What Do Israel’s Food Laws Have to Do with Our Holiness?

When we get to Leviticus in our Bible reading plans, how many of us read every word of chapter 11?

It’s not most people’s idea of engaging literature. The Lord provides a long list of which animals were ritually pure and which were ritually impure. The pure ones could be eaten; the impure ones couldn’t.

If we do make it through the list, one of the first questions we ask is “Why? What makes an animal pure or impure?” Interpreters have ventured various guesses.

Some say it was for health reasons: pure animals are good for our health, while impure ones aren’t. But if health is a concern, why get rid of these laws in the New Testament? (And please pass the calamari as you answer.) Others say it was for cultic reasons: impure animals were used in pagan worship or represented pagan gods. But this doesn’t work when it comes to bulls, which are pure even though they were commonly worshiped in the ancient world. (Golden calf, anyone?)

Despite our best guesses, we’re not told in the Bible why the animals are impure. Instead, Scripture focuses on the goals the Lord had in view with these laws.

Testimony of God’s Holiness

A diet marks a person in a certain way. In our day, those who don’t eat meat are identified as vegetarians (or vegans). In the Israelites’ day, those who kept the diet of Leviticus 11 were identified as the Lord’s followers. It marked them as his people.

But more than that, it marked them as the people of a certain kind of God. For those following a meat-free diet, avoiding meat is a priority. For those following a gluten-free diet, avoiding gluten is a priority. The Lord put the Israelites on an impurity-free diet. Why? He wanted his people to make avoiding impurity a priority.

The nature of their diet testified that the Israelites followed a God who was holy—the opposite of all that was impure. But these laws did more than testify about God’s holiness.

Reminder to Pursue Holiness

The nature of their diet testified that the Israelites followed a God who was holy—the opposite of all that was impure.

The Lord often gives his people physical signs to remind them of other obligations or promises. Circumcision of the flesh was to remind Israelites of the need for circumcision of the heart (Deut. 10:16). The Lord’s Supper reminds Christians of Jesus’s sacrificial death and their covenant obligations to him and to fellow members of his body (1 Cor. 11:23–34). Such physical signs are reminders of deeper realities.

Laws on ritual purity and impurity work in the same way: by commanding the Israelites to distinguish between purity and impurity at a ritual level, the Lord was reminding them to make such distinctions at a moral level. These laws were like spiritual strings around their fingers, reminding them at every meal, “If the Lord requires me to distinguish between purity and impurity ritually—seeking one and avoiding the other—how much more should I do so morally.”

I’ve seen this work out in practice. I once taught a semester-long seminary class on Leviticus. One of the assignments was to follow as many of the laws in Leviticus as possible for a week and to keep a journal of the experience.

The students shared understandable frustrations: several noted the prohibition against clothing of two different fabrics eliminated most of their wardrobes, and one student simply commented on day two, “I really miss bacon.”

By far, however, the most common observation went like this:

Every day, I made decisions about ritual purity and impurity. By midweek, I realized I was thinking about these things all day long and in every aspect of my life, and that’s when it hit me: God cares a lot about our purity and holiness, not just from a ritual perspective but also from a moral perspective. All day long and in every aspect of life, the Lord wants me to pursue purity in my heart, in my thoughts, in my actions. He wants me to reflect his holiness in all that I do. I have been treating holiness way too lightly! O Lord, help me to be holy!

What Happened to the Dietary Laws?

Originally, the laws on ritual purity and impurity were meant to set the Israelites apart as distinct so they might be a light to the nations. But by Jesus’s day, these laws had become a dividing wall that caused them to withdraw from the nations, which they viewed as unholy and unclean.

God cares a lot about our purity and holiness, not just from a ritual perspective but also from a moral perspective.

Even Peter didn’t at first think of the Gentiles as a people group with whom he could go and share the gospel, and it took a direct vision from the Lord to convince him otherwise (Acts 10). So it isn’t surprising that Jesus explicitly sets aside these food laws when he initiates the new covenant (Mark 7:19; Rom. 14:13–15).

But even in doing so, Jesus emphasizes the importance of what these laws pointed to: the need for deep, inner moral purity. In Mark 7:21–23, he says, “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

In saying this, Jesus calls us to give him our hearts so he can wash them clean, and then to reflect his holiness all day long and in every aspect of life—so the nations might know we follow a holy God.