Leviticus today
Leviticus is one of those books where I think the average Bible reader with his uncritically held assumption that everything the Bible says is equally true and authoritative will make some mistakes that can have a negative impact on healthy faith formation.
The first mistake involves the topic of sacrifice. The opening seven chapters of Leviticus record a very detailed system for offering ritual sacrifices to God. Lots of bulls, rams, lambs, and goats. Some killed in this way. Some in that. In one case, you have to do this with the blood. In another case, you have to do that. Some sacrifices are burned on the altar. Some are burned outside the camp. And some are burned both on the altar and outside the camp.
It’s all very serious, right down to the priests’ underwear as well as what kind of incense they’re allowed to burn. Just ask Nadab and Abihu what happens if you screw it up.[1]
If Leviticus was all you had, you would have to conclude that sacrifice is central to the God-human relationship. More specifically, God-directed sacrifice. The reason God cares very much about sacrifice—so much that he spends seven chapters laying out how to do it properly—is because God is someone who expects and demands his people to offer him sacrifices.
That’s how it works.
That, however, is a mistake. And if you make that mistake it will cause you to misunderstand not only ancient sacrifice but, because the coming of Jesus is often framed using sacrificial logic,[2] the entire purpose of Jesus’ life and death.
The truth about sacrifice, and this was something the earliest prophets tried to help God’s people to see, is that God is not the one who needs or wants sacrifice.[3] We do.
According to Leviticus 17:3-7, the entire point of the God-driven sacrificial system in Leviticus was to coopt and curb Israel’s sacrificial predilections. In other words, it was built-in to the ancient mindset that sacrifice was how you related to deities. Everyone sacrificed to the gods. And things could get pretty gnarly, with people even sacrificing their own children. This was not something God wanted his people doing, but step #1 in moving them into a reality where they didn’t sacrifice anything was getting them to only sacrifice certain things in certain places. If God had not put in place the sacrificial system you read about in Leviticus 1-7, Leviticus 17:3-7 makes it clear these people would have been out sacrificing God knows what to God knows whom, including perhaps even their children to false gods like Molech.
Back when Leviticus was written, the uncritically accepted belief was that religious faith was all about people sacrificing to the gods. On the surface it looks like Leviticus may be endorsing that perspective. Far from it. Leviticus is actually working to undermine that perspective. We do not need to sacrifice to God. No one needed to sacrifice to God. According to Jesus, God is the one who sacrifices for us.
The second mistake people make when reading Leviticus concerns the various lists of moral prescriptions, especially the sexual prohibitions you’ll find in Leviticus 17-19. If you’re not familiar, take a minute and read those chapters and then ask yourself, “What must that world have been like if someone felt the need to put these specific sexual prohibitions in writing?”
It must have been a pretty wild place.
And that’s the point. Leviticus 19 makes it clear that the primary reason for these various prescriptions is to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbors. It was the neighboring nations who engaged in these practices but since God’s people were supposed to be distinct—set apart, holy—they should not.
The average Bible reader thinks that what is most important are the specific prohibitions rather than the purpose given for those specific prohibitions at that time.
The outcome is that you have well-meaning Christians today who are very careful not to engage any of the behaviors listed in Leviticus 17-19 (and condemn anyone who does) all the while doing all kinds of things that are common to their neighboring nations; perhaps things like consumption, distraction, promiscuity, and violence.
I think Jesus would call that straining out a gnat to swallow a camel.
When Jesus came along and told his followers that they must be holy because God the Father is holy—language he borrowed directly from Leviticus—he did not list a bunch of sexual prohibitions. He told his followers they must be merciful, echoing language from those same Levitical chapters that often (and conveniently) gets overlooked.
There is a reason wise Jewish teachers landed on Leviticus 19:18—love your neighbor as you love yourself—as the summation of the whole code. They could see clearly enough that it wasn’t about the specific list of dos and don’ts. It was about the principle to love and take care of people. Even most of the sexual prohibitions had to do with honoring other people.
And, therefore, the specific lists can change over time. The point is to honor God by the way you honor people. That was always the point. Christian faith is not about trusting some kind of ritual sacrifice as a way of avoiding having to honor God by the way you honor people. Christian faith is accepting that God is a God of sacrificial love and to follow this God is to become someone how is also characterized by sacrificial love.
[1] Leviticus 10:1-2
[2] John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, perhaps referring to the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. Jesus chose instead to frame his death using Passover imagery, though that also deals with animal sacrifice.
