THE LORD SAID to Moses, 2“Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them: ‘This is what the LORD has commanded: 3Any Israelite who sacrifices an ox, a lamb or a goat in the camp or outside of it 4instead of bringing it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting to present it as an offering to the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD—that man shall be considered guilty of bloodshed; he has shed blood and must be cut off from his people. 5This is so the Israelites will bring to the LORD the sacrifices they are now making in the open fields. They must bring them to the priest, that is, to the LORD, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and sacrifice them as fellowship offerings. 6The priest is to sprinkle the blood against the altar of the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and burn the fat as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. 7They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves. This is to be a lasting ordinance for them and for the generations to come.’
8“Say to them: ‘Any Israelite or any alien living among them who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice 9and does not bring it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting to sacrifice it to the LORD—that man must be cut off from his people.
10“‘Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood—I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. 11For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. 12Therefore I say to the Israelites, “None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.”
13“‘Any Israelite or any alien living among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, 14because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, “You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.”
15“‘Anyone, whether native-born or alien, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then he will be clean. 16But if he does not wash his clothes and bathe himself, he will be held responsible.’”
Original Meaning
REGULATING THE LIFE OF GOD’S PEOPLE both at the sanctuary and away from it, Leviticus 17 is like Janus, simultaneously looking back to the ritual laws in chapters 1–16 and forward to the instructions for holy living in chapters 18–27. Whereas chapters 1–16 focus on remedies for sin and ritual impurity, the remainder of the book concentrates on divine commands that carry terminal penalties—without remedy—if they are violated.1
Addressed to all Israelites, both priests and laity, chapter 17 issues three sharp warnings against violation of divine commands recorded earlier in Leviticus. These commands concern offering sacrifices at the sanctuary (nowhere else) to the Lord (not to anyone else) throughout the year and related matters of diet: (1) not eating blood with meat, and (2) ritual purification when eating meat from animals not slaughtered by human beings. In this chapter the warnings are formulated according to the casuistic pattern: “Anyone who . . . [does a certain offense] is condemned to . . . [receive a corresponding penalty].”
Bringing All Sacrifices to the Lord (17:1–9)
THIS FIRST WARNING puts teeth into the rule that the Israelites must bring all sacrifices to the sanctuary for officiation there by the Aaronic priests. This rule explicitly and implicitly appears throughout the sacrificial prescriptions and descriptions of chapters 1–10; 12; 14–16 (cf., e.g., 1:3; 3:1–2). A violator is guilty of bloodshed and condemned to suffer the divine penalty of being “cut off,” that is, probably extirpation of his or her line of descendants (17:4, 9).2 The reason for the warning is to stop the Israelites from offering sacrifices out in the open country (lit., “on the surface of the field,” 17:5) to “goat-demons, to whom they prostitute themselves” (17:7 NRSV). Committing such (spiritual) promiscuity to/with (lit., “after”) beings other than the Lord through illicit worship (Ex. 34:15–16; Lev. 20:5; Deut. 31:16; Judg. 2:17; 8:27, 33) violates the first of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:3).
The word for “goat-demons” (NIV, “goat idols”) here literally means “male goats” (śeʿ irim)—the same word that appears in chapter 16 with reference to the male goats used in the Day of Purgation service (16:8). The fact that in chapter 17 some Israelites were sacrificing to male goats in the open country, away from the sanctuary and its altar (17:5, 7), indicates that they regarded these “male goats” as supernatural beings. However, the beings they honored were not the Lord, to whom the “LORD’s goat” was offered (16:9, 11–19). Rather, they offered these sacrifices in uninhabited country, such as the desert into which Azazel’s goat was sent (16:10, 21–22).
We have seen that “Azazel,” the personal being to whom the live goat was sent, most likely represents a demon (see Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 16; note how later Scriptures identify desert areas as haunts of the devil and demons, Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1–2; 11:24; Rev. 18:2). The idea that male goats in uninhabited regions could represent demons is reinforced by a parallel between Isaiah 13:21, where the desolated city of Babylon becomes the habitat of wild male goats (śeʿ irim), and the allusion to this passage in Revelation 18:2, describing the demise of a later “Babylon”: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.”
