Tattoos: Should Christian believers get them?

Elsewhere I've explained why I started to think about tattoos generally and specifically in relation to Christian believers. Just to repeat here this came out of a lecture by John W Kleinig in relation to the Old Testament Book of Leviticus. He was going through the various laws in chapter 19 of Leviticus and there in verse 28 is the command,

"Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord."

This is the NIV translation of the verse. John W Kleinig does his own translation and puts it this way:

"… and you shall not make a gash in your flesh for the dead, nor shall you put tattoos on yourselves; I am the Lord your God."

I assume that modern-day Jews stick to this command as it is in the law of Moses.

Before going any further, I want to explain my attitude before I started researching this issue, my thoughts in the middle of doing the research and my conclusion having completed my research. I will be writing a book about these things shortly.

Before starting my research, my attitude was that I didn't like tattoos (just as I didn't like to see men wearing earrings!), but if people wanted to get them, that's up to them. I know a few people who have them, but I had never spoke to them about them. So, basically, I didn't like them, wouldn't have one, but didn’t think much more about them.

When I started reading about tattoos, I found that wherever you found tattoos you tended to find non-Judeo Christian religions and very often, if not always, tattoos went with scarification, human sacrifice, cannibalism (the eating of human flesh) and the drinking of blood (both of animals and human beings). These behaviours were very widespread. This made me wonder whether these behaviours were not good, wherever they might be found and for whatever reason they were done. More often than not the people who did these things were animists, who believe that everything contains a spirit; if you killed something and eat it and drink it or his blood you take into yourself the spirit of that thing or person. So, if you kill a strong warrior in another tribe and you eat him and drink his blood you take into yourself his strength, his cunning, his ability to fight and it is added to your spirit, so you become more powerful.

John Kleinig says in one of his lectures that animists consider that there is only one substance in this world that is both a physical substance and a spiritual substance and it is very powerful, and that substance is blood.

My view of tattoos, scarring, and cutting began to take on a form and shape that I hope and believe was not just a personal dislike. I will explain below.

At the end of my research, I came to a conclusion which I state below, but now I'm going to go back to talking about the law of Moses set out in the Old Testament and the relationship of the law to Christians today.

There is great debate amongst Christians as to the effect of the law of Moses for modern-day Christians. Some say that the law of Moses does not apply in any way to believers today, but others think that Christians should obey the law. I think is rather more complicated than either of those views. I believe it's quite clear that as far as any laws given to the people of Israel in respect of the sacrificial system, the priesthood and those laws concerning that which is clean or unclean no longer apply because when Christ died upon the cross and rose again from the dead the need for the sacrifice of animals for the forgiveness of sins, and the covering of sins, and for the cleansing of the human body was fulfilled in Christ. But it's clear that New Testament ethics are Old Testament ethics brought into the New with significant differences. So, the question then becomes which part of the law still has an effect.

When you read the New Testament Book of Romans, we see that Paul the Apostle teaches that we cannot keep the law of God given through Moses, while we live in the "sinful nature". Human beings while in the sinful nature will always fail in their attempts to keep the law. The New Testament teaches it is not possible to keep the law because sin within human beings deceives us when we hear the law of God and sin drives us to do the opposite of what we wanted to do (obey God’s law). But Paul also points out that the law is good, righteous and holy; it is not something that is bad or sinful. It is the sinful nature (our human nature by normal birth) in human beings that perverts the good law of God. When Christ came and died upon the cross and was raised again, he opened the way for human beings to be set free from the sinful nature. The only way for this to happen is for human beings to ‘die’!

Fortunately, God has provided a way for us to ‘die’ without having to die! By this I mean that when we come to faith in Christ, repent (turn away from sinful behaviours) we are ‘united with Him in a death like his’ and therefore we have ‘died’ with him. Because we have died with him, we have been set free from sin, set free from death (for when Christ died and was raised again from the dead he cannot die again and as we are united with him, we are also united with him into a death-less life) and we have also been released from the law. As Paul puts it in Romans 7 verse 8, "… We have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code."

We have been set free from seeking to do the law while in the sinful nature and if we are believers who have been filled with the Holy Spirit we are now serving in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code as the Jews sought to do and failed. I hope you can see from what I've said above my statement that the Jews tried to obey but failed is not a criticism of the Jews. Anyone who seeks to obey the law while still in the sinful nature will fail. This is a statement about human beings and not particular people.

What this means is that the Old Testament is still God's Word and contains God's Commandments but now those commands and laws have been internalized by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us (see the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as Joel). Now we turn not to the written code, originally written on tablets of stone and then written on scrolls, but to the Living God who dwells within us and is enabling us to be transformed by that Living Word in us.

What is the relationship between Christians and the law of God, meaning the law of Moses as set out in the Pentateuch now that we know from the New Testament that believers do not have to "obey" the Lord of Moses (see Acts 15)?

If you look at Leviticus 19, you'll see that it contains many laws which we would accept as being good things today, but there are some that we are not happy with. If you look back in chapter 18, would anyone say that none of these 'laws' applies today? Of course, this is controversial, especially because of chapter 18 verse 22 which deals with homosexual sexual behaviour, but if you look at the next verse in chapter 8 verse 23 you see that there's a command against having sex with animals. Would anyone say that shouldn't be obeyed? (Actually, there are!). My point is to say that this is complicated.

Many of the ethical commands in the Old Testament are repeated in the New Testament, but we are to bring Scripture to the indwelling Holy Spirit for his guidance. I am convinced that a lot of the Old Testament does still 'applies' as it shows God's will. My conclusion is that it is not the will of God for his people to cut themselves (scarification) or to tattoo themselves.

Others will disagree, but this is where I stand.

Then we need to ask what you should do if you are a believer and you have had yourself tattooed.

But that is for another day.