“For I am Adonai your God; therefore, consecrate yourselves and be holy, for I am holy…For I am Adonai, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. Therefore, you are to be holy, because I am holy. Such, then, is the law…Its purpose is to distinguish between the unclean and the clean…”
Leviticus 11:44a, 45-46a, 47a CJB
The terms used in Hebrew to designate the clean and unclean animals are tahor and tamai. These are terms that are never used to describe physical cleanliness or uncleanliness, but rather a spiritual or moral state of being. The term tamai is used only in relation to moral and religious deficiencies that contaminate the soul and character of man, particularly incest and idol worship, and to characterize the absence of ritual purity. It is often translated as defilement…The English words clean and unclean are therefore to be understood as purity and defilement in a spiritual-ritual sense.
-Rabbi Hayim H. Donin
“You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:48 ESV
“Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.“
Galatians 3:24 NASB
“For whoever hears the Word but doesn’t do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror, looks at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But if a person looks closely into the perfect Torah, which gives freedom, and continues, becoming not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work it requires, then he will be blessed in what he does. Anyone who thinks he is religiously observant but does not control his tongue is deceiving himself, and his observance counts for nothing. The religious observance that God the Father considers pure and faultless is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being contaminated by the world.”
James 1:23-27 CJB
The Law shows us our need, our “uncleanness” and moral impurity.