The Israelites may not have known they were sacrificing to demons. But even if they viewed them as gods with whom they thought it beneficial to be on friendly terms, these gods were of the kind that pagans worshiped. Elsewhere in the Bible, the objects of pagan worship are real, but they are not really gods (Deut. 32:17; Ps. 106:37; 1 Cor. 10:20). Interacting with such beings is much more dangerous than simply substituting nonliving idols for the living God.
From a strictly human point of view, polytheistic worship is prudent and reasonable. Even if you know that two superpowers don’t like each other, it is good politics for a lesser party to avoid antagonizing either side. But for the Lord, polytheism was anathema because it expressed disloyalty to his exclusive sovereignty and distrust of his total power and commitment to protect his people from other powers.
The fact that the Lord did not immediately strike dead the Israelites sacrificing to goat-demons implies that he mercifully recognized that they did not understand the full implications of what they were doing. However, his warning in Leviticus 17 puts an end to any such ignorance. Henceforth, they would be fully accountable for doing what they should have known all along: They must sacrifice only to him at the location and in the manner he specifies.
Warning Against Eating Fat or Blood (17:10–14)
THIS SECOND WARNING puts teeth into the Lord’s prohibition against eating any fat or blood (3:17; cf. 7:26 regarding blood). Here he provides the reason: The life is in the blood, which is why he has assigned it the function of ransoming the lives of offerers on the altar (17:11). Again the penalty for violation is to be “cut off” (17:10, 14).
Warning Against Neglect to Purify Oneself (17:15–16)
VERSES 15–16 ISSUE THE THIRD WARNING, this time against neglect to purify oneself in violation of 11:39–40:
If an animal that you are allowed to eat dies, anyone who touches the carcass will be unclean till evening. Anyone who eats some of the carcass must wash his clothes, and he will be unclean till evening. Anyone who picks up the carcass must wash his clothes, and he will be unclean till evening.
This case has to do with a “pure”/permitted animal dying of a cause other than slaughter by a human being. In 17:15 we read of the two main ways that such an animal could die: naturally by itself, violently by the agency of one or more wild animals. (Presumably modern “road kill” by Cougars, Mustangs, and so on would belong with the latter.) Unlike the earlier warnings, this one (17:15–16) provides no rationale and the penalty for violation is stated differently: “He shall bear his culpability” (author’s transl. of v. 16). The law applies only to nonpriests. A later law holds priests to a higher standard of purity, as befits their holiness, by prohibiting them from eating such animals altogether (22:8).
The most intense scholarly debate regarding Leviticus 17 has swirled around three main questions. (1) What is the relationship between this chapter and the preceding (chs. 1–16) and following (chs. 18–27) blocks of material in Leviticus? Some see chapter 17 as an appendix to chapters 1–16, with chapter 18 commencing the next major section, which emphasizes holiness for all Israelites. More common is the view that chapter 17 begins a so-called “holiness” section that follows chapters 1–16. In any case, because there are affinities of content and terminology between chapters 17 and both the preceding and following materials in Leviticus, this chapter is clearly transitional.
(2) Chapter 17 requires an Israelite who wishes to eat a sacrificeable animal to slaughter it at the sanctuary as a well-being offering (vv. 3–9). Deuteronomy 12:15–16, 20–25, by contrast, allows nonsacrificial “profane/common slaughter” of sacrificeable animals, provided that the blood is drained out on the ground as with nonsacrificial game animals (cf. Lev. 17:13). Why this difference? This apparent legal contradiction has long been seen as major support for the hypothetical existence of documentary sources of the Pentateuch that disagree with each other: “P” (= priestly source) and “D” (Deuteronomic source).3
However, the contradiction vanishes if we take seriously the difference in life situation (German Sitz im Leben) indicated by the two passages. Whereas Leviticus 17 applied to the desert camp, when the Israelites lived close to the sanctuary, Deuteronomy 12 regulated settled life in the land of Canaan, when they spread out and many of them lived too far from the sanctuary to come there every time they wanted meat of domestic animals (Deut. 12:20–21). As a concession to this change in practical circumstances, the law of Deuteronomy allows nonsacrificial slaughter.
