The LORD spoke again to Moses and Aaron, telling them, “Say to the Israelites, ‘Of all the beasts of the earth, these ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud. But of those that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, you are not to eat the following: The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. The rock badger, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. . . .

You are sons of the LORD your God; do not cut yourselves or shave your foreheads on behalf of the dead, for you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD has chosen you to be a people for His prized possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. You must not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals that you may eat: The ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. . . .

Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on his opinions. For one person has faith to eat all things, while another, who is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not belittle the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. . . .

“No, Lord!” Peter answered. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

For behold, the LORD will come with fire—His chariots are like a whirlwind—to execute His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword, the LORD will execute judgment on all flesh, and many will be slain by the LORD. “Those who consecrate and purify themselves to enter the groves—to follow one in the center of those who eat the flesh of swine and vermin and rats—will perish together,” declares the LORD.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

And he cried out in a mighty voice: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a lair for demons and a haunt for every unclean spirit, every unclean bird, and every detestable beast.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone. It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence before God is ours through Christ. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God. . . .

“Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And: “I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

Pray that I may declare it clearly, as I should. Act wisely toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love

So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take away sickness from among you. No woman in your land will miscarry or be barren; I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send My terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn and run. I will send the hornet before you to drive the Hivites and Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. I will not drive them out before you in a single year; otherwise the land would become desolate and wild animals would multiply against you. . . .

You are to take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate; a pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate;

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean.

There are different ministries, but the same Lord.

By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep His commandments.

As obedient children, do not conform to the passions of your former ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. . . .

The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He drives out the enemy before you, giving the command, ‘Destroy him!’

Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month is the beginning of months for you; it shall be the first month of your year. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man must select a lamb for his family, one per household. If the household is too small for a whole lamb, they are to share with the nearest neighbor based on the number of people, and apportion the lamb accordingly. Your lamb must be an unblemished year-old male, and you may take it from the sheep or the goats. . . .

At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD’s divisions went out of the land of Egypt.

He told them, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil. Then set aside whatever remains and keep it until morning.’”

In the third month, on the same day of the month that the Israelites had left the land of Egypt, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai.

And God spoke all these words: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, . . .

“These are the ordinances that you are to set before them: If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything. If he arrived alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrived with a wife, she is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children; I do not want to go free,’ . . .

After that, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let My people go, so that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’”

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

because Abraham listened to My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed as well.

By speaking of a new covenant, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

Now, however, Jesus has received a much more excellent ministry, just as the covenant He mediates is better and is founded on better promises.

But God found fault with the people and said: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will become like wool.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

For You granted Him authority over all people, so that He may give eternal life to all those You have given Him. Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.

Then the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying, “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When any of you brings an offering to the LORD, you may bring as your offering an animal from the herd or the flock. If one’s offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to present an unblemished male. He must bring it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting for its acceptance before the LORD. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, so it can be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. And he shall slaughter the young bull before the LORD, and Aaron’s sons the priests are to present the blood and sprinkle it on all sides of the altar at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. . . .

“Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.

But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Here is a call for the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Certainly not! Instead, we uphold the law.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the outcome is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

so that the righteous standard of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately.

For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected,

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was called the Italian Regiment. He and all his household were devout and God-fearing. He gave generously to the people and prayed to God regularly. One day at about the ninth hour, he had a clear vision of an angel of God who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” Cornelius stared at him in fear and asked, “What is it, Lord?” The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to call for a man named Simon who is called Peter. . . .

Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food.

Now if perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on this basis the people received the law), why was there still need for another priest to appear—one in the order of Melchizedek and not in the order of Aaron? For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed as well. He of whom these things are said belonged to a different tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, a tribe as to which Moses said nothing about priests.

I know, O LORD, that a man’s way is not his own; no one who walks directs his own steps.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; . . .

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked.

Everyone who practices sin practices lawlessness as well. Indeed, sin is lawlessness.

because it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

For physical exercise is of limited value, but godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for the present life and for the one to come.

‘No, Lord,’ I said, ‘for nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

Then some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after engaging these men in sharp debate, Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. Sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, recounting the conversion of the Gentiles and bringing great joy to all the brothers. On their arrival in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and apostles and elders, to whom they reported all that God had done through them. But some believers from the party of the Pharisees stood up and declared, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.” . . .

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond these essential requirements:

Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. It is because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”

You must not eat any detestable thing.

and say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.”

He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God,

They are to teach My people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to discern between the clean and the unclean.

Am I now seeking the approval of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

I am amazed how quickly you are deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—

And you are to bring two of every living creature into the ark—male and female—to keep them alive with you.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the promised land as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith Sarah, even though she was barren and beyond the proper age, was enabled to conceive a child, because she considered Him faithful who had promised. And so from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. . . .

And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called a friend of God.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

But the following among all the teeming life and creatures in the water are detestable to you: everything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales. They shall be an abomination to you; you must not eat their meat, and you must detest their carcasses. Everything in the water that does not have fins and scales shall be detestable to you. Additionally, you are to detest the following birds, and they must not be eaten because they are detestable: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture,

All flying insects that walk on all fours are detestable to you.

All other flying insects that have four legs are detestable to you.

You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud.

Every creature that moves along the ground is detestable; it must not be eaten. Do not eat any creature that moves along the ground, whether it crawls on its belly or walks on four or more feet; for such creatures are detestable.

Do not defile yourselves by any crawling creature; do not become unclean or defiled by them.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be unclean for seven days, as she is during the days of her menstruation. And on the eighth day the flesh of the boy’s foreskin is to be circumcised. The woman shall continue in purification from her bleeding for thirty-three days. She must not touch anything sacred or go into the sanctuary until the days of her purification are complete. If, however, she gives birth to a daughter, the woman will be unclean for two weeks as she is during her menstruation. Then she must continue in purification from her bleeding for sixty-six days. . . .

But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

And Jesus told the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, and they saw some of His disciples eating with hands that were defiled—that is, unwashed. Now in holding to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat until they wash their hands ceremonially. And on returning from the market, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions for them to observe, including the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and couches for dining. So the Pharisees and scribes questioned Jesus: “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead, they eat with defiled hands.” . . .

Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him; but the things that come out of a man, these are what defile him.” After Jesus had left the crowd and gone into the house, His disciples inquired about the parable. “Are you still so dull?” He asked. “Do you not understand? Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him, because it does not enter his heart, but it goes into the stomach and then is eliminated.” (Thus all foods are clean.) . . .

My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments;

Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.

The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not falter.

I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.”

Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but think of yourself with sober judgment, according to the measure of faith God has given you.

And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.

What then shall we say? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase?

So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.