What does the Bible say about... Tattoos?
- Lift Church
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Transcript:
Leviticus 19:28 is the key verse for this, and it says, "You shall not make any cuts on your body, or tattoo yourselves, I am the Lord." So there you go, that's what the Bible says.
But is that meant to be a law that we are supposed to follow? Because in the verse that comes right before that, it says, "You shall not round off the hair of your temples, nor mar the edges of your beard." (Lev 19:27)
So clearly there's a bit of an interpretation issue here. We need to know how to properly and faithfully understand the words, especially in Leviticus. I read a book called The Lost World of the Torah, written by Walton Walton sometime last year, and it really opened my eyes to this.
They said that for us Westerners, we come from a worldview that is so caught up in something called the "Rule of Law". Basically, as a nation and as a culture, we look towards legislation to know what is lawful and unlawful. If something is unlawful, the law actually tells us that there are going to be consequences for breaking that very law.
And it is, in many ways, a great thing. The rule of law ensures that if you're tried in the court here in one place, as compared to another court in another state, you're likely going to have a similar interpretation of what is lawful and unlawful behavior. There is consistency.
If it is a well-written law, it means that there is also fairness across the country. But there are some real limitations to this. For example, in the world of AI which is exploding right now, our laws are not catching up, and we're are not keeping up with all the latest developments in the technological world.That leaves loopholes for people to jump into and say, "Hey! Well, this is not unlawful behavior because nothing was written about this."
So we can take this sense of lawful and unlawful, and when we read a book like Leviticus, which seems to be just full of laws, we get caught up thinking that these are words that are meant to describe the kinds of behaviors that every single one of us should either be doing or not doing. In the case of Leviticus 19.28, we read it as though God is saying, "I don't like people having body art, and therefore you should keep away from it."
But as I was reading this book by Walton & Walton, they helped me to understand that the book of Leviticus and the first five books of the Bible, which we often term the Torah (and we interpret that as "law", even though "instruction" is probably a better word for it). But we see all of these laws and we think, oh, well, this must be the way that God wants things to be. But Walton and Walton were saying it's not really law, it is more about wisdom.
See, wisdom is about understanding and perceiving God's order and then establishing it. So, for example, when it comes to AI, we don't need to think about whether there is a law that governs my behavior. Rather, we need to think about God's order.
We need to think about, as Jesus summarizes in the New Testament, the Law can be summarized as loving God and loving people. And if I'm using AI to create deep fakes that hurt other people, then I know this is not God's order. This is not something I should do.
There should be this wisdom that I can activate rather than looking for something written to tell me what I can and can't do. And so that's what Leviticus is all about. It is about showcasing God's order, in particular for the people of Israel, who were a bunch of slaves that had come out of Egypt and God was establishing them as a nation and he was teaching them his ways.
And in particular, Leviticus is really concerned about God's holiness. God's people needed to be holy because God is also holy. Holiness is about being set apart.
They weren't meant to look like other nations. And so when we look at Leviticus 19 and we see about this writing about the tattoos, scholars have told us that likely these tattoos were made to worship ancestors or to worship other pagan gods. So clearly God was saying you're not to do the same. "You're not to worship me or any other gods using tattoos. That's not the way that we do things. You are set apart. You are different from every other nation."
And so when we understand that that's God's order in that particular case, we can then think about where we sit today. In Australia, we are not using tattoos to worship anyone or to worship our ancestors. Quite often it's just about personal expression.
But still there is a greater thing for us to consider. Does this glorify God? 2 Corinthians 16: 16-18 says this, "for we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling place among them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and separate from them, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, then I will welcome you."
Paul uses that scripture reference from the Old Testament to say, hey, this is still the same thing today. God has chosen to live with us. And so in 2 Corinthians 17:1, the very next verse, he says this, "Since we have these promises", what are the promises? That God actually dwells with us.
He says, "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit and bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God". The fear of God, because God lives with us. We want to please Him.
We desire to glorify Him through every aspect of our lives. So the question for us is, if you're wanting to get a tattoo, how does it glorify God? My body is not my own. I'm here to ensure that God is glorified through all that I do.
If you got a tattoo from your past and maybe it's something that you're not proud of even, but maybe what it can be, if people see that and ask you, what's that tattoo about? You can say, well, you know what? That was from a previous life, a life before I met Jesus, a life before God changed me. And that was what it was about. But now that I have Jesus, you see a tattoo can maybe become an opportunity to share your faith and to share what God has done in your life.
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