Context No. 2576 of 4322 · Deuteronomy
Context · Reflection
Deuteronomy 14:17-21: in context
17the pelican, the vulture, the cormorant, 18the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. 19All winged creeping things are unclean to you. They shall not be eaten. 20Of all clean birds you may eat. 21You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself. You may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Deuteronomy finishes its list of clean and unclean creatures and then gives the reason behind the whole business. You are not to eat what is unclean, or what dies of itself, and the ground for it is stated plainly: for you are a holy people to the LORD your God. The practices flow from an identity. They eat and live differently because of who they already are, a people set apart and belonging to God.
Notice the order. God does not say, keep these rules in order to become holy; he says, you are a holy people, therefore live this way. The belonging comes first; the behavior expresses it. That is a very different engine than trying to earn a place by good conduct. Israel was already God's, already set apart, and the distinct way of life was meant to match a status already given, not to purchase one. The same order runs through the gospel: you are made God's own, and then you live as what you already are. Behavior that grows out of belonging is worlds away from behavior that is trying to buy it.
Am I trying to earn a place with God by my behavior, or living out of a belonging he has already given, letting who I am shape how I live?
Sources
- Deuteronomy 14:21: You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself... for you are a holy people to the LORD your God.
- Deuteronomy 14:2: you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession.
- 1 Peter 2:9: you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession.