Week 24 Discussion Guide: Holy Living

Opening

Begin by reciting this week’s memory verse together:

“You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” – Leviticus 19:2 (ESV)

Think about a person whose character you deeply admire – someone whose integrity, kindness, or courage has shaped how you want to live. Now consider: did that person ever issue you a command, or did their life itself become the standard? “Be holy, for I am holy” is not an arbitrary demand. It is an invitation to become like the one who speaks it. As we discuss this week, notice how Leviticus defines holiness – not as withdrawal from the world, but as a particular way of being fully in it.

Review: The Big Picture

This week we read from the theological center of Leviticus to its close. We began with the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur – the most solemn ritual in Israel’s calendar: one priest, stripped to plain white linen, entering the Most Holy Place with blood that is not his own. Two goats, one slain and one sent into the wilderness, together picturing the double movement of atonement – the penalty paid and the sin removed. From there we entered the Holiness Code, where the command “Be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” radiates into every dimension of Israelite life: the sanctity of blood, the boundaries of sexual ethics, the love of neighbor, justice for the poor, honesty in commerce, the feast calendar that organizes time around God’s saving acts, and the radical economics of Jubilee – debts forgiven, slaves freed, land returned every fiftieth year. The book closes with blessings and curses that make the stakes of covenant faithfulness existential.

Leviticus insists that holiness is not a feeling. It is a way of eating, working, judging, harvesting, resting, and loving.

Discussion Questions

Day 1: The Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:1-34)

1. The Priest in Linen. On Yom Kippur, the high priest removes his garments of glory and beauty and puts on plain white linen – stripped of rank, dressed as a servant. He is the only person who enters the Most Holy Place, and this is the only day it happens. What does the stripping of priestly garments communicate about the posture required to enter God’s presence? How does Philippians 2:6-7 – Christ “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” – echo this ritual?

2. Two Goats, One Atonement. The first goat is slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. The second goat – the azazel, the scapegoat – receives the confession of “all the iniquities of the people of Israel” and is sent into the wilderness, carrying the sin away to “a remote area” (Leviticus 16:21-22). Why does the ritual require two goats? What dimension of atonement does the death of the first goat address, and what dimension does the departure of the second address? Can you have one without the other?

3. Blood on the Mercy Seat. The blood is sprinkled on the kapporet – the mercy seat, the golden lid of the ark where God’s presence dwells – seven times. The blood stands between God’s holiness and the tablets of the law (contained in the ark beneath). What does this spatial arrangement communicate? When God looks down from the mercy seat, what does he see – the broken commandments or the covering blood?

Day 2: Blood and Boundaries (Leviticus 17:1-18:30)

1. “The Life Is in the Blood.” Leviticus 17:11 makes an extraordinary theological claim: “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” God gives the blood to the people as a means of atonement. The blood is not taken from God – it is a gift from God. How does this reshape the way you understand sacrifice? Is atonement something humanity offers to God, or something God provides for humanity?

2. Sexual Holiness. Leviticus 18 draws the boundaries of sexual ethics with exacting specificity, grounding them not in cultural convention but in the character of God: “I am the LORD your God” appears repeatedly as the basis for the commands. What does it mean that sexual ethics in Scripture are rooted in theology rather than sociology? How does this challenge both permissive and legalistic approaches to sexuality?

Day 3: “Be Holy” in Practice (Leviticus 19:1-20:27)

1. The Practical Holiness Code. Leviticus 19 translates “Be holy, for I am holy” into astonishingly concrete terms: do not steal, do not lie, pay your workers on time, do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, leave the edges of your field for the poor and the foreigner, show no partiality in judgment. Which of these commands surprises you most as an expression of holiness? What does this list reveal about what God means when he says “be like me”?

2. “Love Your Neighbor.” The command “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) does not originate in the Gospels. It originates here, in the heart of the Holiness Code, surrounded by commands about honest scales, just wages, and care for the immigrant. Jesus calls it the second great commandment (Matthew 22:39). What does it mean that the love command is embedded in a legal code rather than in a sermon? Does its context in Leviticus add anything to how you understand its meaning?

3. The Sojourner. “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong… You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Israel’s treatment of the foreigner is grounded in their own memory of being foreigners. How does remembered suffering become the basis for compassion in this passage? Where does this principle apply in your own life and community?

Day 4: Priests, Feasts, and Sacred Time (Leviticus 21:1-24:23)

1. The Feast Calendar. Leviticus 23 organizes Israel’s year around seven feasts: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks (Pentecost), Trumpets, Atonement, and Booths. Each feast reenacts a dimension of God’s saving work. What does it mean that Israel’s calendar is structured by remembrance rather than by economics or agriculture alone? How does the rhythm of feasts shape a people’s identity over time? Which of these feasts finds its fulfillment in a specific event of Christ’s life?

2. Sacred Persons and Sacred Times. The priests are held to higher standards of purity (Leviticus 21-22) because they handle holy things. The feasts mark certain days as set apart from the ordinary flow of time. Together they declare that holiness requires both consecrated leaders and consecrated rhythms. How do you see this principle at work in the life of the church today? What happens when either element – set-apart leadership or set-apart time – is neglected?

