The Logic of Consecration Text: Leviticus 21:1-9
Introduction: Recovering the Fences
We live in an age that despises boundaries. Our culture is pathologically committed to blurring every distinction that God in His wisdom established. They want to erase the line between male and female, good and evil, beautiful and grotesque, and ultimately, between the holy and the profane. And the modern evangelical church, in its desperate quest to be seen as relevant and winsome, has often followed suit. We have become allergic to the idea of being "set apart." We want a God who is accessible, which is good, but we have translated that into a God who is common, which is a disaster. We want a faith that fits in, not a faith that confronts and transforms.
Into this muddy confusion, the book of Leviticus marches with muddy boots and clear instructions. Leviticus is God's instruction manual for building fences. It teaches us the grammar of holiness, and the fundamental lesson is this: holiness requires separation. To be holy is to be set apart by God, for God. It is not an internal feeling; it is an objective status with real-world, tangible consequences.
This chapter deals with the highest standards of holiness, those required for the priests, the sons of Aaron. These were the men who worked in God's house, who stood nearest the fire of His presence. The requirements laid upon them were not arbitrary hoops to jump through. They were a living, walking object lesson for the entire nation of Israel. The priest was a representative man, and his life, his body, his marriage, and his family were all part of his ministry. They were billboards advertising the character of the God he served. If we want to understand what it means for the Church to be a "royal priesthood," we must first understand the logic of consecration that God lays down here.
The Text
Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: ‘No one shall defile himself for a dead person among his people, except for his blood relatives who are nearest to him, his mother and his father and his son and his daughter and his brother, also for his virgin sister, who is near to him because she has had no husband; for her he may defile himself. He shall not defile himself as a relative by marriage among his people, and so profane himself. They shall not make any baldness on their heads nor shave off the edges of their beards nor make any cuts in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they bring near the offerings to Yahweh by fire, the food of their God; so they shall be holy. They shall not take a woman who is profaned by harlotry, nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband; for he is holy to his God. Therefore, you shall set him apart as holy, for he brings near the food of your God; he shall be holy to you; for I Yahweh, who makes you holy, am holy. Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.
(Leviticus 21:1-9 LSB)
Ministers of Life, Not Death (v. 1-4)
The first set of instructions concerns the greatest source of ceremonial uncleanness: death.
"No one shall defile himself for a dead person among his people, except for his blood relatives who are nearest to him, his mother and his father and his son and his daughter and his brother, also for his virgin sister, who is near to him because she has had no husband; for her he may defile himself. He shall not defile himself as a relative by marriage among his people, and so profane himself." (Leviticus 21:1-4)
The logic here is straightforward. The priest is a minister of life. He stands before the living God to offer sacrifices that atone for sin and restore fellowship, which is life. Death, in Scripture, is the final wage for sin. It is the ultimate enemy. Therefore, the one who ministers life must maintain a holy separation from the domain of death. To touch a corpse was to become ceremonially unclean, unfit to enter the sanctuary. For a priest, this defilement was a direct contradiction of his office.
But God is not a stoic. He does not demand that holiness obliterate natural affection. An exception is made for the priest's closest blood relatives. He is permitted to mourn and handle the bodies of his mother, father, son, daughter, brother, and virgin sister. This shows that the demands of covenantal duty do not cancel out the duties of natural kinship, but they do frame them. Notice the specificity: a "virgin sister, who is near to him because she has had no husband." Once a sister married, she came under the covering of her husband, and her brother, the priest, was no longer in that circle of immediate responsibility. His primary calling as a priest took precedence.
This principle stands in stark contrast to our culture, which is a culture of death. We have made a sacrament of abortion and celebrate nihilism in our art and entertainment. The priest was a walking protest against all of this. He was a man whose life was oriented toward the living God, and he could not afford to be contaminated by the stench of death. His very presence was a declaration that sin and death do not get the last word.
A Body for God (v. 5-6)
The next prohibition deals with the priest's own body. His physical person was part of his priestly equipment.
"They shall not make any baldness on their heads nor shave off the edges of their beards nor make any cuts in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they bring near the offerings to Yahweh by fire, the food of their God; so they shall be holy." (Leviticus 21:5-6)
These practices, shaving the head, cutting the beard, and gashing the flesh, were common mourning rituals among the surrounding pagan nations. They were acts of frantic, self-mutilating despair, often done to appease their cruel and capricious gods. The priest of Yahweh was forbidden from imitating them. Why? Because his body was not his own. It was consecrated to God. It had to remain whole and unmarred, reflecting the wholeness and perfection of the God he served.
