The concept of clean and unclean is found in the old covenant and it concerns access to God and his presence. That which is associated with death is unclean. If God’s people come into contact with death, they must first be cleansed before they are free to come into his presence once again. Under the terms of the old covenant, the priests pronounced people as being clean once they had undergone the appropriate purification rituals (Leviticus 13:6, Leviticus 13:13, Leviticus 13:17).1 For God to say that he has made all food clean means that the dietary laws of the old covenant have come to an end.2 The end of these purification laws (see Romans 14:14; 1 Corinthians 10:19) indicates that all old covenant distinctions that separate Jews from Gentiles have also come to an end.3
15 And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.”