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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God the Father has an eternal plan, God the Son accomplished the means for that plan to be fulfilled, and God the Spirit completes and perfects that plan directly in the world. Bringing harmony to creation, revealing God’s plan to his people, and special empowerment of unique leaders of God’s people at significant points in the outworking of that plan all involve how the Holy Spirit brings the plan of God into order.

One of the Holy Spirit’s primary works has been to give revelation to key leaders of God’s people in the progress of God’s redemptive history, culminating in Holy Scripture, which was written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit also gave some of these same leaders special empowerment in addition to direct revelation. For example, the Old Testament describes the Holy Spirit being “upon” Moses and the elders of Israel, Joshua, judges such as Gideon and Samson, and prophets such as Elijah and Micah. He also uniquely came upon Israel’s kings, Saul and David.
Theocratic Anointing
This Spirit empowerment gave individuals a variety of special abilities primarily so that they could lead God’s people. This is why such special empowerment is sometimes called “theocratic anointing.” In fact, often the prophecy itself was given as a sign that these individuals were chosen and empowered by the Spirit for such leadership.
For example, as ruler of Israel (Acts 7:35), Moses had a special anointing of the Spirit (Nm 11:17). God confirmed that anointing in the sigh of the people through the miracle of changing Moses’s staff into a snake (Ex 40:30–31). Later, Moses “took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied. But they did not continue doing it” (Nm 11:25). The special empowerment by the Spirit was so that the elders could “bear some of the burden of the people” as rulers alongside Moses, and they prophesied as confirmation that they were to share the burden of leadership.
That leadership passed on to Joshua as Moses’s successor, who then is described as “full of the Spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him” (Dt 34:9). God specifically told Joshua, “Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you” (Jo 1:56). And God confirmed Joshua’s leadership of the people with the crossing of the Jordan river on dry ground (Jo 4), a supernatural miracle that would have immediately brought to mind Moses’s miracle of crossing the Red Sea (Ex 14:31). The result was that Joshua was confirmed as ruler of the people: “On that day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they stood in awe of him just as they had stood in awe of Moses, all the days of his life” (Jo 4:14).
Four judges of Israel, are described as having this special Spirit anointing: Othniel (Jgs 3:10), Gideon (Jgs 6:34), Jepthah (Jgs 11:29), and Samson (Jgs 15:14). It is not a stretch to assume that this theocratic anointing came upon all of the judges whom God appointed as leaders of his people.
When leadership of Israel moved to a monarchy, so did the theocratic anointing of the Spirit. After Samuel anointed Saul as king of Israel (1 Sm 10:1), “the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he prophesied among them” (1 Sm 10:10). The same happened later to David: “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Sm 16:13). Likewise, Solomon’s prayer for wisdom was, in effect, a request for the same special empowerment from the Spirit (1 Kgs 3:9). The first result of the empowerment given to him by the Spirit was his ability to wisely judge the case of the two women fighting over the death of one of their babies. This exercise of divine empowerment confirmed Solomon as leader of God’s people: “And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice” (1 Kgs 3:28).
Prophets, too, appear to have had a special empowerment from the Spirit, though perhaps this would not necessarily be called theocratic anointing since they were not rulers. Yet the purpose of such empowerment was similar: to confirm them as messengers of God. For example, the Spirit was known to carry Elijah to places unknown (1 Kgs 18:12), and Micah declared of himself, “I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might” (Mic 3:8). Indeed, as we have already noted, Spirit empowerment and direct divine revelation went hand in hand.
So this empowerment was primarily given by the Spirit to equip leaders of God’s people, often resulting in unique wisdom, physical strength, and revelation from God, to bring God’s people into order with God’s plan and purposes. And the miraculous works performed by these individuals as a result of the Sprit’s anointing were for the purpose of confirming them as rulers and messengers of God in the sight of the people.
This act of the Holy Spirit was never permanent. The Spirit left Samson after Delilah cut his hair, for example, causing him to lose his special strength (Jgs 16:20). The most notable illustration of this is when “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul” after his sin (1 Sm 16:14). Just prior to that, Samuel had anointed David as the new king of Israel, “and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Sm 16:13). This also explains why David prayed that God would not take his Holy Spirit from him after his sin with Bathsheba (Ps 51:11). David wasn’t afraid that he would lose the indwelling presence of God’s Spirit that brings salvation—once we are saved, we never lose the Spirit in that sense (Eph 1:13–14). Rather, what David feared was that the Spirit would remove his special anointing empowerment given to him as king of Israel.
This special Spirit empowerment was even applied to non-believers on occasion. King Saul is, of course, an example of this. Though God anointed him as king of Israel and gifted him with special empowerment from the Spirit, his actions revealed that he was not a true follower of Yahweh. Likewise “the Spirit of God came upon” Balaam and caused him to bless Israel, though Balaam’s desire was to curse Israel (Nm 24:2).
What is clear, then, is that this empowerment by the Spirit is not related to other works by the Spirit that are given to all believers. This empowerment is unique gifting by the Spirit to leaders of God’s people and prophets in order that he might work his plan among them.
This fact alone reveals the unique nature of Spirit empowerment—it is not intended for every believer, or even just those who are especially holy. Rather, the Spirit empowered very specific individuals who were especially chosen by God to deliver his revelation or otherwise order the people and plan of God at significant stages in redemptive history. Between those significant transitional stages, such empowerment is not ordinary or necessary.
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If the human instinct is to build a kingdom upon those who are strong and mighty, impressive and successful, God’s instinct is to build a kingdom upon those who are weak and lowly, who are meek and merciful.

Back in the 1950s, humanity entered into a great age of space exploration as the United States and the Soviet Union battled to be first to the moon. It seems to me that we are now entering into a second great age of space exploration as billionaires battle it out to see who can be first to establish a permanent outpost in space.
We don’t need to push our minds too hard to imagine a scenario in which one of these billionaires announces he is establishing a new nation somewhere beyond earth. We might imagine him making an announcement and saying, “This world is falling apart, the earth is collapsing under the weight of war and epidemic and pollution, so we are going to start over. We are putting out the call to help create Humanity 2.0. Join me as I found the Kingdom of Space.”
The billionaire who is founding this state might explain something like this: “This new nation will be better and greater than any nation or any civilization in the whole history of mankind. Because we are going to recreate humanity, we need to ensure we bring along only the best of the best—only the sharpest minds, only the most impressive personalities, only the most beautiful bodies, only the most accomplished individuals. We need the wise, the winsome, the winners, the well-to-do so together we can fulfill our potential and become all humanity can be. Come to me all who are mighty and self-sufficient. Bring in the rich and the beautiful, the impressive and the accomplished.”
Jesus, too, has founded a kingdom—the kingdom of heaven—and his kingdom could hardly be more different. It’s a kingdom where the call goes out to the low instead of the high. Its king says “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden,” and “bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” But even that’s not enough. He sends his emissaries to the halfway houses and drop-in centers and group homes and says, “Bring them all in!” If the human instinct is to build a kingdom upon those who are strong and mighty, impressive and successful, God’s instinct is to build a kingdom upon those who are weak and lowly, who are meek and merciful.
Keeping these two perspectives in mind, let me present you with two different visions for humanity. Let’s imagine now that our billionaire is ready to blast off to begin his Kingdom of Space. He has chosen the cream of the human crop to accompany him, and now together they are parading toward the great ship will that take them to their new nation.
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