Troublesome Topic: WAS EVERYTHING CREATED CLEAN OR HOLY?

Oswald Chambers says that When God created the universe, everything was intended to be holy, thus, everything is holy by design.

Do Oswald Chambers (often referred to as OC) and Rick Oka agree or disagree?

First of all, everything was created to be holy and clean – nothing was common in the original creation, rather everything was designed to be set apart for God’s special purposes. Obviously, nothing was unclean before the fall of man into sin. In this OC was right.

When sin entered the world, many things were no longer holy or set apart as they were designed to be. Therefore, God used the designations of holy and common, and clean and unclean to teach His chosen people about Himself and what He requires of us.

Oka says nothing about the situation before the fall into sin. In today’s world, a post-fall world, everything is part of the teaching tool God uses to teach His followers about spiritual matters. Nature in general is in the state of common and clean, but that is today’s situation; it was not like that in the Garden of Eden. In this Rich Oka is right.

This is one of the reasons why Paul says that “all the creation groans together and travails together until now” (Rom 8:22). All physical aspects of creation were affected by the fall of man into sin because man was the leader, the administrator of it all. The default setting is no longer holy and clean, but common and clean.

Therefore, OC and Oka agree.

Furthermore, we could imply that one day God will once again make everything set apart for his glory – holy and clean. The designations of common and unclean will be done away with, for they are nothing more than teaching tools which are still being employed today.

Therefore, we should live our lives in a way that makes everything in our lives holy.

ARE WE BORN WITH AN INCLINATION TOWARD SIN,  OR CLEAN AND COMMON?

Both.

This is a bit of a tension. In one way we have great potential, but we also are born with a strong tendency toward sin.

At birth we are common and clean, and thus we are eligible to become holy. But being common and clean also means that we are only one step away from becoming common and unclean.

So we are a combination of the good and the bad. That is why it is so important to remember that Adam was made from the dust of the ground, dust being worthless, the ground being valuable, tillable, productive soil. We must always keep those two things in proper equilibrium in our minds.

ONE TYPE OF CHILDREN ARE BORN CLEAN AND HOLY

Take special note of the very end of I Corinthians 7:14.

Paul knew that there would be cases in which a married person would become a believer after getting married, and the unbelieving spouse would not leave, and he wondered what that meant for the children. Would they start life with a disadvantage spiritually (common and unclean)?

God must have given Paul an answer to this question in some direct way, an answer which Paul shared at this point with the Corinthians. The answer was that the children are not disadvantaged, in fact God grants them a special status. Instead of starting out as common and clean, they will start out as clean and holy. The things a spouse goes through when not married to another believer will be noticed by the children and will be a powerful witness to the work of God in a human life. God chooses to look at the fact that one spouse is going above and beyond what is normal in order to live for Him; He does not focus on the fact that the other spouse does not follow Him at all. In this way, the home and the resulting children are not disadvantaged by a situation out of their control.