from One Body, One Spirit: Disability and Community in the Church
by Paul Pettit & B. Jason Epps
Sometimes a gap seems to exist between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Since the heretic Marcion of Sinope, who argued Jesus was a new, loving God in contrast to the evil, vindictive God of the Old Testament, readers have wondered, “Is God’s character really consistent between the first thirty-nine books of the Bible and the last twenty-seven?”
Regarding people with disabilities, we see strict purity laws in the Old Testament and sometimes occasional statements forbidding PWDs (“person with a disability”) from ministering before God (Lev. 21:16–23), which could be misunderstood as God not caring for people with disabilities. On the other hand, we see Jesus’s ministry focusing on PWDs: healing, helping, and ministering to them. On the surface, this would appear to be a stark contrast. In Malachi, God the Father declared his immutability (Mal. 3:6); Hebrews insists that Jesus’s ministry was the continuation and fulfillment of God’s plan (Heb. 6:17–20). If God has not changed, why are the Mosaic law and Levitical requirements so harsh against PWDs?
Did God care for people with disabilities when he delivered the law to Moses or during the times of the kings? Accounts relating the stories of PWDs occur with a higher frequency throughout the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and those writings convey a tenderness toward people with disabilities that does not appear quite as readily in the Old Testament. Does God’s concern for PWDs exist in the Old Testament, or is that solely a New Testament concern?
In Exodus 34 when God meets Moses on the mountain a second time, after the golden calf incident, God inscribes a second set of tablets with the Ten Commandments. Prior to writing on the tablets, God declared himself to be “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exod. 34:6–7).
God revealed himself as merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and forgiving. Christ models those traits to those with disabilities so clearly throughout the Gospels. But does the Old Testament portray God extending those character traits toward PWDs? Jesus embraced the blind, the crippled, and the mute, but was that tenderness always on God’s heart? Does the posture that Jesus held and modeled for his church to hold toward PWDs align with God’s posture toward people with disabilities in the Old Testament? Or does a disparity exist between the God revealed in the Old Testament and the God-man revealed through the incarnation? This chapter wrestles with these questions and seeks out God’s heart regarding them by digging into the Word of God.
God’s desire to heal the brokenness that resulted from the fall never wavered after the fall. He longs for us to experience the trajectory of redemption history. In the meantime, he has never stopped caring for those who are hurting due to the fall and its effects, and that love encompasses every person, including people with disabilities. God wants to heal the gap that exists between himself and the totality of his created order.
Through the Old Testament, God exposed the problem that separates him from humanity: humanity chose to rebel against a perfect God, and no form of imperfection can stand welcome before God (Hab. 1:13, Col. 1:21–22). Humankind possesses a desperate and very real need for someone who is perfect, who can make all things right, including the healing of the fallen creation, a healing that must cure all disabilities. When God sets up the problem as clearly as possible, humanity gains a fuller view of the reality of their desperate need for a Savior, and that need serves to propel humanity toward Christ and his waiting arms.
The Old Testament clarifies the need for the God-man and makes that need explicit. In addition to God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6–7, God reveals the holiness of his character to his people, stating, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). God is holy, and his people must be holy too. There is a fittingness to God’s holiness. It is right that he is holy, and it is right, or fitting, that his people be holy too. But his people cannot be holy. When people are left to their own devices, the fittingness required to be God’s people remains totally removed from their grasp, a fittingness that cannot be achieved by the imperfect.
Imperfection marks the totality of the created order. No one is holy aside from God. That gives rise to the question, “Is anyone worthy?” That question points to humanity’s deepest need, and God answers that there will be one who is worthy. The entirety of the Old Testament builds humanity’s anticipation as God prepares the world for the arrival of the one who is worthy, the only one, the Lamb of God (Rev. 4:8–11; 5:8–14).
When compared with the New Testament, the Old Testament holds very few accounts telling the stories of people with disabilities. However, that disparity does not mean the Old Testament, or the God revealed in it, lacked care and compassion toward PWDs. The tenderness of God’s heart toward those with disabilities still appears throughout the text.
