of the defiling taint of disobedience that renders them unacceptable. If we do not distinguish the clean from the unclean, we will end up adopting practices that will leave us as dead and lifeless as Nadab and Abihu’s limp bodies after they were consumed by God’s holy fire.
“Touch no unclean thing”
When we hear of the social stigma attached to leprosy in many ancient cultures, our hearts go out to the poor souls who suffered from that condition, which we today know as Hansen’s disease. Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, leprosy can cause peripheral nerve damage, leading to a loss of the sense of touch (from the CDC):
“When loss of sensation occurs, injuries such as burns may go unnoticed. Because you may not feel the pain that can warn you of harm to your body, take extra caution to ensure the affected parts of your body are not injured.”
The crippling effects of this disease can leave their mark without causing even so much as a twinge of pain. This is how sin often operates in our lives: slowly and imperceptibly, like a creeping disease, it does its damage with our conscience none the wiser.
Though some today may think it cruel that God required leprous persons to shout the warning “Unclean! Unclean!” and to dwell alone outside the camp (Leviticus 13:45-46), God’s desire was to use this practice and others like it to train His people to rapidly identify and isolate sin.
Echoing God’s instructions in Deuteronomy (13:5, 17:7, 19:19, 21:21, 22:21, 24, 24:7), Paul told the Corinthian Christians to cast out of the camp (so to speak) any professing brother or sister who openly flaunted God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 5:11-13). To justify this command, Paul appealed to the Passover feast instructions as practiced by Israel since the Exodus (1 Corinthians 5:6): “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”
Paul’s point was that tolerating the spiritual contagion of unrepentant sin in professing Christians endangers healthy members of the community by sending them the message that deadly sin is of no real threat to them. This lie then emboldens them to let their guards down and catch the disease. “Oh it’s just the sniffles. Come on in and enjoy the potluck!” And so the disease becomes an outbreak.
To further bolster his point, Paul reiterates the Old Testament command not to touch anything unclean, as well as related teachings (quoting from, in order of citation, Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 32:38, Ezekiel 37:27, Isaiah 52:11, Ezekiel 20:34, and 2 Samuel 7:14), in his follow-up letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 6:14-18, emphasis mine):
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make My dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty.”
If you repent and separate yourself from sin, then God will welcome you into fellowship (cf. Revelation 3:19, 20). As the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah to the priests of his day (Isaiah 52:11):
“Depart, depart, go out from there; touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her; purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the LORD.”
How far we fall short of this command in our day! American Christians are handling all sorts of unclean things, and we don’t even recognize it. And the reason for this is because most of us cannot even tell the difference between clean and unclean things in the first place—we have not been trained to do so.
Distinguishing good from evil
Christians often confuse unholy things for holy—our senses are dull (Luke 24:25; Romans 11:8; etc.) and our fork-tongued enemy is crafty (Genesis 3:1). As Israel’s priests knew, a patch of discolored skin that at first appeared innocuous could later develop into something truly destructive (Leviticus 13:1-46).
Infants will put their fingers into just about any opening and shove practically anything into their mouths because they have not been trained to distinguish between what is good for them and what is bad for them. To them, an ear canal is as good as an electrical outlet, a rattle as good as a roach motel.
This is what many American Christians are like: full grown and long in the faith, but often clueless to the dangers of what they are touching and swallowing (Hebrews 5:11-14, emphasis mine):
“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
This, in a nutshell, is the Biblical road map to maturing in spiritual discernment: Train your ability to distinguish good from evil by constant practice in accurately doing so.
Admittedly, this process does involve some trial and error. But over time, armed with the scriptures in your heart and years of experience under your belt, you will begin to see trouble coming from a mile away, instead of only recognizing it when you are face to face with it, or not at all.
Even Jesus, our “great High Priest,” “learned obedience” through the trials He endured, only His were without error (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12, 13; Luke 2:51, 52, 4:1-13; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:8).
The priests of today’s Church, however, bear more resemblance to those of Ezekiel’s day than to the Head of their order (Ezekiel 22:26, emphasis mine):
“Her priests have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.”
This is the sorry state of our contemporary priesthood and the lazy, laissez-faire Levites that comprise it. “Oh that one’s a real gray area,” they assure us. “There are sincere Christians on both sides of that debate. Who’s to say? The Bible doesn’t address it clearly, so we wouldn’t want to be too rigid or dogmatic. Just let your conscience be your guide.”
Cowards, the whole lot of them.
As in the days of Israel’s decline, God’s temple, in our case the Church, has fallen into disrepair due to the neglect of the priests (2 Kings 12:4-6). We have filled God’s dilapidated temple with detestable things (Ezekiel 8), and He will not stand for it.
We will not stand for it.
It’s time to cleanse the temple of Christ’s Body (John 2:19-21; 1 Corinthians 12:12, 27; Romans 12:4, 5; Colossians 1:18, 24) and its individual members (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20; 1 Peter 2:5) of this filth (Matthew 21:12, 13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45, 46; John 2:13–17).