(3) In Leviticus 17:11 the Lord states that he has assigned sacrificial blood on the altar to effect kipper for the lives (plural of nepeš) of the people (i.e., to “ransom” them). To which sacrifice(s) does this function of blood apply? If it applies primarily or solely to the well-being offering, which is primarily in view in chapter 17 because this is the sacrifice from which the offerer is permitted to eat, what is the expiatory role of blood in the wellbeing offering? We will address this difficult question in the Bridging Contexts section.
Bridging Contexts
RANSOM FOR LIFE. Sandwiched between two statements that the Israelites and resident aliens are forbidden to eat blood (i.e., meat from which the blood has not been drained out at the time of slaughter, 17:10, 12), verse 11 expresses the reason: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you on the altar to ransom your lives; for it is the blood that ransoms by means of life.”4 Blood is an apt and powerfully mysterious symbol for life. “There is something horribly unnatural, even nauseating, about watching the fluid of life pour uncontrollably from a living body. Little wonder religions throughout history have honored blood as a sacral substance.”5
In verse 11 the Lord explains that he has given to sacrificial blood, which represents sacral life and is especially consecrated by contact with the altar, the function of ransoming human life. Thus, he does not follow a judicial constraint that he lays on human courts: The life of a person convicted of a capital crime may not be ransomed (Num. 35:31–34).6
In 17:11, ransom is life for life. On one hand this represents the talionic demand (cf. 24:18), but on the other hand,
it is a rejection, or at least an alleviation, of the very same talionic demand, since the 
that man offers here is not his own, nor even actually that of an animal, but merely . . . a substitute, an exchange which God is willing to receive in place of the real thing. It is merely the symbolic representation of the life of an animal, a bit of its blood—an appropriate symbol, to be sure, since blood embodies life, but a symbol nonetheless.7
In our study of Leviticus 1–16, we found that kipper can refer to expiating/purging a person or part of the sanctuary from (privative min) a moral fault or ritual impurity (e.g., 4:26; 12:7; 16:16). However, a specialized usage of kipper appears in 17:11, where it is closely followed by nepeš (“life”). Some scholars have associated such kipper for life (kipper ʿal nepeš) with the idea of giving a ransom or legal compository payment (koper), which avoids the death penalty and serves as the cost of reconciliation between the culpable and injured parties (cf. Ex. 21:30).8
Although such a payment is prerequisite to pardon, pardon is not automatic because it is a gift that can be withheld, including by God.9 So it is the acceptance of ransom/composition by the aggrieved party rather than the mere giving of it that ensures peaceful reconciliation. Backing up a plea for pardon by giving something of value represents both “a kind of compensation for the wrong caused” and “a sort of request for a peaceful solution.”10
Exodus 30 nails down the connection between kipper for life and “ransom.” God stipulates that when the Israelites take a census, “each one must pay the LORD a ransom [koper] for his life [nepeš] at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them” (Ex. 30:12). Here the word for “ransom” is the noun from the root kpr. Verses 15 and 16 use the Piel verb from the same root to describe the function of the same ransom: “to ransom [kipper] your lives [pl. of nepeš]” (cf. Num. 31:50).
Leviticus 17:11 is unique in the Hebrew Bible in that it explicitly assigns sacrificial blood the function of ransoming human life. Some scholars contend that kipper always carries the idea of “ransoming,” whether it is accompanied by nepeš or not.11 However, what sense would it make to “ransom” a nonhuman object, such as part of the sanctuary (16:16, 18)? In contexts where objects or persons receive kipper “from” (privative min) evils (e.g., 4:26; 12:7), the operative idea seems to be that of removing evil rather than ransom per se.
