Understanding Purity Culture Part 3- How Jesus Changed the Rules for Purity
In Leviticus, we see that it was the finite bodies of humankind that made them impure, different from God, and unable to approach God’s temple without rituals and cleansing. Jesus removed the need for rituals by existing as the infinite presence of God in the finite body of a human, as, “…in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). After not being allowed to enter God's presence during their monthly cycles for so long, a woman's body was the chosen vessel for Immanuel to come into the world and for salvation to come to us all. Immanuel, God with us, was birthed as an unclean human into an unclean environment, and from the moment he was born, he began making the unclean holy.
There was no ritual to preform before approaching or speaking to Jesus, and unlike the temple structures that had to be approached so carefully, the presence of God was now able to walk up to a common human, in human form. Jesus demonstrates this with the bleeding woman who touched his robe (Luke 8: 43-48). In Jewish culture Jesus would have been declared “unclean” because of the touch of a bleeding woman, but instead, the holiness and purity of Jesus healed the woman and made her clean.
The Woman at the Well
In John 4, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, in a manner that biblical scholars call a betrothal type-scene. The betrothal type-scene consists of specific circumstances in a specific order: the bridegroom journeys to a foreign land, he encounters a girl at a well, and either the girl or the man draws water from the well, then the girl runs home to tell her family about this stranger, and after he is invited to a meal at the family home, the betrothal is confirmed. In this situation, Jesus is the bridegroom and the Samaritan woman, represents the bride of Christ. Jesus was travelling through Samaria, a foreign land, and encounters the Samaritan woman and asks her to give him a drink from the well (John 4:3-8). Then, it is Jesus who offers her a drink, not of water from that well, but from living water of eternal life (John 4:10-14). When the woman asks for the water Jesus speaks of, he tells her to go get her husband, but when she says she has no husband, Jesus tells her that he knows of her five previous marriages, and of her current lover that is not her husband (John 4: 16-18).
Not only was this woman a Samaritan, who were seen by Jews as impure because they were not fully Jewish, but she was also not living a righteous life. With five divorces in her past and a current relationship with someone else, she is still chosen to represent the bride of Christ in this story of Scripture. What she does have is faith, as she tells Jesus, “I know that the Messiah is coming…When he comes, he will tell us all things” (John 4:25). And Jesus responds “I who you speak to am he” (John 4:26). The betrothal-type-scene continued as the Samaritan woman runs “home” to tell her town of what Christ told her (John 4:28-29). Many of the Samaritan people came to him because of the testimony of the Samaritan woman, and they asked him to stay, and just as the bridegroom would do, he stayed for two days (John 4:39-40). Jesus chose the Samaritan women to represent the Bride of Christ, and in doing so he declares that He is the only thing that can make his Bride pure.
The Body and Blood of Christ
At the last supper, the meal to celebrate Passover, Jesus blessed the bread, broke it apart and said to his disciples, “Take and eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). Then he took a cup, gave thanks and told them to all drink from it, explaining that it is his blood “…poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:27-28). In this significant scene in scripture, Jesus refers to the physical aspects that have been known as contaminated to the Israelites as the way that He will purify them once and for all.
In his death on the cross, Jesus tore the curtain between the holy and most holy place. Death, which entered the world through Adam, and made the human body impure, was defeated by the resurrection of Christ, giving all who follow Christ the infinite life that makes them pure (1 Corinthians 15: 21-22). In His death Jesus proved that he is fully human, susceptible to dying, and in His resurrection, Jesus proved that he is fully God, the source of eternal life. The righteous one became sin, so that the sinful ones of the world could become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus removes the need for ritual under a new covenant because he has fulfilled all of God’s requirements for purity and cleanness in our place (Hebrews 9:15).
The Body as the Temple of God
Jesus taught the disciples that they would receive the Holy Spirit after he was glorified. Jesus promised that when they received the Holy Spirit they would have “rivers of living water” flowing from within them (John 7:38). Just as the River of Eden was the life source of the Garden (Genesis 2:10), now that same living water would flow in, and out of, the followers of Christ. Some scholars believe that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost (Acts 2) was similar to the fire, wind and sound of the presence of God filling the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-38) and temple (1 Kings 8:10-11) for the first time because it signified God choosing the bodies of believers as His new temple and dwelling place. The bodies of the individual believers, and the collective church body, were now the dwelling place of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 3:10-17).
Next in the Understanding Purity Culture Series we will look at how the messages of Purity Culture compare to the understanding of purity in the Old and New Testament.
