By Colleen Tinker
Recently we received a letter asking a good question about “unclean things”. The whole subject of unclean meats and other foods marginalized by the Adventist health message leaves former Adventists with “food baggage”. Even when many of us formers are convinced that Scripture never forbids certain foods, and when we read the studies demonstrating that the forbidden “stimulants” such as coffee and tea and cinnamon actually contain components that are medically helpful, we still often have deep visceral aversions to eating what we learned was “not food”.
Because we were taught that what we ate enhanced or broke down our ability to perceive the Holy Spirit, we were convinced deeply that even if food was objectively “safe”, it could be spiritually dangerous. Simply changing our knowledge of the facts was not enough to undo our aversions. Even knowing that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mk. 7:19) didn’t destroy our gag reflexes!
It’s not surprising, then, that people who have understood the new covenant still have paralyzing reactions to seeing New Testament references to not touching unclean things.
The letter we share below may resonate with many readers, and we’re also publishing our answer to this person’s question.
How did you reconcile this?
Coming out of Adventism is a terrible ordeal. Some doctrines, like the second coming of Jesus, I still cling to. The angel said He would come in like manner as He ascended, and every eye will see Him come.
Not all teachings are as clear as Jesus’ second coming, though. With the fulfillment of the Torah, unclean foods are eaten contrary to a direct command of God not to eat. I know Colossians 2:16 says let no man judge us regarding what food we eat, but where the struggle comes is in this verse: “‘Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,’ says the Lord. ‘AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you’” (2 Cor. 6:17).
(I don’t know why the NASB version uses capital letters, but that’s not my doing.)
How does a new covenant Christian justify eating pig when God says we shouldn’t touch unclean things? As a matter of fact, being separate and not touching unclean things, according to 2 Corinthians, is the condition we must meet to be welcomed by God.
Please help me understand the “how” and “why” whereby we can eat (touch) unclean flesh.
I’m wondering if the law was abolished only as a means of salvation and is still in effect in other ways, or if it is really gone.
I run across these texts that interfere with my train of comprehension, and it is very annoying!
For me, unclean foods are not an issue because I’m allergic to shell fish and pork, but how did you reconcile this issue?
Dear Reader
First of all, the caps in the passage you quoted signify that the words are quoted from the Old Testament. Some translations, such as the NASB, always show when a NT verse quotes the Old Testament by putting the quotes in all caps.
Second, the verse you quoted, 2 Corinthians 6:17, has a context. Look at 2 Corinthians 6:14–18:
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?
Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,
“I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
“Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN;And I will welcome you.
“And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.
In context, this quotation Paul takes from Isaiah is being applied to a Christian’s being “bound together” with unbelievers. The “unclean thing” in this immediate context is not food at all. It is UNBELIEVERS. God’s born-again people are not to be bound together in any sort of close shared purpose with an unbeliever. Now, Paul gives instruction in other places how a person who has become a believer is supposed to love and relate to an unbelieving spouse. But this passage in 2 Corinthians 6 is explaining how believers are not to voluntarily establish close partnerships with unbelievers.
A believer has a completely NEW purpose and goal. His life is no longer his own. He cannot share close partnerships with unbelievers; he can’t mix financial collaboration, for example, or ministry, or any other close partnership with someone who doesn’t share his commitment to the Lord Jesus. A person whose purpose for living is to achieve financial goals, attain possessions, and indulge or entertain oneself cannot share the purpose of dedicating one’s money, one’s possessions, and one’s time and energy to the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
Paul applies the quote from Isaiah to describe the worldly life focussed on self-fulfillment and achievement as something unclean. Since God Himself lives IN us, He asks us to come out of the worldly, unclean milieu that would deflect our attention away from the gospel to collaboration for self-serving things. He asks us to come out of the world and not to “touch what is unclean.”
Not about food
We know Paul is not speaking of food by at least two other passages. First, in Acts 10 God gave Peter a vision of a sheet filled with unclean animals which God commanded Peter to “kill and eat”—three times. Adventists say that vision was just about not calling Gentiles unclean. But Peter was just about to be commanded to go to the gentile Cornelius’s house and preach. To go to a gentile house was an “unclean” act on its own. Jews were not to interact with or eat with gentiles. Second, to go to Cornelius’s house, Peter would have to eat Cornelius’s food.
In the first place, the fact that any food was prepared in a gentile kitchen would have rendered that food unclean according to Jewish law. Second, God was telling Peter he had to eat gentile food and not object. He was sending Peter to stay in a previously “unclean” gentile home, and Peter was not only to stay in this “unclean” place but he was to share table fellowship with Cornelius. It wasn’t just that he was to eat “clean meat” even though it was prepared in a gentile kitchen. No, Peter was to “kill and eat”; he was not to call “UNCLEAN” what God calls “clean”. Now that the barrier between Jew and gentile was torn down at the cross in the body of Christ (Eph. 2:14), the food restrictions were gone. There is no “unclean” food for Christians.
Moreover, Jesus Himself declared previously “unclean” food to be clean in Mark 7:18–19 when He said,
“Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
Acts 15 further emphasized that gentile believers were not in any way under the law, and they were not ever expected to abstain from “unclean meat” as designated in the law.
Genesis 9:3, furthermore, which occurred before the law, states that God gave the post-flood people everything that moves for food. There was no living thing prohibited for food.
It is not the meat that is intrinsically unclean. Rather, God declared it “unclean” for Jews in order to keep them separate from the unclean gentiles who would have led His people into the worship of other gods…a thing which they actually did do in spite of God’s commands.
With the advent of the new covenant, however, all those Old Testament, old covenant restrictions were removed. We gentiles have never been required to submit to the law in any detail. The unclean food laws were for Jews under the law only. In Christ, we gentiles have been declared clean, and as believers, we are to remove ourselves from worldly pursuits and practices…including “separatist” things such as refusing to eat foods which Jesus has declared to be clean in the new covenant.
There is nothing that separates people more effectively than food. People who are vegetarians, for example, have a hard time eating with meat-eaters and finding enough to be full. If we allow food to separate us from other believers or from unbelievers to whom we are giving the gospel, we sin against them. In the new covenant, food is not a barrier. The Old Testament food laws were not given as health laws, contrary to what the Adventists say. They were entirely about being separate from unbelievers who would defile the Jews with idol worship.
Food is not unclean in itself. Jesus made that very clear. Now we are to eat whatever is placed before us without asking questions. Paul explains this New Covenant concept in Romans 14:13–23.
Nothing is unclean for us in the new covenant except unbelief and those who attempt to draw us away from our freedom in Jesus to be put back under the law!
“He who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
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