Ransom by which sacrifice(s)? In Leviticus 17 the warning against offering well-being (zebaḥ) offerings to goat-demons (vv. 5–7) and the subsequent emphasis on dietary regulations (vv. 10–16) indicate that the primary focus of this chapter is on well-being offerings, the only class of sacrifices from which the offerer is permitted to eat the meat (cf. 7:15–21).12 Although Pentateuchal law does not mention a kipper (“expiation/purgation/ransom”) function of well-being offerings anywhere else,13 these sacrifices must be brought to the sanctuary (17:5), where priests dash their blood against the Lord’s altar and turn their suet/fat into smoke as a pleasing aroma for the Lord (17:6).
The rationale in verse 11—blood carries life and (consequently) the Lord has assigned it to ransom the lives of the people—stands behind the prohibition against eating blood in general (vv. 10, 12; cf. vv. 13–14; 3:17; 7:26–27), not only the blood of well-being offerings. The same rationale is also logically behind the command to bring offerings in general to the Lord’s altar in the sanctuary (17:3–9).14 It is true that the matter of offerers eating (meat with) blood is irrelevant to sacrifices other than well-being offerings, especially burnt offerings (v. 8), from which nothing at all is eaten, not even by officiating priests. However, bringing these sacrifices to the sanctuary is of crucial importance (cf. 1:3, 5, 11, 15; 4:4, 14, 29, 33; 7:2).
The “ransom” effect of blood in Leviticus 17:11 applies to all Israelite blood sacrifices.15 Although such sacrifices do not save criminals from capital punishment, ultimately every offense against the Lord has life-and-death implications. For one thing, while God provides for sacrificial remedies in cases of nondefiant moral faults and severe physical ritual impurities, one who wantonly neglects these remedies incurs a terminal penalty (e.g., Num. 19:13, 20—extirpation).
The fact that expiatory sacrifices deal with lesser, noncapital offenses shows that the goal of these rituals is not remission of punishment on this level. Rather, there is a higher, more stringent standard: the demand of God’s life-giving holiness, from which the offender is estranged. Ransom for life could be regarded as “a restoration of those who have fallen, a healing of the terminally ill.”16 In this sense kipper as ransom can also apply to sacrificial purification from ritual impurities, which are most likely based on the concept of death (see comments on Lev. 12), and also to well-being offerings, which emphasize the positive end of the process of restoration to a healthy relationship with God.
In the New Testament it is Christ who came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; cf. 1 Tim. 2:6). Hebrews 9:14–15 makes it clear that this was blood ransom to set people free from sin that leads to death. Just as Leviticus 17:3–9, 11 called Israelites to the one true altar of the Lord, the only place of ransom, Hebrews 13:10–13 calls Christians to the “altar” of Christ:
We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.
Contemporary Significance
MODERN APPLICABILITY OF biblical laws. How do biblical laws, including those of Leviticus 17, speak to us today? They do not comprehensively specify every detail of the ways we should act and think. Rather, they provide illustrations that reveal the character and values of the divine Lawgiver, thereby establishing the constitution/charter of covenant life with him.17
Are Christians expected to keep any of the biblical laws, or are there any from which we would gain benefit by voluntarily observing them? We are not talking about a legalistic, works-oriented approach to salvation, but about people who are already saved enjoying fuller “new covenant” life and service by following divine guidance and thereby revealing God’s character to others.
For many centuries, Christians have followed a simplistic approach:
The early Church Fathers dealt with Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and chunks of Exodus very simply: We keep the Ten Commandments, and the rest of the Law and Commandments do not apply to Christians. One might ask how they squared that with what Jesus himself had to say about Torah, that he did not come to change a single “jot or tittle” of it; further, when asked what were the greatest of the commandments, Jesus gives two, neither of which comes from the ten. Rather, one is from Deuteronomy, and the other from Leviticus. Nevertheless, the Church Fathers deemed those extra 603 laws to be superfluous. There were those who thought they should be removed from the Christian canon entirely, but fortunately they did not prevail.18
For the purpose of determining whether or how various kinds of Old Testament laws apply today, Christians have traditionally divided them into categories, such as the following:
1. moral laws, consisting of the Ten Commandments, which express timeless and universal principles governing relationships with God and other human beings
2. ritual laws, which served as “types” or “shadows” until they met their fulfillment at the cross
3. ocratic government
4. health laws, which have ongoing value because human bodies function the same today as they did in ancient times
While such categories have some validity and usefulness, understanding them as just summarized needs major nuancing and qualification. Careful examination leads to a paradigm shift and opens up a treasure trove of practical guidance for daily living.
