Kingdom Minded – Honoring Our Father by What We Eat - Summary / Position

🌿 Summary of Eating Clean

1. God Defines Food — Not Man

• When Scripture says “food,” it refers only to what God Himself has declared as edible and good for His people (Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14).
• Humans can eat many things, but that doesn’t make those things food in God’s eyes.
• Therefore, “food” in Scripture refers to clean animals, plants, and produce given by God for nourishment — not whatever man chooses to consume.

2. Clean and Unclean Were Known Long Before Moses

• The distinction between clean and unclean animals was known to Noah (Genesis 7:2) and thus predates the Law of Moses.
• This implies that these dietary principles go back to Adam’s time, possibly revealed during or after the first sacrifice when God clothed Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21).
• The reason: a loving Father would not cast His children into a cursed earth without instruction about what was safe and good to eat. People had to be clothed and it’s reasonable to believe that, with the ground being cursed and growing produce difficult that clean meat was on the diet.

3. Cain, Abel, and Noah Fit This Pattern

• Abel’s offering of the “fat portions” THE BEST/PERFECT of the flock (Genesis 4:4) likely came from clean animals used both for sacrifice and food.
• Noah distinguished clean animals for sacrifice and likely food as well, showing this knowledge was preserved in the king/priest line.

4. God’s Character and Law Are Consistent

• God’s laws reflect His unchanging nature.
• Since God declared certain creatures as “abominations” to eat, and He Himself does not change (Malachi 3:6), it’s inconsistent to believe that what was once unclean and forbidden could later become holy and nutritious.
• The dietary instructions were not arbitrary rituals but acts of loving wisdom from a loving Father who knows what is best for the bodies and spirits of His children.

5. Yeshua (Jesus) and His Followers Ate Clean

• Yeshua never ate or blessed unclean food.
• He said He did not come to abolish the Torah but to fulfill (Matthew 5:17).
• His rebuke of the Pharisees was not against the Torah itself but against their traditions (Talmudic additions) that nullified God’s commands.
• The apostles, including Paul, continued to live by these standards — Paul’s references to “food” (broma) always meant clean food by biblical definition.

6. Peter’s Vision Was About People, Not Food

• Acts 10 (the sheet of animals) was a symbolic vision correcting Peter’s view of Gentiles, not redefining food laws.
• Peter himself says afterward, “God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28).
• The vision never led Peter to eat unclean meat, and Scripture never records him doing so.

7. The Jerusalem Council Supported Torah Instruction

• Acts 15 gave Gentile believers four initial instructions (abstain from blood, idols, strangled animals, and sexual immorality).
• But verse 21 explains the reason:“For Moses has been preached in every city… being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”
  Meaning: these Gentile believers would continue learning the rest of God’s instructions (Torah) as they matured in faith.

8. Eating Clean is Not About Salvation, But Righteousness and Identity

• Salvation is by grace through faith, but obedience defines our identity as God’s set-apart people.
• Choosing clean food reflects a heart that honors God’s design and distinguishes His children from the world.
• It’s a daily, physical expression of holiness — the same principle as modesty, honesty, and purity.
• Simply put: God made some creatures as food and others as trash trucks — they serve a purpose, but not for human consumption.

✨ Why This Reasoning is Reasonable and Theologically Sound

1. It Upholds God’s Unchanging Nature
   We should rightly observe that if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8; Malachi 3:6), His definition of righteousness — including what is “clean” — cannot arbitrarily change.
2. It Interprets the New Testament in Light of the Old
   Rather than reading the Torah through a Greco-Roman lens, this view correctly respects that the apostles wrote within the framework of the Hebrew Scriptures — “the Scriptures” they quoted were the Torah and the Prophets, not yet a “New Testament.”
3. It Aligns with First-Century Practice
   Historical evidence from Acts and early church writings shows the first believers (Jewish and Gentile) continued to keep practices of eating clean for generations after Yeshua.
4. It Emphasizes Relationship Over Regulation
   Dietary obedience not as legalism but as responding to a loving Father’s wisdom. Obedience flows from trust — believing God knows what nourishes both body and spirit.
5. It Recognizes Physical and Spiritual Integration
   Since believers are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), what we consume physically reflects our spiritual reverence. Isaiah 66:17 warns of those in the end times who eat “swine’s flesh and the abomination and the mouse.”
6. It Honors Identity and Distinction
   God calls His people to be holy (set apart). Eating clean food is one of the most practical, continual ways to live out that distinction.