[3] See Samuel 15:22-23 for the first clear example of this
The first mistake involves the topic of sacrifice. The opening seven chapters of Leviticus record a very detailed system for offering ritual sacrifices to God. Lots of bulls, rams, lambs, and goats. Some killed in this way. Some in that. In one case, you have to do this with the blood. In another case, you have to do that. Some sacrifices are burned on the altar. Some are burned outside the camp. And some are burned both on the altar and outside the camp.
It’s all very serious, right down to the priests’ underwear as well as what kind of incense they’re allowed to burn. Just ask Nadab and Abihu what happens if you screw it up.[1]
If Leviticus was all you had, you would have to conclude that sacrifice is central to the God-human relationship. More specifically, God-directed sacrifice. The reason God cares very much about sacrifice—so much that he spends seven chapters laying out how to do it properly—is because God is someone who expects and demands his people to offer him sacrifices.
That’s how it works.
That, however, is a mistake. And if you make that mistake it will cause you to misunderstand not only ancient sacrifice but, because the coming of Jesus is often framed using sacrificial logic,[2] the entire purpose of Jesus’ life and death.
The truth about sacrifice, and this was something the earliest prophets tried to help God’s people to see, is that God is not the one who needs or wants sacrifice.[3] We do.
According to Leviticus 17:3-7, the entire point of the God-driven sacrificial system in Leviticus was to coopt and curb Israel’s sacrificial predilections. In other words, it was built-in to the ancient mindset that sacrifice was how you related to deities. Everyone sacrificed to the gods. And things could get pretty gnarly, with people even sacrificing their own children. This was not something God wanted his people doing, but step #1 in moving them into a reality where they didn’t sacrifice anything was getting them to only sacrifice certain things in certain places. If God had not put in place the sacrificial system you read about in Leviticus 1-7, Leviticus 17:3-7 makes it clear these people would have been out sacrificing God knows what to God knows whom, including perhaps even their children to false gods like Molech.
Back when Leviticus was written, the uncritically accepted belief was that religious faith was all about people sacrificing to the gods. On the surface it looks like Leviticus may be endorsing that perspective. Far from it. Leviticus is actually working to undermine that perspective. We do not need to sacrifice to God. No one needed to sacrifice to God. According to Jesus, God is the one who sacrifices for us.
The second mistake people make when reading Leviticus concerns the various lists of moral prescriptions, especially the sexual prohibitions you’ll find in Leviticus 17-19. If you’re not familiar, take a minute and read those chapters and then ask yourself, “What must that world have been like if someone felt the need to put these specific sexual prohibitions in writing?”
It must have been a pretty wild place.
And that’s the point. Leviticus 19 makes it clear that the primary reason for these various prescriptions is to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbors. It was the neighboring nations who engaged in these practices but since God’s people were supposed to be distinct—set apart, holy—they should not.
The average Bible reader thinks that what is most important are the specific prohibitions rather than the purpose given for those specific prohibitions at that time.
The outcome is that you have well-meaning Christians today who are very careful not to engage any of the behaviors listed in Leviticus 17-19 (and condemn anyone who does) all the while doing all kinds of things that are common to their neighboring nations; perhaps things like consumption, distraction, promiscuity, and violence.
I think Jesus would call that straining out a gnat to swallow a camel.
When Jesus came along and told his followers that they must be holy because God the Father is holy—language he borrowed directly from Leviticus—he did not list a bunch of sexual prohibitions. He told his followers they must be merciful, echoing language from those same Levitical chapters that often (and conveniently) gets overlooked.
There is a reason wise Jewish teachers landed on Leviticus 19:18—love your neighbor as you love yourself—as the summation of the whole code. They could see clearly enough that it wasn’t about the specific list of dos and don’ts. It was about the principle to love and take care of people. Even most of the sexual prohibitions had to do with honoring other people.
And, therefore, the specific lists can change over time. The point is to honor God by the way you honor people. That was always the point. Christian faith is not about trusting some kind of ritual sacrifice as a way of avoiding having to honor God by the way you honor people. Christian faith is accepting that God is a God of sacrificial love and to follow this God is to become someone how is also characterized by sacrificial love.
[1] Leviticus 10:1-2
[2] John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, perhaps referring to the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. Jesus chose instead to frame his death using Passover imagery, though that also deals with animal sacrifice.
[3] See Samuel 15:22-23 for the first clear example of this
Recent
Archive
2026
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
Categories
no categories
No Comments