Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem (Exo 13:13).

Recently I have been reading through Exodus and often I struggle because it is so foreign to our contemporary culture and worldview.  Granted, the Western/Christian world view is a Judeo/Christian worldview but the sacrificial system which was the central and defining element of the Jewish worldview as found in the Old Testament has not been my experienced worldview.  It is often difficult for me to understand. 

The redemption of the firstborn among the sons of Israel by a lamb is familiar to me.  In the Gospel of John, John the Baptist announces “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (Joh 1:29)!”  Jesus is presented as the Lamb of God and an exploration of that concept leads to The Law as established in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).  The lamb that is the redemption price is of those animals designated as clean and as such it represents a righteous sacrifice.  A righteousness that an unclean animal could never represent.  The Donkey, an unclean i.e., unrighteous animal, could not redeem itself, it needed to be redeemed through the death of a clean or righteous animal.  What caught me by surprise though is that to declare a Donkey needs to be redeemed because it is unclean is followed by a declaration that the firstborn of Israel needed to be redeemed.  By implication that declaration declares the firstborn of Israel as equivalently unclean.

What follows then is that the declaration of every firstborn of Israel as unclean is symbolic of the fact that everyone in Israel is unclean.  And because Israel is the firstborn of nations (Jer 31:9) that everyone in Israel is unclean is symbolic of the fact that everyone in every nation is unclean.  Moreover, they are unclean in and of themselves not because they have been made unclean by contact with uncleanness.

Hold on a minute A~A~Ron (That’s a reference to a Saturday Night Live skit just in case the translation was lost in the typing.)!  The Law does declare that to touch an unclean animal is to become unclean (Lev 11:24-26) and this implies that the person who touched the unclean animal was clean before the touching.  I would agree that could be implied but I think it would be the wrong implication.  The declaration that touching an unclean animal makes a person unclean follows that portion of Leviticus that designates the sacrifices required to make a person clean.  They were made clean from their uncleanness prior to touching the unclean animal.  However, by nature, apart from redemption, mankind is unclean before God.

Fast forward to the New Testament and Jesus makes the same statement when He says, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him (Mar 7:14-15).”  When His disciples were confused, he had to elaborate, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.  For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person (Mar 7:20-23).”  This, I think, also sheds some light on that from which we are being redeemed.  We are being redeemed from the judgment required for our evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.  They are all unclean acts that come from an unclean heart.

I think the Israelites had made the wrong assumption; that they by nature were clean and were not made unclean until they encountered uncleanness when in fact, they were unclean because of what was coming out of their own hearts.  Perhaps they thought that the lamb offered at their birth was sufficient for their redemption.  Perhaps they thought that the sacrifices offered after those encounters in which they became unclean would be sufficient.  However, the truth is that this system was only intended to point to Christ.  It could never make a person truly clean (Heb 10:1) because it could not change the heart of man.  If this is true, then the Jew like the Gentile remains unclean, or unrighteous before God.

The good news for us is that the Gentile too has been declared clean.  When Peter was offered in a dream all kinds of animals to eat, he responded, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean (Act 10:14).”  Peter was still operating under the assumption that he could be made unclean by eating an unclean animal.  But God rebuked Peter by reminding him that he had declared those animals clean (Act 10:14).  This occurred just before Peter was to meet Cornelius, a Gentile.  God was using this dream to show Peter that Jesus had cleansed not only the Jewish believers but also the Gentile believers.

To wrap up, all of us by default are unclean.  Not because we were born into uncleanness or because we came into contact with uncleanness.  Our uncleanness is attested to by our own evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.  The need to be cleansed is there and it is universal.  Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse.

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