Leviticus 6:8-7

What’s Happening?

Up to now, most of Leviticus has been addressed to the people who bring offerings to the tabernacle. But in Leviticus 6:8 through chapter 7, God turns his attention to the priests. These instructions are like footnotes to the offerings already described, showing how they are to be handled once they are dedicated to God.

The main concern here is holiness—what happens when ordinary things are given to God. The text makes clear that once something has been offered to God, it becomes holy. That means it is set apart, clean before the Lord, and like him—holy as he is holy. And once something has become holy, it matters deeply who eats it, when, and where.

Even what isn’t eaten, like the holy ashes from the burnt offering, are treated carefully. Every morning the priest gathers them up, and though they are “waste,” they are holy waste. They must be taken outside the camp to a ceremonially clean place (Leviticus 6:10–11). To discard them carelessly would be to despise the holiness of God and potentially cause someone who is not ceremonially clean to interact with them accidentally.

The same principle applies to the priestly meals. Grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings produce holy food. But this food can only be eaten by priests, and only if they are clean (Leviticus 7:6). If an unclean priest or any outsider ate the holy food, they would be cut off from God’s people (Leviticus 7:20–21). That is because holiness means set apart. When the holy is mixed with the unholy, it mixes something set apart for God with something set apart from God. Just as Adam and Eve were set apart from God when they stopped being set apart for God, so unholy eaters are set apart from the camp of God when they stop being set apart for God.

Holiness must be treated carefully because it is contagious. Whatever touches holy flesh becomes holy (Leviticus 6:27). Eating holy food is like ingesting holiness—it makes the priests holy on the inside. This is how God is shaping his people to be holy as he is holy: by giving them access to his holiness in the form of food, handled carefully, consumed reverently, and shared only with those he has cleansed.

Where is the Gospel?

This theme of contagious holiness is fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus himself is the holy one, and he gives his holy life to us. In John 6, he takes the language of the tabernacle meals on his own lips: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:54). Just as the priests ingested holiness when they ate from God’s sacrifices, so all who feed on Jesus by faith are made holy from the inside out.

And unlike Leviticus, where only certain clean priests could eat, Jesus extends his holy meal to everyone who trusts him. At the Lord’s Supper, he offers his body and blood to all believers. What was once restricted to the holy few is now opened up to the whole family of God.

But the same warning remains: God’s holiness is not casual. Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 11 that those who eat the Lord’s Supper “in an unworthy manner” bring judgment on themselves. To eat what is set apart for God while you are set apart from God mixes holiness and unholiness dangerously. God’s holy people are meant to live in God’s holy presence. To persist in unholiness is to choose exile outside his camp.

Yet for those who come in faith, Jesus’ holiness is still contagious. He fills us with his Spirit like a new tabernacle and makes us holy on the inside. He spreads his holiness outward through us, so that the whole world might catch God’s contagious holiness and be brought inside the camp.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit would give you eyes to see the God who makes his holiness contagious, and that you would see Jesus as the holy food who fills you with his own life, making you holy as he is holy.