To begin with, we should recognize that the Bible does not delineate categories such as those stated above. They are more recent analytical constructs. Biblical law does not even make the sharp distinction between religious and secular categories to which we are so accustomed. Since every aspect of life as the people of God came under his jurisdiction, laws belonging to what we would classify as the religious and secular domains often appear together. For example, the “religious” laws of Exodus 22:20, 28a–30; 23:10–19a appear in contexts primarily relating to secular life. The remarkably diverse mixture of laws in Leviticus 19 gives the impression that distinctions between “religious” and “secular” are largely irrelevant; what is important is that God’s people keep all of his commandments.
In the ancient Near East, this wholistic approach to life under God was unique to Israel. Only in biblical law collections “are moral exhortations and religious injunctions combined with legal prescriptions; elsewhere . . . these three distinct spheres are found in separate independent collections.”19
Let us now consider each of the four categories mentioned above. (1) Moral law expresses principles that modern people would regard either as religious (e.g., the first four of the Ten Commandments regarding responsibilities primarily to God, Ex. 20:3–11) or secular (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments covering responsibilities primarily to human beings, 20:12–17).
Two points should be clarified regarding moral law. (a) Any command that God requires a given group of people to obey can be viewed as a “moral law” for them in the broad sense that it is relevant to their divine-human relationship. (b) While the Ten Commandments are towering expressions of timeless, universal moral law, they are not the only moral laws in the Bible. Exodus 23:9, for example, contains another one: “Do not oppress an alien.” This works out part of the overarching principle of love for fellow human beings (cf. Lev. 19:18; John 15:12), on which the last six of the Ten Commandments are also based (Matt. 22:39–40; Rom. 13:9). Another example is Leviticus 19:11, where the comprehensive commandment against lying is found (rather than in Ex. 20:16).
(2) Ritual law regulates a ritual system, by means of which human beings interact with entities that are ordinarily inaccessible to the material domain, such as God (e.g., by offering sacrifices) and ritual impurity (by removing it through purification). The Old Testament ritual laws that were required to be carried out at the Israelite sanctuary/temple, where the Aaronic priests officiated (see, e.g., 17:3–9), can no longer apply because this institution is gone. Laws having to do with regulation and treatment of ritual impurities to keep them from contacting the holy sphere of the earthly sanctuary with its resident divine Presence (e.g., 17:15–16) are also obsolete for the same reason: The sanctuary no longer exists. Since the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, Christian worship is focused toward God’s temple in heaven, where Christ has been ministering (Heb. 7–10). Nevertheless, the Old Testament ritual laws teach us much about the nature and character of God and humankind, the dynamics of divine-human interaction, and God’s plan of salvation through Christ.
As a unique law, the ritual of circumcision originated long before the Israelite sanctuary was constructed and was never dependent on its function (Gen. 17). However, this requirement was specifically removed for Gentile Christians when the “new covenant” was transformed from a covenant of Israelite election, as Jeremiah originally prophesied (31:31–34), to a universal covenant without ethnic boundaries (Acts 15; Gal. 3:26–29).
(3) Civil law can embody and exemplify timeless moral/ethical principles within the ancient Israelite context. Consider, for example, the following civil law from the “Covenant Code” of Exodus 21–23: “Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:12). This contextualizes the sixth of the Ten Commandments, which reads: “You shall not murder” (20:13).