To start, several Levitical laws guarded the defenseless. By extension, those laws potentially protected people with disabilities (Lev. 19:14; Deut. 27:18). While those laws do not tell the stories of PWDs, those laws direct God’s people to make and maintain provisions for people with disabilities. Laws concerning gleaning, for example, ensured that the marginalized, widowed, and fatherless retained access to food. Those laws required the harvesters to leave the edges of the wheat fields untouched and the vineyard workers to pass over the fallen grapes and even some of the fruit still clinging to the vines, so the impoverished and the traveler might gather grain and grapes (Lev. 19:9–10).
While the laws on gleaning do not explicitly mention those with disabilities, those laws extended their protective covering over them. Other laws provided direct orders regarding people with disabilities, such as commands prohibiting God’s people from holding contempt toward the deaf or putting an obstacle in front of the blind (Lev. 19:14). Additional laws ensured families retained their abilities to support and care for fellow family members (Lev. 25:25–55). For instance, the laws regarding the kinsman-redeemer and the reversion of the land back to the land’s original owner in the Year of Jubilee allowed families to support themselves despite hardships (Lev. 25:25–28). If a family lost their land, the main source of life in the ancient Near East, the eventual redemption of that land always remained a possibility regardless of the circumstances surrounding the loss, including the occurrence of disabilities.
Those kinds of Old Testament laws ensured care for the otherwise overlooked and marginalized and revealed God’s heart toward people with disabilities. Those laws portray God’s tenderness and provision for people struggling against barriers—sometimes permanent barriers—threatening to bar those people from a flourishing life.
Occasionally, people suggest the law does not represent a tenderness toward PWDs, but an exclusion toward them. Those people view the law as partly cutting off those with disabilities, since people with disabilities from the tribe of Levi were not allowed to participate in the priesthood. In Leviticus 21:16–23, priests with blemishes or disabilities face prohibitions from making offerings to the Lord. The Law explicitly states, “No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord’s food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God” (Lev. 21:21). Levites with defects and disabilities were not allowed to approach the altar.
Like the priests who made the offerings, the holy place and the offerings themselves had to be perfect. No blemishes were allowed. Imperfections would profane the sanctuary and the person who mediated the forgiveness fostered by the sacrificial system. That correlation between a perfect God and a temple, priests, and sacrifices without blemishes possesses a fittingness. It is right that a perfect God be approached by priests without blemish and receive sacrifices without blemish.
Despite the lack of blemishes on God’s temple, his priests, and the sacrifices, all three failed to be perfect. Yet, despite that lack of holiness, God’s mercy and grace reached out and found a way to declare God’s people holy. Christ, the Perfect, came, touching people with disabilities and making explicit the need for the God-man, and Christ will come again to touch and forever heal every blemish.
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This post is adapted from One Body, One Spirit: Disability and Community in the Church by Paul Pettit & B. Jason Epps. This title is set to be released on August 6, 2024. If you are interested in adopting this book for a college or seminary course, please request a faculty examination copy. We will also consider requests for your blog or media outlets.
There is a massive deficit in our churches, parishes, and fellowships; an entire category of people is missing
According to the CDC, one in four people in the United States lives with a disability, yet many of our churches don’t resemble this reality. Attempts to welcome those with a disability are often implemented by well-meaning but ill-informed people. The results can lead to those with disabilities feeling excluded and isolated from the family of God.
One Body, One Spirit gives eyes to the able-bodied to see the challenges experienced by those with disabilities:
- Physical barriers to places of worship, classrooms, and small group settings leave people outside the gathered family of God.
- Emotional barriers, like fear and prejudice, preclude them from using their spiritual gifts.
How can church communities, both on the congregational and individual level, address these issues? Paul Pettit and Jason Epps provide a roadmap by looking at a biblically informed solution. They survey disability in the Old and New Testaments, provide a vision for full integration, outline how to conduct a disability audit, and offer a five-step plan for how to change the culture of your church.
