If man is so sinful that they must constantly seek forgiveness, how could they ever be holy enough to measure up to God’s standard? God’s solution cuts the Gordian knot in a way man’s pride would never allow him to invent: God makes his people holy.

Are Christians hateful? Bigoted? Ignorant? Do they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them”? Do they stubbornly retain discredited beliefs, while the world has passed them by, entering into a more enlightened age? You may have heard these criticisms of Christianity, or others like them. You may have heard them go unanswered, or even applauded. You may have heard Christianity mocked until your face stung with shame.
We live in a world where those who reject God, his Word, and his law have convinced themselves they have the moral high ground. “Love is love,” they intone tautologically, and they insist that the argument ends there. Any attempt to distinguish love for what is good from love for what is bad is met with instant, often violent scorn. When Christians won’t get on board with the world’s vision of love, the world feels justified in viewing them with intolerant hatred.
This is especially true in politics. When Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) quoted Deuteronomy 22:4 on the House floor last year, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) responded with what he evidently thought was an epic takedown, “what any religious tradition describes as God’s will is no concern of this Congress.” In other countries, the stakes are even higher. Finnish Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen faced criminal hate crime charges this spring for authoring a pamphlet that quoted Leviticus 18:22, “Do not lie with a man as with a woman; for it is an abomination.”
Lest we overstate the argument, some self-described Christians are not derided by the world. Just this week, The Washington Post ran a lengthy story promoting the podcast of a “former Christian parenting blogger” who left her husband to “marry” a U.S. women’s soccer star. Some politicians, religious leaders, and even some churches have managed to find favor in the eyes of the world. But what is the difference? Is there a common distinction between the Christians the world hates, and the Christians the world loves? There is, and a good place to see that distinction is in the book of Leviticus.
Introduction to Leviticus
Leviticus is structured in a chiasm (KAI-asm), with the second half of the book mirroring the first half, in reverse order (imagine the reflection of a stick if you held it at an angle into the lake). The climax of the book comes in the middle, with the laws concerning the Day of Atonement in chapter 16. Before and after this centerpiece are laws concerning ceremonial purity (chapters 11-15) and moral purity (chapters 17-20). Then come regulations about how the people can come near to God, including instructions about priests and offerings (chapters 1-10) and about various reminders to keep the people from turning away from God (chapters 21-25). Throughout the book are promises of blessing for obedience and warnings against disobedience, which the concluding chapters of the book (chapters 26-27) punctuate with an exclamation point.
Narrative is sparse in Leviticus, with only brief sections in chapters 8-10 and 24 (the children of Israel remain encamped at Mount Sinai for the entire book). This, combined with seeming repetitiveness and dullness of many long passages, cause many Christians to treat Leviticus as the dreaded doldrums of their yearly Bible reading plan. I am not immune from this flaw. (I have found that it helps to intersperse the more difficult books with New Testament readings, such as reading Leviticus and then reading Luke.) But if we wish to say, “Oh how I love your law!” (Psalms 119:97), then we must learn to love God’s law.
The point of Leviticus is holiness — God’s holiness, and the holiness of his people. If you ever find yourself at a loss to understand the relevance of something in Leviticus, consider how it relates to holiness, and the pieces will likely fall into place.
Drama of Leviticus
Despite the lack of narrative, Leviticus has its dramatic moments. When Aaron is consecrated as high priest and makes his first offerings, “fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces” (Leviticus 9:24). The priests offered the sacrifices God prescribed, and God responded by confirming them by this sign from heaven. Furthermore, the Lord had commanded, “fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out” (Leviticus 6:13). Then the Lord himself lit the fire; this divine fire continued burning on the tabernacle’s altar as long as it was in use.
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Adults have a responsibility to prioritize children’s needs and well-being. Subjecting children to irreversible “treatments” in an effort to change their bodies is harmful, and many Americans still recognize this, even if they are afraid to say so in public. It is discouraging and troubling when people are unable or unwilling to say what a woman is. It is easy to stay silent when there is an entire month celebrating a radical sexual agenda and we are constantly being told that everyone else agrees. But not only is this agenda far less popular than we are led to believe, it is and always will be harmful because it is at odds with God’s good design. Parades and marches—even surgical intervention—will never change that.

