“I will scatter you among the nations and I will disperse you through the lands, and I will consume your uncleanness from you. You will profane yourself in the sight of the nations, and you will know that I am the LORD” (Ezek 22:15-16).
When speaking about atonement, Messianic believers almost exclusively think of the forgiveness of sin, transgression, and iniquity through faith in Yeshua. And while this is certainly true, it is not the whole picture. The Sinai Covenant also highlights the problem of ritual defilement, which prevents us from drawing near to God’s holy presence in the tabernacle (see especially Leviticus 11–15). Ritual defilement is perhaps best understood as contamination directly connected to coming into contact with the consequences of Adam’s sin. On the Day of Atonement, therefore, the high priest necessarily had to make purification for Israel’s uncleanness so that a perfectly holy God could continue dwelling among them, and that they, as His people, could continue to draw near (see Lev 16:16, 19). For ritual uncleanness, no less than moral failure, bars the way into God’s holy presence (see Isa 6:5).
For not only, through Yeshua’s once-for-all sacrifice, have our sins been eternally forgiven (Jer 31:34), but also, through the shedding of His blood, we have been forever made clean.
According to Ezekiel 22, God was about to cast Israel into a well-deserved exile because, through engaging in forbidden behaviors, they had become completely and thoroughly unclean (compare Ezek 22:3-5, 10-11, 15, 26 with Lev 18:19-20, 23-25, 27-28, 30; 19:31; 20:3, 25).
It is this essential background that helps us better appreciate the glories of the New Covenant. For not only, through Yeshua’s once-for-all sacrifice, have our sins been eternally forgiven (Jer 31:34), but also, through the shedding of His blood, we have been forever made clean. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols…. Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you” (Ezek 36:25, 29).
So powerful, so perfect, and so pure is the blood of Yeshua that even those who were once strangers to the covenants are free to draw near to God and boldly enter in. It is not a cliché but a rich theological truth when we say that Yeshua has made us kosher, completely acceptable to the God of Israel, whole, complete, and perfectly clean.
“For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb 9:13-14).
“For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Eph 2:18-22).
