Today when reading Leviticus 21:6, "[Priests] must be holy to their God and must not profane the name of their God," the overwhelming expectation for human beings to be holy jumped out at me. Maybe this should have happened sooner, as I found in the introduction of the Leviticus People's Bible (p.9): "The word holy occurs 90 times in Leviticus. In fact, the verse that perhaps best serves as the theme of the entire book is this: 'Be holy, because I, the LORD your God, am holy' (19:2)."
But how can human beings be holy? The People's Bible picks up perfectly on my thought process: "But how could the people of Israel be holy? How could they stand before a holy God? The means for holiness is atonement, a word occurring 40 times in Leviticus and meaning 'satisfaction for wrongdoing.'" From p.100: "Because God is holy, it is impossible for him to tolerate man's sin. But God in his love conceived a plan in eternity to let man become holy again and live in his presence. No sooner had man fallen into sin than God revealed his plan of salvation. Down through the centuries, he said that forgiveness and salvation for mankind would be accomplished by the promised Messiah. By his grace he brought a nation of slaves out of the land of Egypt and gave them worship procedures that assured them of the removal of their sin for the sake of the one who was coming. Then when Jesus' perfect life was given into death on the cross for the sins of the world, these outward symbols of holiness were no longer necessary. 'These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ' (Colossians 2:17)."
So God did not expect the priests or the people to be perfect on their own, but through faith in him God made them holy. This holiness showed itself in their obedience to God through the carrying out of his commands--commands meant to point ahead to Jesus.
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