“21 This is a permanent statute for them. The person who sprinkles the water for impurity is to wash his clothes, and whoever touches the water for impurity will be unclean until evening. 22 Anything the unclean person touches will become unclean, and anyone who touches it will be unclean until evening.”
Numbers 19:21-22
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It’s definitely interesting and telling that even in the rights for purification and making things and people ‘clean’ again that one could be made ‘unclean’ in the process of making the ashes and water for impurity. This is another example that God gives to us that points to the need for a ‘once-for-all’ sacrifice that covers all sin and all impurity.

These Levitical rituals pointed in the most basic way toward a need for personal cleanliness, but their necessary repetition surely left the people desiring a more lasting ordinance, a way to be made pure in a definitive and final way. As Christians, we who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death and have been covered by His blood, not just the ashes of a heifer. We have been purified by His perfect sacrifice, not just temporarily atoned for by an animal.

Look at what the author of Hebrews says about this in Hebrews 10:1-10 –

“1 Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those realities, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. 2 Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, once purified, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Therefore, as He was coming into the world, He said:
‘You did not want sacrifice and offering,
but You prepared a body for Me.
6 You did not delight
in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings.
7 Then I said, ‘See —
it is written about Me
in the volume of the scroll —
I have come to do Your will, God!”

8 After He says above, ‘You did not want or delight in sacrifices and offerings, whole burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (which are offered according to the law), 9 He then says, ‘See, I have come to do Your will.’ He takes away the first to establish the second. 10 By this will of God, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.”

And that is where our peace in Christ comes from. His sacrifice covers us once and for all, and it will continue to cover us as long as we live according to the covenant that was established in His blood. He will never fail us, but we can walk away, although that would be a sad and terrible thing to do.

As we GoLove others in the Name of Christ, we carry with us the joy of the ‘once-for-all’ sacrifice that He made for us. We do not work our way to heaven or pray that we do no accidentally die in an ‘unclean’ state, but rather, we rely on the finality and wholeness of His sacrifice. In Christ, we are only ever made ‘clean’ and as we walk with Him, that holiness carries us through all life’s struggles and pains because we know it is a gift of love, grace, mercy and compassion. It draws our hearts toward the One who first loved us.