When You Don't Want to be Sealed

If you’ve restored any furniture, or perhaps built a backyard deck, etc…, then you know (hopefully) that it should be finished with a good sealant. Sealing the material protects it from the elements, maintains the beauty and gives it a smooth surface. Basically, sealing preserves and protects.

For the Christian, the being “sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13) is much the same – only much more. According to the Benson Commentary, this sealing:

• assures our adoption and regeneration,
• stamps us with the image of God,
• constitutes us as heirs of heavenly inheritance, and prepares us for the enjoyment of it, and
• produces, in every man that possesses it, a new nature, marked (as) the son of God; a stronger evidence of title to eternal life, than if possessing miraculous gifts.

So, don’t you always want to seal your work, don’t you always want to be sealed? The surprising answer to that is – NO.

Suppose that the furniture that you are sealing is wet, that the paint job is unsatisfactory or that there are imperfections that need to be addressed. In those cases, you would potentially be sealing mold into the surface, or setting the piece into a perpetually imperfect state. You would first want to make sure that your work is finished and ready to be sealed before you do seal it.

The same goes for us being “sealed in Him.” If you are a Christian, you shouldn’t want to be sealed as a blemished being.

Leviticus 4 is Moses’ recording of God’s instructions regarding the sacrifice to be made for sin. We sin, we confess and repent, and we are forgiven. That’s what most of us know. And it is true, but it also leaves out a most critical step – the sacrifice. For the Jews of the Old Testament, that meant transferring their guilt onto an animal and offering that animal upon the altar. For Christians that sacrifice has been made, once and for all, by the blood of Jesus Christ. Believing on Him is a prerequisite for being forgiven, after confession and repentance. It is a prerequisite to being “sealed in Him.” Confessing and repenting is also called “atonement.” So, atonement = forgiveness. That’s a formula that any student can remember.

Still, when is being sealed not such a good thing? Well, it’s when we assume His forgiveness without the necessary atonement. In Leviticus 4:18, the priests were to take some of the blood of the sacrifice and put it on the horns of the altar of incense. This was symbolic of the cleansing of the sin, for Jeremiah said that,

“The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus; With a diamond point it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars,” Jer. 17:1 (NASB).

Their sins, our sins, are “written…on the horns of (the) altar.” We know that if we sin we must atone – confess AND repent. Repenting means to sincerely regret the sin and to sincerely dedicate ourselves to the removal of that sin. It’s this second part where so many of us get stuck. We often confess, and less often regret, but much less often sincerely dedicate ourselves to its removal. And, so it remains in us. It remains written upon the horns of the altar.

When our sins remain written upon the horns of the altar, the application of the sacrificial blood, Christ’s blood, still a sealant, seals our sins upon the horns. Christ’s blood seals our sins, as Matthew Henry writes, “binding them on faster, perpetuating their memory and they will remain a witness against us.” Christ’s blood seals us in our mold, in our imperfect state.

THIS is when being sealed is not such a good thing.

One additional note about Leviticus 4. This sin offering is in regards to a sin that is one committed unintentionally, of which one becomes aware later. (A sin committed intentionally is a whole different subject.) When we commit a sin unintentionally, we become aware of it either by our own cognizance (again, after the fact) or by being made aware of it by another. The thought of being made aware of it by another is, at first, likely to “ruffle our feathers” a bit. In our “me first” culture we remove ourselves from the right of alerting others to their sin, or their pointing out of ours. That wasn’t so much the case back then – and it shouldn’t be now. We should desire to know our sins, for they are still sins whether we know them or not. And, we remain guilty whether we know them or not. And, they will become sealed upon us if we do not know them. Matthew Henry also wrote, regarding this, “In ignorance we may fall into sin, but let us not, in ignorance, still lie in it.”

A Holy Diet - Giving the Fat to God (Leviticus 3)

I need a "Skinny Mirror"! Amazon used to sell one, but now it is listed as out of stock with the disclaimer, "We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." [This is a mirror that, with a slight vertical extension caused by bending the glass, gives the appearance of a slimmer me.] Maybe it would be just an appearance, but surely it would suffice to a self-deceptively satisfying degree.

I know that a healthier option would be to actually attain the truth of the vision that I seek in the mirror. It would be healthier because where the slimming of my frame is concerned, the shedding of pounds would be required. If my motivation to slim comes from health reasoning, this is a noble and respectable effort. Though, if like many of us, the "look" outweighs the "feel," I would have to admit that my motivation would be more from vanity. But, either way, the end result of losing weight delivers me having to carry that luggage around. I may look better, but I would also BE better!

Slimming down, in my case, would mean that I would have to divest myself of excess fat. Diet helps (else, getting rid of it just to replace it with more would be a frustration of futility), but I've got to get rid of what I have now! That means exercise, which unfortunately doesn't come easy for me (motivation, work, family... I can "legitimize" any excuse.) Wouldn't it be easier if I could, some way, say to someone, "here, just take my fat," and they would? IM-possible! Who would want more fat?

While reading Leviticus 3, I was struck by an answer to that (not that I was looking). Leviticus 1 and 3 describe God's directions, given to Moses, about sacrifices. There's the burnt offering, an atonement for sin (chapter one), and a peace offering, given in thanksgiving and in petition (chapter three). With the burnt offering, the whole animal was to be sacrificed, burnt upon the altar by the priests. The wholeness of it was burnt because our sins are present in the wholeness of our body. The peace offering, though, was to be split between God (and burnt upon the altar), the priest and the one presenting the offering. It was to be divided because in peace (thankfulness) we all feast together, in communion and friendship. The priest and the offerer got the meat, and God got...yep, the fat.

God wants the fat, though. In fact, that was His command, to give Him the fat. But, why? Well, for a few reasons:

1. The fat of the animal is actually the most flavorful. What we give to God should be the best of what we have (which was given to us by Him in the first place).
2. As described in chapter 3, this fat is of the "inward" parts of the animal. God is concerned with our inward parts, He sees our inward parts where no one else does, and that is the part of us He wants - not our external appearances.
3. Being the most flavorful, the fat also represents our desires for "flavor," or our "affections and lusts," or the corruptness of our inward parts. He wants us to turn that over to Him - to be burnt upon the altar.

What should we do in response to this? Well, first, be thankful that He wants to help us lose weight - the weight of our sin - to get healthier, to look better, to BE better. We should also be obedient and actually hand over our fat to Him, to subdue our "corrupted nature." We should be obedient because, well, He tells us to, but also because only by doing so can we be truly thankful (otherwise we continue to deceive ourselves, by thinking we are deceiving Him). And also because only by doing so will we be prepared to receive further mercies from Him. He requires the fat be burnt so that our hearts be saved.

Thankfully, we don't have to physically sacrifice animals any longer - Christ took care of that for us by offering Himself upon the altar for our salvation. But we do have to accept His sacrifice. When Moses recorded God's instructions for His people, these sacrifices were to be made at the doorway of the tabernacle. The people couldn't enter the tabernacle, only the priests could, so that was the nearest to God they could get. But Jesus invites us in, through the doorway -

"I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." (John 10:9)

Accepting His sacrifice, entering the door, receiving the salvation He offers, costs us but choosing Him. Choosing Him means we give Him our fat. And who doesn't want to get slimmer?