There are two basic differences between the two laws. (a) The civil law is narrower in scope, limited to striking that results in death. But this is still a timeless principle. (b) The civil law attaches a penalty (i.e., capital punishment) to be administered by the Israelite system of jurisprudence within the theocratic covenant community. We can no longer count on this court system to enforce the law in this way because that system no longer exists. Thus, we have found that so-called civil law contains both ongoing and temporary elements. If we simplistically dismiss it as a civil/Mosaic law and therefore no longer applicable, we miss the timeless moral element: You must not hit a person in such a way that he or she dies. A modern court in any country would undoubtedly agree that such striking is a crime, although it may not impose the same penalty.
In civil laws, timeless principles come to us in various layers of cultural garb. When we get below the specifics to the underlying dynamics, we can find helpful guidelines to clothe in modern dress. For example: “If a man uncovers a pit or digs one and fails to cover it and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit must pay for the loss; he must pay its owner, and the dead animal will be his” (Ex. 21:33–34). Although this could literally apply today, most of us do not have oxen or donkeys. What we have are cars and trucks, with regard to which the principle applies: We are liable for damage to the property of other people resulting from our neglect.
Some civil laws no longer apply simply because we lack the social institutions they were designed to regulate—for instance, servitude (Ex. 21:2–11, 20–21, 26–27) and ancestral land tenure (Lev. 25:8–55). However, by studying these laws in light of their cultural context, we can still learn valuable principles of justice and mercy to protect those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. For example, even when your workers are completely dependent on you and under your control, “do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God” (25:43).
(4) Regarding health laws, in connection with Leviticus 11 we found that Pentateuchal laws for which we recognize health implications are consistently formulated with motivations other than health. God was concerned for the health of his people, but he bestowed this benefit wholistically as a blessing that would come from observing all of his commands.
Now we are in a better position to grapple with the question of whether the prohibition in Leviticus 17:10–14 against eating meat with blood (cf. 3:17; 7:26–27) still applies. Is it a moral, ritual, civil, or health law? The fact that eating meat with blood has to do with diet implies that health could be involved, and modern science confirms that blood carries disease. This could be reason enough to abstain from meat with blood. However, in 17:11 the Lord’s reason for the prohibition is: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you on the altar to ransom your lives; for it is the blood that ransoms by means of life.”20 Mention of the altar indicates a ritual element in the law. Indeed, because God assigned the blood of sacrificeable animals for application on his altar, the Israelites were not permitted either to offer their sacrifices anywhere else or to eat the blood of well-being offerings. But does this mean that the law has no application now that the ritual system is gone?
In 17:11 the most basic reason for the prohibition is that the blood represents life. This is why God selected the blood of sacrificeable animals for the function of ransom. Even where ransom through animal sacrifice did not apply, as in the case of a nonsacrificeable game animal, the Israelites were forbidden to eat meat with blood because the blood of any animal represented its life (17:13–14). That this was the basic reason is confirmed by Genesis 9:3–4, where the Lord first allowed human beings to eat meat just after the Flood (9:3) but withheld permission to eat meat with its lifeblood still in it (9:4). Genesis 9:5–6 reads:
And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.
The prohibitions of blood and of murder are both based on the timeless moral principle of respect for God-given life that is expressed in the sixth of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:13). Thus, although the blood prohibition in Leviticus 17:10–14 has health and ritual implications, it is more fundamentally a moral law. This explains several pieces of biblical data. (1) In Genesis 9 God gave the prohibition to Noah for the entire human race before the Israelite nation and its ritual worship system existed.
(2) In Ezekiel 33:25–26 eating meat with blood is listed with moral faults such as murder, idolatry, and adultery.
