According to Gerry Breshears, “When the angels appeared to the shepherds, they came to the lowest rank of Jewish society. Shepherds, because of the [their] contact with blood,…are completely defiled and unable to keep the ceremonial law of the Jews [i.e., a Jewish person who has contact with blood would not be allowed to go through the Temple ceremony until they had been cleansed]. This is appropriate that the Lamb of God is going to come to a defiled, unclean, and sinful people to cleanse them.” What can we learn about the shepherds being ceremonially unclean and unable to approach God without biblical cleansing?

We need to be cleansed by Jesus to have a relationship with God. God sent His Son to cleanse the unclean, so that we could be close to God again. The shepherds were ceremonially unclean, and so the angels coming to this particular group of people, signified the cleansing power of the Savior that was born.

Regarding what we can learn about the shepherds being ceremonially unclean and unable to approach God without biblical cleansing reminds me a bit of the veil in the temple tearing when Jesus died…remove the barriers! I also love to think that although, according to law, the shepherds couldn’t go to God…God came and invited them to him…remove the barriers! 🙂

It’s identifying that Jesus christ is the sacrificial lamb when you confess him and accept him your cleansed.

The only way to become “clean” is to confess your sins to God and allow Him to “wash” you with His blood. We cannot “become clean” through good deeds for actions. We must hand over our lives to Jesus Christ to experience spiritual cleanliness.

We learn that we were unclean and that just as the unclean Shepard, we too can come to God through the sacrifice of Jesus

It shows that Jesus’s sacrifice was the greatest of all and all that accept Jesus are forever cleansed

I believe this points out the new covenant. That Jesus was going to be the last sacrifice needed for someone to be cleansed. That from this point on, no one was to “dirty” or “inappropriate” in Christ’s eyes. It also foreshadowed what his ministry would be about, being in the present and company of those that society would have deemed not acceptable.

Since they were ceremonially unclean they would not have been able to enter the Temple. However, after the angels appeared to them they went right away to approach God in the stable. Jesus was able to cleanse them. We can approach the Throne of Grace with confidence too because the shed blood of Jesus washes us. Jesus came to be the sacrifice once for all and we can be made clean because of His sacrifice.