The God Who Dwells Among Us: Leviticus 15:31-33
Introduction: Our Sanitary Rebellion
We live in a squeamish and sentimental age. We like our religion to be abstract, spiritual, and above all, clean. We prefer a God who stays in His heavenly throne room, concerning Himself with lofty thoughts and ethereal principles. But the book of Leviticus, and particularly a chapter like this one, drags us down to earth with a thud. We are confronted with a God who is intensely interested in bodily discharges, seminal emissions, and menstrual impurity. Our modern sensibilities are tempted to blush, to skip over these passages, or to dismiss them as part of a primitive hygiene code that we have long since outgrown with the advent of indoor plumbing.
But to do so is to fundamentally misunderstand the God we worship and the world He has made. This is not about hygiene, though God's laws are never unhygienic. This is about holiness. The central, earth-shattering reality of the Old Covenant was that the transcendent, holy God of the universe had pitched His tent, His tabernacle, right in the middle of Israel's dusty, noisy, and very messy camp. He dwelt among them. And if God is going to live in your neighborhood, there are going to be some neighborhood rules. If the Holy One is at the center of the camp, then the camp must be holy.
These laws are a massive, living, breathing object lesson. They are a gigantic audio-visual aid designed to teach a redeemed slave people a fundamental concept: the difference between clean and unclean, holy and common, life and death. Our rebellion against God in the Garden introduced corruption, decay, and death into the world, and that curse affects our very bodies. These laws concerning bodily fluids, which represent the loss of "life" or the potential for life, are constant, tangible reminders of our fallenness. They are not sinful in themselves, but they are potent symbols of a world that is not as it should be. And bringing these symbols of the curse into the presence of the Source of all life and holiness is a fatal mistake.
This passage is the summary statement, the grand conclusion to a chapter that makes moderns uncomfortable. But in it, we find the very heart of the matter: God demands separation because His presence is both a glorious blessing and a terrible danger.
The Text
"Thus you shall keep the sons of Israel separated from their uncleanness, so that they will not die in their uncleanness by making My tabernacle that is among them unclean."
This is the law for the one with a discharge, and for the man who has a seminal emission so that he is unclean by it,
and for the woman who is ill because of menstrual impurity, and for the one who has a discharge, whether a male or a female, or a man who lies with an unclean woman.
(Leviticus 15:31-33 LSB)
The Principle of Separation (v. 31a)
The entire chapter, and indeed much of Leviticus, is distilled into the opening of our text.
"Thus you shall keep the sons of Israel separated from their uncleanness..." (Leviticus 15:31a)
The first thing to notice is the word "separated." This is the essence of holiness. To be holy is to be set apart, to be distinguished. God creates the world by separating light from darkness, and land from sea. He builds His covenant people by separating them from the pagan nations. And here, He commands them to maintain a separation from their own uncleanness. This is not a call to Gnosticism, as though the body were evil. The body is a good creation of God. But it is a fallen body, subject to processes that are reminders of death and decay.
Uncleanness here is not the same as sinfulness. A woman's period is not a sin. An involuntary emission is not a sin. But in God's symbolic world, these things were ritually defiling. Why? Because they are associated with the curse. They represent a loss of life, or life potential. Blood is the symbol of life, and when it flows out where it should not, it is a picture of life draining away. These things are little echoes of the grave. They are involuntary reminders that we are mortal, that our bodies are running down, that we are not the masters of our own frames.
So God commands a separation. This was a physical separation for a set period of time. It was a tangible, lived-out lesson. You touch a dead body, you are unclean. You have a particular bodily discharge, you are unclean. And this state of uncleanness meant you were excluded from the central place of worship for a time. This constant rhythm of clean and unclean, of access and exclusion, was designed to hammer into the Israelite mind the profound truth that God is holy, and we are not. It taught them to make distinctions, to pay attention, to walk carefully before a holy God. Our modern world hates this. It wants to blur all distinctions, to erase all boundaries, and to call everything common. But where everything is common, nothing is holy.
The Reason for Separation: A Holy God is a Dangerous God (v. 31b)
The second half of the verse gives us the life-and-death reason for these regulations.