🕯️ In Short

Let’s reason from a foundation of love, consistency, and reverence:

• Love for a Father who gives good instructions,
• Consistency with His eternal Word,
• Reverence for the body as His dwelling.

Beginnings

🩸 1. The First Sacrifice — Covering and Cleanliness

Genesis 3:21

“Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skins, and clothed them.”

Nothing here explicitly says what animal was used or whether the flesh was eaten.
Yet — the passage implies:

• A life was taken to cover sin and shame.
• Blood was shed, foreshadowing substitutionary atonement.
• “Skins” naturally come from an animal that was sacrificed, skinned and tanned (preservation), also would have been taught to Adam as a way of clothing his family and descendants, which implies a full sacrifice.

Since “clean” vs. “unclean” distinctions existed before Moses (as Genesis 7:2 shows Noah already knew them), it’s very plausible the first animal slain by God was from a clean species — consistent with later sacrificial law.

That inference gives coherence: the very first substitutionary sacrifice aligns with God’s future pattern.

🐏 2. Cain and Abel — Sacrifice and Implicit Consumption

Genesis 4:3–5

“Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions…” THE BEST/PERFECT

The Hebrew ḥēleb (fat portions) is the same word later used in Levitical sacrifices (e.g., Leviticus 3:16) for what belongs to God on the altar.
Abel is offering an animal in priestly fashion.

Now, while Scripture is silent about eating, there’s a compelling typological logic:

• In Mosaic practice, only priests and worshipers could eat from the peace and thanksgiving offerings (Leviticus 7).
• If Adam functioned as the first priest — and many theologians link him typologically to the order of Melchizedek — then partaking of the sacrifice would fit that priestly role.

Thus, the absence of an explicit prohibition before the Flood doesn’t necessarily mean they abstained from meat. The text simply focuses on moral corruption (violence, Genesis 6:11–12), not diet.

🕊️ 3. Noah — “Clean” Known Before Sinai

Genesis 7:2

“You shall take with you seven pairs of every clean animal, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean…”

This predates Moses by centuries.
Noah knew the difference — which implies an inherited oral revelation about what animals were acceptable for worship (and possibly food).

Later, in Genesis 8:20, Noah offers of every clean animal and clean bird as burnt offerings.
If each “clean” species was represented by seven pairs, the remaining animals (after offering one pair) could easily provide food — particularly since in Genesis 9:3, God formally permits meat as food, clarifying rather than newly introducing the practice.

Then it’s reasonable to believe humans may have already eaten clean animals, especially from sacrificial contexts.

🔥 4. Priestly Pattern Before Sinai

It’s perceptive to note that priestly participation in sacrificial meals was later codified:

• Leviticus 7:15–17 — the flesh of peace offerings could be eaten.
• Numbers 18:9–11 — priests received portions of offerings as their due.

If Adam and early patriarchs served as mediators or priests for their families (as Job 1:5 and Abraham in Genesis 12:7–8 did), the pattern of consuming clean, sacrificed meat fits perfectly.

Hence the interpretation — that the consumption of clean sacrificial meat likely began with the first sacrifice itself — harmonizes typologically and theologically.

👑 5. Hidden Wisdom — The Glory of Kings

Proverbs 25:2 Cites:

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

That verse precisely captures this kind of study: connecting scattered threads of revelation to uncover God’s consistent pattern.
Scripture often reveals truth progressively — the Torah illuminates what was already in seed form in Genesis.

✨ Summary of a Reasonable View

🕯️ Final Thought

Then it is entirely fair and theologically consistent to believe that:

• Clean animals were known and sacrificed long before Sinai.
• Their meat may have been consumed in a priestly or worship context beginning with Adam and his descendants.
• At the fall, being cast from the garden, and the ground cursed, and the raised difficulty of growing grain and produce, and the fact that humans were being clothed with clean animal skins, that Adam knew and was taught what could be eastern, how to prepare it (draining the blood, giving the fat to the YHVH) and eating the meat would be reasonable. As a priest Adam would have taught his descendants to do and teach the same.
• The formal permission to eat “every moving thing” (every clean thing that moves) in Genesis 9 clarified, not created, the practice.

This is exactly what Proverbs 25:2 describes — searched out a concealed matter and connected it to God’s coherent redemptive pattern through Scripture.