Day 5: Sabbath, Jubilee, and the Stakes of Covenant (Leviticus 25:1-27:34)

1. The Jubilee. Every fiftieth year: debts forgiven, slaves freed, land returned to its original owners. The theological premise is extraordinary: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25:23). No human arrangement is permanent. Everything belongs to God. What does the Jubilee reveal about God’s view of wealth, poverty, and ownership? How does Jesus’ inaugural proclamation in Luke 4:18-21 – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” – connect the Jubilee to the gospel?

2. Blessings and Curses. Leviticus 26 lays out the consequences of covenant faithfulness and unfaithfulness with unflinching clarity: obedience brings rain, harvest, peace, and God walking among them; disobedience brings disease, defeat, exile, and the land vomiting out its inhabitants. The language is severe. What do the blessings and curses reveal about the seriousness of the covenant relationship? Is there grace even in the curses – and if so, where do you find it (see Leviticus 26:40-45)?

Synthesis

1. The Holiness That Kills and the Holiness That Heals. Throughout Leviticus, holiness is simultaneously the greatest danger (Nadab and Abihu consumed, the unclean cut off) and the greatest gift (atonement provided, fellowship restored, community ordered by justice and love). How do you hold both realities together? How does the New Testament resolve this tension – or does it?

Going Deeper: Connections Across the Week

• The Two Movements of Atonement. The Day of Atonement insists that forgiveness requires both propitiation (the wrath absorbed by the slain goat) and expiation (the sin removed by the scapegoat). The first goat dies – the penalty is paid. The second goat disappears into the wilderness – the sin is carried away. Christ fulfills both: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24) – the penalty absorbed – and “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12) – the guilt eliminated. What Leviticus 16 required two animals to picture, one Savior accomplishes. The cross is both the altar where blood is shed and the wilderness into which sin vanishes.

• Holiness as Love. The command “Be holy, for I am holy” and the command “Love your neighbor as yourself” appear in the same chapter (Leviticus 19:2, 18). This is not coincidence. In God’s vocabulary, holiness and love are not competing categories but overlapping descriptions of the same reality. To be holy is to love justly, generously, and without partiality. To love your neighbor is to reflect the character of the holy God. The separation that many Christians assume between holiness (personal piety) and love (relational compassion) is a separation Leviticus never makes. When Jesus identifies the love command as the second great commandment, he is not innovating. He is reading Leviticus correctly.

• The Land That Belongs to God. The Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 rests on a theological claim with radical economic implications: “The land is mine.” No one owns anything permanently. Debts cannot accumulate forever. Slavery cannot harden into a permanent condition. The gap between rich and poor has a built-in limit because the true owner periodically resets the system. This is not socialism – it is theocracy in the deepest sense: God owns, and humans steward. The implications for contemporary economic ethics are profound. Luke records Jesus inaugurating his ministry with a Jubilee declaration (Luke 4:18-21), and the early church practiced a version of Jubilee economics: “There was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:34). The land may have changed. The owner has not.

Application

• Personal: The Day of Atonement required the high priest to strip off his garments of glory before entering God’s presence. What would it look like for you to approach God this week stripped of pretense – without the garments of accomplishment, reputation, or self-sufficiency? Come to prayer this week in plain linen. Come as you actually are.

• Relational: Leviticus 19:9-10 commands Israel to leave the edges of the field unharvested so the poor and the foreigner can eat. This is institutionalized generosity – not waiting to be asked, but building margin into your life for others’ needs. Where can you leave the edges of your field unharvested this week – margin in your time, your resources, your attention – so that someone else can glean?

• Formational: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Peter quotes this verse to the church (1 Peter 1:15-16), confirming that the call has not changed. But the ground has shifted: what the law demanded, the Spirit produces (Galatians 5:22-23). This week, ask the Spirit to produce in you one specific fruit of holiness from Leviticus 19 – honest speech, fair dealing, compassion for the vulnerable, love for the stranger. Holiness is not self-improvement. It is the character of God taking root in human soil.

Closing Prayer

Close your time together by praying through Leviticus 19:2. Praise God that holiness is not a distant abstraction but his own character, offered as the pattern for your life. Thank him for the Day of Atonement – the blood on the mercy seat and the goat in the wilderness – and for the Christ who fulfills both. Confess where your life falls short of the holiness Leviticus describes: unjust speech, neglected neighbors, hoarded resources, unexamined prejudices. Ask the Spirit to make you holy – not merely moral, but shaped by the character of the God who calls you. And pray for the Jubilee that Jesus announced: debts released, captives freed, the oppressed liberated – the year of the Lord’s favor that has no end.

Looking Ahead

Next week we enter the book of Numbers, where the God who dwells in the tabernacle prepares his people for the march toward the Promised Land. We will watch Israel counted, organized, and set in motion – and we will witness the failures that delay the arrival by forty years. The holiness Leviticus describes will be tested in the wilderness. The sacrificial system will be needed every day. And the question that runs beneath everything will sharpen: will this people ever be able to keep the covenant on which their life depends?