What do christians think about leviticus

God gave the laws, after all. He gave them to His people in a specific place for a specific time, but they are in the Bible and the whole Bible is important. So what do they mean for today? The following is a simple seven-step method that I have found helpful for interpreting and applying the law. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness.

When the apostle Paul wrote that, the New Testament did not exist. So we affirm inspiration—God breathed out, inspired, Leviticus. Also we affirm its helpfulness. So, all Scripture is not only inspired; all of it is also helpful. In the new covenant period the Old Testament ceremonial and civil laws are not law for us; our disobedience to individual laws receives no punishment as was the case in ancient Israel.

The whole Old Testament is fulfilled in Jesus, even the legal sections like Leviticus. After the resurrection of Jesus, He met a few of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. He told them that His life, death, and resurrection were prophesied in the Old Testament.

He said in Luke ,. The law of Moses, including Leviticus, is somehow about Jesus. Jesus said that He came to fulfill the Law. How does Jesus do that? We study what originally happened. What does the Bible say about how a particular sacrifice was offered, or how the Day of Atonement was observed? The contemporary meaning is based on the original meaning; the contemporary application is based on the original application.

A text in the Bible cannot mean what it never meant. How would this passage have been understood and applied in its original setting? We base our interpretation on that. I like pork. Barbequed pork is so common in North Carolina that if I did not eat it I would likely be breaking some state law.

However, I would not be breaking any law in the new covenant. Even the death penalty applied to some practices we now accept: working on the Sabbath Exodus and charging interest on loans Ezekiel Doesn't Leviticus prohibit male same-sex behavior for a reason that hasn't changed — God's complementary design of men and women?

As Hebrew scholar Saul Olyan and rabbinic scholar Daniel Boyarin have argued, Leviticus and specifically prohibit male same-sex anal intercourse—not all same-sex acts. Only the former is prohibited in Leviticus, the writers of the Talmud said. They treated other same-sex acts as separate, lesser issues of lust. Male same-sex intercourse was prohibited because it subverted patriarchal gender norms of male dominance in a society that devalued women.

Does this mean the Bible is a misogynistic text? The implication is that if we do not believe we have to observe those laws, such as the law against wearing garments made of two different kinds of material, then we should not teach that the law against homosexual practices — also found in Leviticus — is applicable today. The author is correct in saying that Christians today do not seek to enforce the laws of Leviticus that he cites. That reason lies in what the New Testament teaches about the old law, the Law of Moses, including the books of Exodus and Leviticus.

The New Testament clearly teaches that the old law has been taken away in that its legal requirements are not binding today. For example:.