"...so that they will not die in their uncleanness by making My tabernacle that is among them unclean." (Leviticus 15:31b)
Here is the nub of it. The problem is not the uncleanness in itself; the problem is bringing that uncleanness into contact with God's manifest holiness. The tabernacle was God's dwelling place. It was a localized manifestation of His glorious, pure, and holy presence. And holiness, for a fallen creature, is like high-voltage electricity. It is pure power. Handled rightly, it gives light and life. Handled carelessly, it brings instant death.
Think of Uzzah, who was struck dead for merely touching the Ark to steady it. He was not a wicked man, but he treated a holy object as a common thing, and he died for it. God is not safe; He is good, but He is not safe. His presence in the camp was the greatest blessing Israel had, but it was also their greatest danger. They had to be taught to treat Him as holy.
So, if an Israelite in a state of ritual uncleanness, representing the curse of death, were to waltz into the tabernacle courts, it would be an act of high-handed blasphemy. It would be like tracking mud into a sanitized operating room. It would be contaminating the holy with the common, the living with the dead. And the penalty for such profanation was death. God was teaching His people in the starkest possible terms: My holiness will either consecrate you or consume you. There is no middle ground. You cannot bring the symbols of your fallenness into My house and live. You must be cleansed first.
The Scope of the Law (v. 32-33)
The final two verses simply summarize the specific instances of uncleanness covered in the chapter.
"This is the law for the one with a discharge, and for the man who has a seminal emission so that he is unclean by it, and for the woman who is ill because of menstrual impurity, and for the one who has a discharge, whether a male or a female, or a man who lies with an unclean woman." (Leviticus 15:32-33)
This is a comprehensive list. It covers both men and women, normal bodily functions and abnormal ones, voluntary acts and involuntary ones. No one is exempt. This is not about a particular class of people; it is about the human condition. Everyone, at some point, would find themselves in a state of ritual uncleanness. This was a great equalizer. It reminded every single Israelite, from the greatest to the least, of their common creatureliness, their common fallenness, and their common need for cleansing and restoration to fellowship.
God does not ignore the nitty-gritty realities of our embodied existence. He is not a Platonic deity who is only interested in our disembodied souls. He made us as whole persons, body and soul, and His law addresses us as such. These laws, which seem so strange to us, were a profound mercy. They provided a clear, gracious path for a person in a state of uncleanness to be declared clean and restored to the worshiping community. It was a constant cycle of reminder, separation, cleansing, and restoration. And this entire cycle was a magnificent picture of the gospel.
From Ritual Uncleanness to the Uncleanness of the Heart
As New Covenant believers, we are no longer bound by these ceremonial laws. The curtain of the temple was torn in two when Christ died. The way into the holiest place is now open through His blood. So what are we to do with a passage like this? We are to see that it points to Him in every particular.
Jesus came and declared all foods clean. He touched lepers and healed them, He touched a dead girl and raised her, and a woman with a chronic discharge of blood touched His garment and was made whole. In every instance, instead of the uncleanness transferring to Him, His cleansing holiness transferred to them. He is the fulfillment of this entire system. He is the great purifier.
The fundamental uncleanness that separates us from God was never a bodily fluid. It is the sinful discharge of our hearts. Jesus said, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person" (Matthew 15:19-20). Our sin is the true defilement. Our rebellion is the true uncleanness that, if brought into the presence of a holy God, must result in eternal death.
But the good news is that "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The sacrifices and washings of Leviticus could only purify the flesh for a time. They were a shadow, an audio-visual aid. But the blood of Christ purges our very conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). He is our cleansing.
And the application for us is this: the tabernacle of God is no longer a tent in the desert. If you are a believer, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). God dwells in you. Therefore, the principle of separation still holds, but it has moved from the external to the internal. We are to separate ourselves from the spiritual uncleanness of the world. "Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you" (2 Corinthians 6:17). We must not defile the temple of God with idolatry, with sexual immorality, with bitterness, or with greed. The stakes are just as high. To profane the dwelling place of God is to invite judgment. Let us therefore take these ancient laws to heart, not by inspecting our bodies for ritual uncleanness, but by inspecting our hearts for sin, and fleeing to the cross of Christ, our only hope for cleansing and our only access to a holy God.