Thus far in our letters, we have been patiently weaving together our whip of cords (John 2:15). Now, we start cracking that whip.
Whitewashing sin
It is easy to see that the world around us has gone completely off the rails, practically begging for God’s judgment. The signs that this judgment is already upon us are all around us (Leviticus 26:14-45; Deuteronomy 28:15-68). If you don’t recognize this, then you are either blind or not paying attention.
To illustrate this point, here’s a recent gem courtesy of the U.S. military: Doctors with the Department of Defense are now claiming that seven-year-olds are capable of electing to be injected with puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones that will “transition” them from little girls to little boys, and vice versa. Seven-year-olds!!! And they have the audacity to call this madness “gender-affirming care” (emphasis mine).
If you can’t see this for what it is, pure evil, then what we are about to share will be of little help to you.
Although most believers can spot the evil in the unbelieving world around them, what many Christians do not see is that we are complicit in aiding and abetting these sins and the judgments they bring by approving of and practicing the very same sins, albeit in their more presentable, less “in-your-face” forms. We may dress our versions of these practices up in the fig leaves of man-made religion, but God sees right through our flimsy disguises. Underneath are the very same shameful sins on account of which the wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience (Colossians 3:5-8).
Again, do not miss the point we are making here, because it is the punchline that we have been building to up to for all this time:
WE ARE DOING THE VERY SAME THINGS THE UNBELIEVING CRAZIES ARE DOING, ONLY THE TAMER, FAMILY FRIENDLY, “CHRISTIAN” VERSIONS OF THEM!
It’s us Christian! We’re the problem!
Sadly, this sort of deception is nothing new. Think about it: How could Jesus say of the squeaky-clean religious leaders of His day that they were like “whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27)? Was He engaging in hyperbole? How did their hypocrisy go unnoticed by so many?
The answer is simple: Because when the scribes and Pharisees committed adultery, murder, idolatry, and theft, they made it look good (Mark 7:13; Romans 2:17-24). They did not commit these sins as the unwashed masses did; only the antiseptic versions of these unclean practices would do for them. Like “unmarked graves,” you could walk right over these men and not know that you were brushing up against a defiling corpse (Luke 11:44; Leviticus 21:1-4, 11; Numbers 19:11-16).
In the same way, we in the American Church are whitewashing our sins, keeping up our sober appearances while inwardly becoming intoxicated (Ephesians 5:18). We have fallen for the old “tastes great, less filling” light beer marketing ploy, feeling good about ourselves for ingesting fewer calories, while getting just as hammered as our neighbors downing equally alcoholic regular beer. We are skinny drunks, proud of our figures while staggering headlong into judgment.
Seven practices bringing God’s judgment
Below is a list of what we here at the League of Believers believe to be the top seven practices that are bringing God’s judgment on the Church and our country. Although they now commonly pass for clean amongst respectable Christians, it is our contention that these practices are no different than the defiling, unclean practices that are so prevalent in the unbelieving world today.
In putting forward this list, our purpose is not to “bash the Church” or “beat up on God’s people.” We are not strutting around, all high and mighty, pointing out others’ sins. As we have stated before, these are not merely others’ sins; we too have been burned by these strange fires. We too are sinners, saved by God’s grace. But we will not let our failures stop us from warning our friends and family, our brothers and sisters in Christ, about these dangerous, deceptive practices.
We are not afraid to follow Jesus outside the camp to embrace the disgrace He bore (Hebrews 13:11-13). Following our Lord’s example (Ephesians 5:2), we are taking up our crosses and laying down our lives for the Church, for the people we love (Matthew 16:24; Luke 14:27; John 15:13).
In the words of the old hymn:
“I have decided to follow Jesus; no turning back, no turning back. Though none go with me, I still will follow; no turning back, no turning back. The world behind me, the cross before me; no turning back, no turning back.”
Here is our list of the Top Seven “Christian” Practices That Are Bringing God’s Judgment on the American Church:
Divorce and remarriage, that is, the violent tearing apart of a man and a woman (Malachi 2:16) that God has joined together for life in a “one flesh” marriage union by holy matrimony (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6; Mark 10:8, 9; Ephesians 5:31) in direct defiance of God’s commands not to do so (Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9) and the subsequent remarrying of divorced spouses to other persons while their original spouse is living, which the scriptures condemn as adulterous (Matthew 5:32, 19:9; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18; Romans 7:2, 3; 1 Corinthians 7:39; Hebrews 13:4), destructive of the family (1 Corinthians 7:10-16), and, worst of all, a grave misrepresentation of Christ’s love for His bride, the Church (Ephesians 5:21-33).
Birth control, that is, any method which either permanently or temporarily sterilizes the male or female reproductive organs to prevent God’s blessing of children (Psalm 127:3-5) from coming to fruition in direct contradiction to His commands to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28, 9:1, 7) for the production of godly offspring (Malachi 2:15), which the scriptures condemn as wicked (Genesis 38:8-10), being at most equivalent to, or at least akin to infanticide, depending on the method (Exodus 23:19b; Leviticus 20:2; Jeremiah 19:5).
