Holiness Does Not Travel by Contact. Defilement Does.
Jesus Way Ministries
We keep the word sin for the large public failures. For everything else we have no word at all.
Scripture has one. It is defilement, and it is treated as the same thing.
Jesus was asked about clean and unclean and gave a list of what actually defiles a man. Read it slowly, because most of what is on it would never reach a courtroom and much of it would never be noticed in a congregation.
Evil thoughts. Covetousness. Pride. An evil eye.
These come out of the heart, He said, and these are the things that defile.
Not one of them requires a witness.
How it behaves
The picture Scripture uses is leaven. A little of it does not stay a little. It works quietly through the whole lump, changing everything it touches, and it never announces itself.
Jesus warned His own disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and they thought He was discussing bread. He was discussing men who were certain they were righteous and were not.
That is the most contagious defilement there is.
The two questions God had put to the priests
The law behind all of this is set out in Haggai, and God has it put to the priests as two questions — so that the answer comes out of their own mouths and not the prophet's.
First: if a man carries holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and that garment then touches bread, or wine, or oil, does the food become holy?
The priests answered: No.
Second: if a man made unclean by a dead body touches any of those things, do they become unclean?
The priests answered: It shall be unclean.
Now set those two answers side by side, because between them they overturn something most of us have quietly assumed all our lives.
Holiness does not travel by contact. Defilement does.
The arrangement is not symmetrical and it never has been. Sitting near holy things will not make a man holy. No amount of attendance transfers anything to anybody. But contact with the unclean transfers immediately, and without any intention on his part.
Then read what God does with it
Haggai does not leave this as a lesson about food.
So is this people, He says, and so is this nation, and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.
Their offering came back unclean. The religious work itself carried it.
That is the part to sit with. Not the private failure — the ministry. The thing they brought Him.
So defilement is larger than your conduct
It is not only what you have done. It is what you have been in contact with and have left yourself in contact with: what you tolerate, what you enjoy in private, what you would defend if a leader named it out loud.
Paul draws the boundary with four questions and expects the same answer to every one of them.
What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
None. None. None. And none.
Then the command that follows from it: come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.
The error of this generation
Somewhere the Church started teaching grace as a covering — a merciful sheet laid over a man who is not going to change, so that God sees the sheet instead of the man.
Paul asked the question directly. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? And he answered it with the strongest phrase available to him: God forbid.
Then read Titus and see what grace actually does. It appeared, bringing salvation, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.
Grace teaches. Grace trains.
Grace is not permission to remain. It is the strength to leave.
The passage nobody is comfortable with
Hebrews puts it where no one can get around it. If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment.
Weigh the first clause, because the whole passage rests on it. Wilfully, and after the knowledge of the truth.
That word is not decoration and it is not there to let anybody off. It marks the line between a man overtaken in a fault — whom Scripture commands us to restore — and a man who has counted what the blood cost and gone on regardless, on the calculation that it is covered.
To that second man the writer says there is no second sacrifice to go to, because there was only ever one. To handle it as a licence is to count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing and to do despite unto the Spirit of grace.
We set this before you plainly and we will not soften it. Paul told the elders at Ephesus that he was pure from the blood of all men, and he gave one reason: for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
This is part of that counsel. To leave it out in order to keep a reader comfortable would be to shun it.
So it is said here, and now you have heard it. If you have been living on that calculation, leave it today, while it is called today.
Of everything in the universe, grace is the last thing to presume upon.
One thing to do
Do not go looking for your worst sin. Go looking for your closest contact.
Name the one thing you are still touching — the thing you would argue about if someone with authority in your life named it out loud.
That is the point of contact, and it is the exact ground an enemy stands on to resist you.
This article is adapted from Lesson 3 of The Progressive, First Edition: The Deep Work by Jesus Way Ministries — Part One of four, on seeing sin the way God sees it.
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