(3) Although the early Christian council in Jerusalem recognized that the ceremonial requirement of circumcision was nonbinding on Gentile Christians, the prohibition of eating meat with blood was included in the “bottom-line” lifestyle requirements laid on Gentile Christians among other tests of fellowship (Acts 15:20, 29). Notice that Acts 15 refers to the Old Testament, where the only biblical requirement for preventing ingestion of blood along with meat is to drain it out at the time of slaughter (Lev. 17:13; Deut. 12:24; 1 Sam. 14:32–34). Although one cannot remove every bit of blood in this manner (just as draining the oil out of a car leaves a small amount of oil lining parts of the engine), basic drainage fulfills the divine command. If this is done, as is often the case in modern butchering, it is not necessary for Christians to follow additional traditional practices of salting and roasting to get more blood out.21
Can we reduce the above discussion into a single, simple rule of thumb to determine whether the Bible intends for Christians to keep a given Old Testament law? Here is an attempt: A law should be kept to the extent that its principle can be applied unless the New Testament removes the reason for its application. Thus I am in basic agreement with Wenham when he concludes that “the principles underlying the OT are valid and authoritative for the Christian, but the particular applications found in the OT may not be.”22
Legalism and the purpose of God’s law. If we overcome our neglect of biblical law, won’t this lead to legalism? Not if we understand the purpose of God’s law. It is a standard of acting and thinking in harmony with God’s character of love. It is not, cannot be, and never was intended to be a means to salvation. Doing right can never redeem us from our mortality or past sins. Only God’s grace through Christ’s sacrifice, received by faith, can do that. God’s commandments are for people who are already delivered, as demonstrated by the fact that he gave Noah covenant stipulations after bringing him through the Flood (Gen. 9:4–6) and he proclaimed the Ten Commandments to the Israelites after delivering them from bondage in Egypt (Ex. 20).
A venerable Christian fallacy is the idea that the more Christian we want to become, the less Jewish our religion must be. This anti-Semitic notion, which has wreaked havoc on Jewish-Christian relations for more than a millennium and a half, is not supported by Scripture. Rather, the more Jews and Christians absorb and live up to the essential ideals of our respective biblical holy books, the more common ground we will discover.
God’s law is a precious gift to protect human beings for our own good. Moses explicitly stated this:
And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? (Deut. 10:12–13; emphasis supplied; cf. 32:46–47).
Jesus agreed, saying of the Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
In teaching his barber how to pray through the Ten Commandments, Martin Luther emphasized their positive protective function. For example, on “You shall not bear false witness,” he commented, “Thus a wall has been built around our good reputation and integrity to protect it against malicious gossip and deceitful tongues.”23
In their profound and practical book Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God, H. T. Blackaby and C. V. King speak of the gift of God’s law:
God loves you deeply and profoundly. Because He loves you, He has given you guidelines for living lest you miss the full dimensions of the love relationship. Life also has some “land mines” that can destroy you or wreck your life. God does not want to see you miss out on His best, and He does not want to see your life wrecked.
Suppose you had to cross a field full of land mines. A person who knew exactly where everyone of them was buried offered to take you through it. Would you say to him, “I don’t want you to tell me what to do. I don’t want you to impose your ways on me”?24
In 1987, when my wife and I were studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, we spent a vacation backpacking around northern Israel. In one place we were walking on the side of a road and noticed a sign on the edge of a field that we thought of entering. It had only one word in Hebrew, which neither of us knew. I pulled a pocket dictionary out of my backpack and discovered to my horror that the word meant “land mines.” Needless to say, we were grateful for the sign and for the dictionary that helped us to understand it. It has never occurred to us that heeding the warning, which blocked us from going where we wanted to go, was “legalism.” We could have asserted our “freedom” by going ahead and having a blast, but this approach would have resulted in much greater confinement—to oblong boxes six feet under the ground!
Properly viewed within a covenant framework of love and grace,25 God’s law is not “legalistic” and obedience to it is not “legalism.” People are legalistic when they put his law in place of his grace as a means of salvation, as in Jesus’ story of a Pharisee who despised a tax collector (Luke 18:9–14). He failed to discern God’s free grace or, as Dale Patrick points out, that law is much bigger than the external bottom line:
Law is the order of justice and right to which individuals and groups should conform and which judicial authority should enforce. Rules will necessarily play some role in this order, but there also will be principles and values which form a consistent system, cover all possible situations, and belong to the collective conscience of the community. By this definition, explicit rules—laws—are only the tip of the iceberg of the phenomenon of Law.26
Patrick does not deal with the reasons for “justice,” “right,” and “order,” but the “possible situations” covered by law are involved in relationships. Relationships can only be harmonious if the respective parties show proper respect for each other’s well-being. Thus the orderly, just, right principles of law are based on the foundational principle of love (cf. Matt. 22:36–40), which is also the basis of God’s grace (see John 3:16). Without love, external law-keeping is meaningless (cf. 1 Cor. 13).