A study released earlier this year found that 43 percent of adults between the ages of 20 and 65 say that children and teens with gender dysphoria should not be subjected to puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and so-called “sex reassignment” surgery. However, a more recent study asked a slightly different question. This study asked if people believed that transgenderism is a healthy condition and whether they were willing to say so publicly. 64 percent said that it was not a healthy condition, but only 30 percent were willing to say so publicly. Seventy-eight percent were opposed to children being encouraged to undergo gender transition. Similarly, 63 percent of American adults were opposed to redefining sex to include “gender identity.”
The majority of children who struggle with gender dysphoria become comfortable with their bodies by the time they reach adulthood if they do not undergo social or medical “transition.” “Transitioning” a child signs him up for a lifetime of invasive medical interventions that come with serious, lifelong consequences.
Because God’s Word accurately describes his world, we know that the biblical view of gender and sexuality is the truth and that our bodies follow that design. This means that what God has to say about sexuality and our bodies is true not just for believers but for everyone, and that the transgender movement’s insistence that a person can be “born in the wrong body” or that mutilating surgeries and hormone “treatments” will help people become their “true selves” is always harmful.
As Christians, we are called to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.
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Our goal is to work toward the right way for Christians to think biblically about angels and properly relate to them. The biblical response to these heavenly beings is somewhere between worship and obsession on the one hand, and a total denial of their existence on the other. Christians can learn from Scripture how to relate to angels as they follow the great God and Savior of the world.

What Are Angels?
While God’s word does not offer us a detailed description of how and when God made the angels, or of what exactly they look like, we can nevertheless gather truths and principles from various Scripture passages that teach us about these beings that are in eternal service of God.
You have probably seen pictures, movies, or cartoons portraying angels, but it’s likely that none of them portrayed angels in any way close to what they are actually like! What does the Bible say?
Angels are created beings. First, the Bible is clear that angels, like humans, are created and living beings, made by God. In Psalm 8, the psalmist points out that human beings have been made “a little lower” than the angels and “crowned . . . with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5).
Angels, then, have greater glory and honor than humans; it is noteworthy that the natural human response to these beings when they appear is first fear and then worship. Nevertheless, angels were created by God, and therefore are less than God. They are another kind of living being that God made.
Angels are eternal, nonmortal beings. Jesus makes it clear that angels—unlike human beings—are eternal and nonmortal (they do not share in human institutions such as marriage, for example; see Matt. 22:30). Angels were created by God to live forever; they do not grow old and die. While it seems that angels can certainly take on physical form, they are spiritual beings.
Angels are servants of God. Primarily, angels were created by God to be his servants (we will talk much more about what their service looks like in the next section). You saw this in the passage from Revelation 22 that you read just above. John was tempted, as we discussed above, to bow down and worship the angel who was showing him this vision of heaven. The angel stopped him, though, reminding him that, although glorious, he was nothing more than a “fellow servant” of God with John (Rev. 22:9). Angels are not to be worshiped; they are servants of God, who alone is worthy of worship and praise.
Angels dwell in heaven with God. Angels, unlike human beings, never have lived on earth and never have been subject to the fall in the same way that human beings are. Angels, then, do not have sinful natures; they are not guilty of sin, rebellion, and death. We know this because they are portrayed (in Rev. 4, for example) as dwelling closely with the holy God in heaven. Sinful beings would not be able to do that! So the permanent dwelling place for angels is in heaven with God.
The Purpose of Angels
Now that we have considered what angels are, we are going to dig a bit deeper into their purpose, as we see it revealed in the Bible. We will identify several of the chief roles that we see angels filling in Scripture as they obey God and help his work to move forward in the world he made. While we are not certain about the work of angels in the world today, we can look at how they have worked throughout the history of God’s people.
Above all, the Bible presents angels to us as servants of God. This was the point that the angel in Revelation made clear to John when John attempted to worship him (Rev. 22:9). But what do these servants do? What is their purpose? In the Bible, we see them acting in several key ways:

Announcement. This is the purpose that you saw in the passage from Luke that you read just above. The angel Gabriel (one of the few angels who is named in Scripture) was sent to Mary to announce the coming birth of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

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