Leviticus 11:44: “For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy.”
I have had the word holy thrown at me by preachers all my lives. I have been exhorted by preachers to live a holy life, demonstrate a holy character, walk in a holy manner, heck; I was told to just be holy. As far as what it means to be holy well that preacher did what most good preachers do, use the definition of other good preachers who have used the definition of other good preachers who have simply parroted what other preachers have said down through the ages. As a general rule the preachers will say that the word holy means to be separate. They usually stop there and then add their own ideas as to what separation means. Generally, it has to do with being different. Rarely do they drill down into this word to determine if this separation is referring to a location or a behavior.
I remember a rabbi once saying that sometimes spiritual understandings or insights are simply the thoughts of some man who lived hundreds of years ago and who passed it on to someone who passed it on to someone else until it eventually became dogma and if anyone even tries to suggest something different it is heresy. You check your lexicons you will find that the word kodesh simply means to be separate. That is what tradition tells us. Indeed, in some areas of the Christian faith tradition is just as authoritative as Scripture. Jesus was constantly trying to put this in its proper prospective. There is the story of a Pharisee who approached Jesus in Matthew 22 asking if he should pay taxes to the government which was forbidden by tradition as tradition taught that paying taxes was a tithe and you only tithed to God and not man. If Jesus said you should pay your taxes then He was violating tradition and therefore committing a sin. Jesus asked the man if he had a coin and whose picture was on the coin. The Pharisee fell right into the trap and pulled out a coin with Caesars picture on it. Such coins are now in museums and you can see the inscription in Greek, Caesar the Divine. Hence when Jesus said “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars and unto God that which is Gods” the old boy stood with egg on his face realizing that he was in violation of the second commandment where we are to make no carved imagine of the likeness of anything in heaven or under the earth. If Caesar was considered a god what was he doing with a carved image of a god? Jesus walked away scott free for He simply pointed out that this Pharisee was putting tradition on the same level as Scripture.
I have found a meaning for the word kodesh (holy) popping up all throughout ancient Jewish literature which predates any Christian literature. Somehow this meaning of kodesh (holy) never made it into our Christian lexicons or our Christian sermons yet it is a meaning used by followers of Jehovah God long before Christians came on the scene. Indeed, the word kodesh (holy) carries the idea of separation but there is more to this separation when used in Jewish literature. It is God separating His presence from those things which are not in harmony with Him. In other words the word kodesh (holy) carries the element of the presence of God. In fact I have read the word kodesh (holy) rendered in Jewish literature as I am here or God is here.
Simply put, holy is a place, or something where God is or dwells. In Leviticus 11:44 I would question the rendering of you shall be hold for I am holy. The word for is the word in Hebrew ki which is often rendered as because although a rendering of for is not necessarily incorrect. However, considering this understanding of the word kodesh (holy) as where God dwells, it would make more sense to use the word because. Thus, God is simply saying: “You will be where I am because you are the place that I will dwell.
When we invite Jesus into our lives to live and dwell we automatically become holy. We do not have to live a certain type of life, follow certain rules to be kodesh (holy), for the very presence of God in our lives makes us holy. His death on the cross cleans us up so he can find our bodies to be a worthy dwelling place, a place for kodesh (holiness). Of course God does not dwell in uncleanness, such as deceit, impurities, lust, etc. God cannot manifest Himself in our midst if we have anything in our lives that is not compatible with Him. We must continually claim that cleansing blood of Jesus to keep our lives pure enough to be the kodesh (holy place). That is why we must live a holy life, a life where God is comfortable to dwell.
St. Francis of Assisi would call birds, wolves, deer and other animals to him and they would come because they were not drawn to St. Francis but were drawn to their creator that was manifested in St. Francis and they would join with St. Francis in their worship and praise of God. Our bodies were meant to be a center of worship for all creation to join with us in our worship. But we cannot accomplish this, only the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ can clean us up so that it is a dwelling place a kodesh (holy) suitable for God to dwell.
In II Corinthians 4:7 the Apostle Paul calls this holiness a treasure. He declares that we have this treasure in earthen vessels. He is referring to our bodies and this treasure is the life of Jesus Christ, a kodesh. If you have a treasure you polish it, preserve it, protect it and put it on display. You do not take your treasure and toss it in with your garbage, yet this is exactly what we do with the treasure, the kodesh (holiness) the very presence of God when we seek to satisfy the flesh with those things that are not compatible with God.
Leviticus 11:44 does not say that we must try to be holy, it is saying that we will become or are holy and that occurs when we have a life that is pure and that only takes place through the cleansing work of Jesus Christ. Once we have a dwelling place for the presence of God, we must preserve, protect, and polish this holiness like it is what Paul declares, a treasure.
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