Gender confusion, that is, the unlawful and disordered commingling of distinct gender traits and roles established by God in His creation of mankind as male and female (Genesis 5:2) as expressed in female behavior exhibited by men (effeminacy) and the rule by women in the place of and over men (matriarchy), which the scriptures condemn as gross perversions of God’s “very good” design for masculinity and femininity (Genesis 1:26-31) and attribute to the judgment and wrath of God against sin (Genesis 3:16; Isaiah 3:12; Romans 1:18-27).
Love of self, that is, a refusal to lay down one’s life and pay the cost of following Christ (Matthew 10:37-39; Luke 14:25-33; John 12:25; Revelation 12:11), but instead crafting all of one’s affairs according to one’s selfish preferences (James 4:2, 3), which the scriptures condemn as a denial of Christ’s lordship (Matthew 7:21), willful disobedience (Matthew 25:14-30; 2 Timothy 3:2), deception (James 1:22), and folly (Luke 6:46-49).
Love of money, that is, obedience to perceived financial demands over and against the will and commandments of God, which the scriptures condemn as evil (1 Timothy 6:10; 2 Timothy 3:2), idolatry (Matthew 6:24; Colossians 3:5), vanity (Proverbs 23:4, 5), presumption (James 4:13-17), self-indulgence (Luke 12:13-21, 16:19-31; James 5:1-6), and worldly preoccupation (Matthew 6:19-34, 13:22; Mark 4:19).
Porneia, that is, sexual immorality, which the scriptures uniquely condemn as a sin against one’s own body (1 Corinthians 6:18-20) that results in the judgment of God (Hebrews 13:4) and exclusion from the kingdom of heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:5; Revelation 22:15), especially as it is fueled by pornography, the great stumbling block of our time (Matthew 6:22, 23, 18:6-9, 24:12), which the scriptures condemn as adultery of the heart (Matthew 5:28) deserving of the fires of hell (Matthew 10:26-28, 18:9).
Pharmakeia, that is, any substance that prevents or distorts the normal, “very good” created functions of the body (Genesis 1:31) rather than encouraging or restoring them, which the scriptures condemn as an ungodly usurpation of God’s prerogatives as Creator (Genesis 1:1; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Revelation 4:11; etc.) and Sustainer (Acts 17:28; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3) of all things, a futile attempt to fulfill the serpent’s lie that man can “be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5b), and a mode of action analogous to, if not identical with the dark arts (Exodus 7, 8; 1 Samuel 15:23; Galatians 5:20; Revelations 18:23).
American Christians have been indulging in these practices for long enough. After several generations of running these experiments, the trial period is now officially over. The data is in: It’s a total, unmitigated disaster from start to finish, and we don’t even know the half of it.
We as believers must rise up as one and say “ENOUGH!”
IT IS TIME FOR US CHRISTIANS TO WAKE UP AND CLEAN UP OUR ACTS WHILE WE STILL CAN!
No more limping between two opinions (1 Kings 18:21); choose this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15)!
Him who has ears to hear us out
In the posts that follow, we will take these issues head on. We will be unsparing in our critiques, showing no mercy to these merciless practices. We will not be doing this out of a desire to attack anyone. Rather, we hope that by identifying these issues, and convincing our fellow Christians of their harms, we can turn from them and be of greater use in God’s temple as the holy vessels He has set us apart to be (2 Timothy 2:21).
Even if you are already offended and turned off by our list, we urge you to please hear us out. We believe we can provide sound scriptural arguments that Christians should not even go within a mile of handling these unclean things. Make no mistake about it: Our objective is to take each of these “options” off the table for Christians, once and for all, and to show that they never belonged there in the first place. If we are right, or are at the very least on to something, then it is imperative that you give us a fair hearing.
In presenting our arguments, we will not be reasoning with the spirit of the age (Ephesians 2:1-3) or the Christian’s old sin nature, but rather to the mind that is submitted to the Spirit (Romans 8:6). God has given each and every born-again believer the mind of Christ (2 Corinthians 1:21, 22; Philippians 2:5), and it is to this mindset that we will be making our appeals.
Jesus told it like it was and was known for His straight talk (Mark 12:14). He knew what was in men’s hearts and did not let them have power over Him (John 2:24). This will be our approach as well. There will be no ear tickling here friends (2 Timothy 4:3). Our aim is to please God (2 Corinthians 5:9), not man—no apologies (Galatians 1:10):
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Our top priority here to is defend the honor of our holy God against all comers. We are not ashamed of the simple (2 Corinthians 11:3), offensive (1 Corinthians 1:18-31) gospel of repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ, for it is the only message that can save us (Romans 1:16).
In the next series of newsletters, we are going to make our case against what we believe might very well be public enemy number one in the Church: divorce and remarriage.
Let him who has ears to hear, hear.
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