Absolute moral compass versus postmodern subjectivity. Comparison between biblical and other ancient Near Eastern laws has led John Walton to the conclusion that the laws given to Israel were not, for the most part, presented as a new mode of conduct:
Israel had laws before to insure the smooth functioning of society, and it is logical to believe that they would have been heavily dependent on other cultures of their day for those guidelines. The revelation, though, had to do with providing a foundation for those norms (the covenant) and establishing YHWH as the source of those norms. One does not refrain from adultery merely because adultery disrupts society. Rather, adultery is prohibited because it goes against an absolute standard of morality by which YHWH himself is characterized.27
We need absolute standards. Can you imagine listening to an orchestra in which the players have not agreed that A = 440 vibrations per second?28 What about transforming plans into a building if the construction workers interpret the basic units of measure differently? So why shouldn’t we enjoy the security of absolute moral standards, which help us to get along with each other smoothly rather than having our harmony disintegrate into a cacophony of chaos?
If standards were continuously left up to agreement between people, they would suffer from variability and circularity, as when a man who blew the noon whistle at a factory regularly set his watch to a clock in the window of a shop, only to learn that the shopkeeper set his clock every day by that whistle.29 This is why we have Greenwich Mean Time and a Bureau of Standards. It is also why we have the Bible. Only God is big, wise, and good enough to set our moral standards.
In addition to the attempt to make God’s law into a means of salvation, another misuse is to use it as a political tool by making artificial human interpretations into the standards to which others must adhere. There is no question that setting standards can generate power and/or wealth (e.g., Bill Gates and Microsoft computer operating systems). But putting subjective human authority in place of God’s absolute authority is nothing short of blasphemy (cf. John 10:33), and it is even worse to do this for gain by preying on people’s legalistic fears that they will be eternally damned unless they measure up to the dictates of a human voice that they mistake for the voice of God.
If we disregard the Bible, our moral compass may appear logical and self-consistent, but it lacks an external reference point. It would be like a lady who was travelling by plane over a large body of water at night. To calm her apprehension, she asked the pilot how he could navigate in the dark. “You see that green light on that wingtip?” he replied. Yes, she saw it. “You see that red light on the other wingtip?” he continued. “Yes” again. “I just steer the plane straight between them,” he assured her.
Absolute moral standards are out of vogue in our postmodern world. We are supposed to listen to whatever voices we feel comfortable with, as long as they do not claim to be absolute. Respect for others demands that we recognize anyone else’s source of moral guidance (or lack thereof) as equal to our own. Value judgments are strictly forbidden.
Respect for others is crucial. But must we purchase it by relinquishing our right to absolute moral standards and assenting to a polytheistic moral culture that puts anything claiming divine authority (including human beings) in place of God? Masquerading as enlightenment, moral subjectivity is not only inconvenient and irritating; it is also terribly dangerous, as Rabbi Stewart Vogel points out with startling passion:
If each of us creates his own meaning, we also create our own morality. I cannot believe this. For if so, what the Nazis did was not immoral because German society had accepted it. Likewise, the subjective morality of every majority culture throughout the world could validate their heinous behavior. It comes down to a very simple matter: Without God there is no objective meaning to life, nor is there an objective morality. I do not want to live in a world where right and wrong are subjective.30
Postmodernism refuses to recognize the possibility that a person sincerely following his or her “religious” or cultural norms, whatever they may be, could perpetrate something that should be characterized as “evil.” So what was it that stared us in the face on September 11, 2001 through the eyes of Mohammed Atta?