God's Culinary School: The Grammar of Holiness Text: Leviticus 11:46-47
Introduction: Thinking God's Thoughts After Him
We live in an age that despises distinctions. Our culture is laboring with all its might to erase every line God ever drew. They want to blur the line between male and female, good and evil, beautiful and grotesque, sacred and profane. This is not a new rebellion. It is the ancient rebellion, the satanic whisper of "ye shall be as gods," which always results in a return to chaos, a return to the formless and void state of the world before God's Word imposed order upon it.
It is into this kind of confusion that a chapter like Leviticus 11 speaks with a bracing and scandalous clarity. To the modern mind, these dietary laws are baffling at best and offensive at worst. Why would God care if an Israelite ate a lobster? What is the great spiritual crime in eating a ham sandwich? Is this not the kind of arbitrary, ritualistic fussiness that Jesus came to do away with? If we think this way, we have missed the point entirely. We are like a student in a chemistry lab complaining that he has to distinguish between hydrochloric acid and water because, after all, they are both clear liquids.
Leviticus 11 is not primarily about hygiene, though these laws were certainly healthy. It is not primarily about avoiding pagan practices, though it certainly accomplished that. At its heart, Leviticus 11 is a theological kindergarten. It is God teaching His toddler-nation the basic grammar of reality. He is training them to see the world as He sees it, to love the order that He loves, and to recognize the holiness that flows from that order. These laws were a daily, tangible, three-times-a-day audiovisual aid for learning the difference between the holy and the common, the clean and the unclean. Before Israel could be trusted with the weightier matters of the law, they had to learn their ABCs at the dinner table. God was teaching them how to think.
These two verses we are looking at today serve as the grand conclusion, the summary statement for this entire chapter of divine instruction. God gives the law, and then He gives the reason for the law. And in that reason, we find the permanent principle that applies to us today just as much as it applied to ancient Israel.
The Text
This is the law regarding the animal and the bird and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, to separate between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten.
(Leviticus 11:46-47 LSB)
The Categories of Creation (v. 46)
We begin with the summary in verse 46:
"This is the law regarding the animal and the bird and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth," (Leviticus 11:46)
Notice the categories. Where have we seen these before? This is the language of Genesis 1. God is deliberately taking Israel back to the beginning, back to the created order. He made the great sea creatures and the fish to fill the waters. He made the birds to fill the air. He made the livestock and the creeping things to fill the earth. God established distinct realms, and He created creatures perfectly suited to inhabit those realms. The sea, the sky, the land. This is the foundational structure of the world.
This verse is a declaration that God's law is not an arbitrary set of rules dropped out of the sky. It is rooted and grounded in the very fabric of the cosmos He created. The law for man's life is consistent with the law of the world in which he lives. This is why our modern rebellion is so profound. When men try to deconstruct created realities like male and female, they are not just breaking a rule in Leviticus; they are declaring war on the created order of Genesis. They are attempting a "de-creation."
The word for law here is "torah," which means instruction or direction. God is not being a cosmic killjoy. He is the Creator giving the operating instructions for His creation. He is telling His people, "This is how the world works. If you want to live in it rightly, in a way that reflects My character, you must pay attention to the order I have built into it." This law concerning the animals was a constant reminder that they lived in a world defined and ordered by God, not by their own appetites.
The Curriculum of Separation (v. 47)
Verse 47 gives us the purpose, the final exam for this course in God's culinary school.
"to separate between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten." (Leviticus 11:47 LSB)
The central lesson is separation. The Hebrew word for holy, qadosh, means set apart, distinct. To be holy is to be separate from sin and consecrated to God. And how were the Israelites to learn this high theological concept? By practicing it every single day with their beef, fish, and chicken. God was training their minds to make distinctions. This is good, that is bad. This is clean, that is unclean. This reflects God's order, that introduces confusion.
So what was the operating principle? What made one animal clean and another unclean? It was their conformity to the ideal of their created sphere. A "clean" animal was a perfect picture of what a land, sea, or air creature was supposed to be.
- On the Land: Clean animals had two characteristics: they had a cloven hoof, and they chewed the cud. The cloven hoof is the perfect foot for a land animal, providing stable footing on the earth. Chewing the cud is a picture of meditative digestion. These animals perfectly represented "life on land." An animal like a pig has the cloven hoof but doesn't chew the cud. A camel chews the cud but doesn't have a proper cloven hoof. They are unclean because they blur the categories. They are living contradictions.
- In the Water: Clean sea creatures had fins and scales. This is the perfect equipment for a fish, designed for navigating the waters. Creatures that live in the water but lack these features, like shellfish, eels, or lobsters, are unclean. They are anomalous. They crawl on the sea floor, blurring the line between swimming and swarming. They belong to the murky depths, not the clear waters.
- In the Air: The list of unclean birds is largely composed of predators and scavengers, birds that traffic in death and blood. The eagle, the vulture, the hawk. God's people were to be a people of life, and so they were not to eat creatures that lived by bloodshed. Also on the list is the bat, the classic category-crosser. Is it a bird or a mammal? It flies in the sky but has fur and teeth. It is an abomination, a confusion of God's created order.
And then you have the swarming things, the things that creep on the earth. They are detestable because they move on their bellies, close to the dust, a living reminder of the serpent's curse in Genesis 3. This was not about hygiene; it was about theology on the hoof, in the water, and on the wing.
From the Menu to the Heart
So what does any of this have to do with us? We are not under the Mosaic covenant. We can eat shrimp and pork, and we should do so with thanksgiving. Does this mean God stopped caring about distinctions? Not at all. It means the lesson has graduated from the dining room table to the heart.
These dietary laws were what I call "redemption laws," not "creation laws." They were temporary, typological, and designed to teach a lesson that would be fulfilled in Christ. They were part of the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile that Jesus, in His flesh, tore down (Ephesians 2:14-15). The purpose of the audiovisual aid was to create a distinct people, Israel. But once the lesson was learned and the Messiah had come, the aid was no longer necessary.
We see this pivot point clearly in the ministry of Jesus, who declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). And we see it spectacularly in Peter's vision in Acts 10. Peter, a good Jew, is horrified when a sheet full of unclean animals is lowered from heaven and he is told to "kill and eat." He refuses three times. And God's response is the key for the entire New Covenant age: "What God has made clean, do not call common."
The immediate application of that vision was not about food, but about people. The sheet came down right before messengers from the Gentile Cornelius arrived. The real point was that the gospel was now for the unclean Gentiles. The separation was over. In Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, clean or unclean. All who are washed in the blood of Christ are made clean.
But the principle of separation remains. The lesson has been internalized. We no longer separate clean and unclean animals on our plates, but we are commanded to separate clean and unclean thoughts in our minds. We are to distinguish between truth and error, between righteousness and sin, between wisdom and folly. We are to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). We are to separate ourselves from the world's profane way of thinking and living. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2).
The old lesson was external, physical, and national. The new lesson is internal, spiritual, and personal. God still demands that His people be holy, that they be separate. But the separation is no longer about what goes into your mouth, but what comes out of your heart. You are no longer defiled by a lobster, but you are defiled by lust. You are not made unclean by a pig, but you are by pride. The grammar of holiness that God taught Israel in their diet is the same grammar we are to apply to our entire lives. We are to love God's created order, cherish the distinctions He has made, and live as a people set apart for His glory.