This is a direct polemic against any form of Gnosticism that would separate the spiritual from the physical. Your body matters. What you do with your body matters. For the priest, his body was a public testimony. This is also why the priesthood was restricted to those without physical defect, as we will see later in this chapter. It was not because disability is sinful, but because the priest was a living type of the coming Christ, who would be the perfect, spotless Lamb of God. The physical wholeness of the priest pointed to the moral perfection of our Great High Priest.
The reason given is central: "for they bring near the offerings to Yahweh by fire, the food of their God; so they shall be holy." Function determines status. Because they handle holy things, they must be holy. You do not handle the king's food after wrestling in the pigsty. Their proximity to God's table demanded a corresponding separation from the defiling practices of the world.
A Household for God (v. 7-9)
The logic of consecration does not stop at the priest's skin. It extends to his entire household, beginning with his wife.
"They shall not take a woman who is profaned by harlotry, nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband; for he is holy to his God. Therefore, you shall set him apart as holy, for he brings near the food of your God; he shall be holy to you; for I Yahweh, who makes you holy, am holy." (Leviticus 21:7-8)
The priest's marriage was not a private matter. It was a public statement. His union with his wife was to be a picture of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. Therefore, he could not marry a woman whose life represented covenant-breaking. A prostitute is the very image of infidelity. A divorced woman, in that culture, represented a broken covenant. This is not to say such women were beyond redemption, but they were not suitable to be the wife of a priest, whose marriage had to be a pristine symbol of faithfulness.
This is the direct root of the New Testament requirement for elders. An elder must be "the husband of one wife" (1 Timothy 3:2), a man whose marriage is a model of covenantal stability and faithfulness. The modern church, which often treats divorce and remarriage among its leadership as a trivial matter, has severed itself from this biblical logic. We have prized therapeutic platitudes over God's demand for holiness in His house.
Notice in verse 8, the congregation is commanded to "set him apart as holy." Holiness is a community project. The people were to recognize and honor the priest's special status because of his special function. This is all grounded in the character of God Himself: "for I Yahweh, who makes you holy, am holy." God is the source of all holiness, and our holiness is a reflection of His.
"Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire." (Leviticus 21:9)
This is a terrifying verse, and it is meant to be. The priest's daughter is held to a higher standard. Her sexual sin is not just a personal failure; it "profanes her father." It brings his office, his ministry, and his God into public disgrace. She trades on the high status her father's office gives her and drags it through the mud. The severity of the punishment, burning with fire, is reserved for the most heinous offenses. It corresponds to the holiness she has violated. Fire is a symbol of God's presence and purity, and here it is an agent of judgment. This demonstrates in the starkest possible terms that the families of spiritual leaders are not a private affair. They are on the front lines, and their conduct either adorns the gospel or brings it into reproach.
Our Priesthood in Christ
As we read these demanding statutes, we should feel the weight of them. We should see how impossible it would be for any sinful man to perfectly fulfill them. Every priest in Aaron's line was a sinner. Every one of them was a placeholder, a shadow, a signpost pointing down the road.
They all pointed to the one, true, Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate minister of life, who did not just avoid the dead but raised them. His body was perfectly whole, without sin's blemish or defect. His bride, the Church, is one He is washing and cleansing, presenting her to Himself without spot or wrinkle. He is the one who is intrinsically holy, and not just by virtue of His office.
And the glorious news of the gospel is that through faith in Him, we are united to Him. Peter tells us that we are now a "holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). We are a "royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9). This means the logic of consecration now applies to the whole church.
We are called to be separate from the world's culture of death. We are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. Our marriages are to be pictures of Christ and the Church. Our households are to be ordered according to the Word of God. And our leaders, our pastors and elders, are to be men who embody these principles with particular clarity.
These laws in Leviticus are not a burden to be dismissed, but a portrait of holiness to be pursued. We do not pursue it in order to be saved, but because we have been saved. Because the Lord who makes us holy is holy, we too must be holy in all our conduct. He has called us out of the profane world's mud and has set our feet on the solid rock of His sanctuary.