It is well to see that the personal holiness of God's people--their entire separation from all manner of uncleanness, flows out of their relationship to Him. It is not upon the principle of "Stand by thyself: I am holier than thou;" but simply this: "God is holy," and therefore all who are brought into association with Him must be holy likewise. It is in every way worthy of God that _His_ people should be holy. "Thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh Thy house, O Lord, forever." What else save holiness could become the house of such an One as Jehovah? If any one had asked an Israelite of old, Why do you shrink so from that reptile which crawls along the path? He would have replied, Jehovah is holy, and I belong to Him. He has said, "Touch not." So also now, if a Christian be asked why he walks apart from the ten thousand things in which the men of this world participate, his answer is simply to be, _My Father is holy_. This is the true foundation of personal holiness. The more we contemplate the divine character, and enter into the power of our relationship to God, in Christ, by the energy of the Holy Ghost, the holier we must, of necessity, be. There can be no progress in the condition of holiness into which the believer is introduced, but there is and ought to be progress in the apprehension, experience, and practical exhibition of that holiness. These things should never be confounded. All believers are in the same condition of holiness or sanctification, but their practical measure may vary to any conceivable degree. This is easily understood. The condition arises out of our _being brought_ nigh to God by the blood of the cross; the practical measure will depend upon our _keeping_ nigh by the power of the Spirit. It is not a man setting up for something superior in himself--for a greater degree of personal sanctity than is ordinarily possessed--for being in any wise better than his neighbors. All such pretensions are utterly contemptible in the judgment of every right-thinking person. But then, if God, in His exceeding grace, stoop down to our low estate and lift us into the holy elevation of His blessed presence, in association with Christ, has He not a right to prescribe what our character is to be as thus brought nigh? Who could think of calling in question a truth so obvious? And further, are we not bound to aim at the maintenance of that character which He prescribes? Are we to be accused of presumption for so doing? Was it presumption in an Israelite to refuse to touch "a creeping thing"? Nay, it would have been presumption of the most daring and dangerous character to have done so. True, he might not have been able to make an uncircumcised stranger understand or appreciate the reason of his conduct; but this was not his province. Jehovah had said, "Touch not," not because an Israelite was holier in himself than a stranger, but because Jehovah was holy, and Israel belonged to Him. It needed the eye and the heart of a circumcised disciple of the law of God, in order to discern what was clean and what was not. An alien knew no difference. Thus it must ever be. It is only Wisdom's children that can justify her and approve her heavenly ways.
Ere turning from the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, my reader might, with much spiritual profit, compare it with the tenth chapter of Acts, ver. 11-16. How strange it must have appeared to one who had, from his earliest days, been taught the principles of the Mosaic ritual, to see a vessel descending from heaven, "wherein were _all manner_ of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and _creeping things_, and fowls of the air;" and not only to see such a vessel so filled, but also to hear a voice, saying, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." How wonderful! No examination of hoofs or habits! There was no need of this. The vessel and its contents had come from heaven. This was enough. The Jew might ensconce himself behind the narrow inclosures of the Jewish ritual, and exclaim, "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean;" but then the tide of divine grace was rising majestically above all such inclosures, in order to embrace, in its mighty compass, "all manner" of objects, and bear them upward to heaven, in the power and on the authority of those precious words, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." It mattered not what was in the vessel if God had cleansed it. The Author of the book of Leviticus was about to raise the thoughts of His servant above the barriers which that book had erected, into all the magnificence of Heaven's grace. He would teach him that true cleanness--the cleanness which Heaven demanded--was no longer to consist in chewing the cud, dividing the hoof, or any such ceremonial marks, but in being washed in the blood of the Lamb, which cleanseth from all sin, and renders the believer clean enough to tread the sapphire pavement of the heavenly courts.