Why I Don’t Use Leviticus to Defend Christian Ethics

Shellfish, Sexuality, and the Savior

Imagine someone says to you:

“Yes, British law says theft is illegal. But it also says you’re not allowed to shake your rug out in the street. So if you care about theft, why aren’t you protesting all the rug-shakers?”

Bizarre, right?

(And yes — in case you’re wondering — the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839 really does prohibit “beating or shaking any carpet, rug, or mat in the street” in London.)

Now, if you were British, maybe — silly as it sounds — you'd have some reason to engage that discussion. You might ask whether the law still applies, or whether it's enforced anymore. But if you're not British, the whole conversation is nonsense. You don't live under British law. You’re not bound by its rules. That’s just not your legal system.

But we hear this same argument all the time. A more modern version — just as strange, but dressed in different words:

“Yes, Leviticus prohibits same-sex sexual activity. But it also says you’re not to eat shellfish. If Leviticus is your guide, then why do you eat pork and seafood?”

And here’s where many Christians fall into the trap — because they try to answer the question on its own (presuppositionally flawed) terms.

A common response goes something like this:

“Well, come on — theft and shaking out your carpet are obviously different things. Use some common sense. They’re not in the same category. Carpet care is tucked away in a dusty corner of municipal code. Theft is in the criminal statutes. We all know the difference.”

In other words: sure, both statutes may exist within British law, but they're clearly different types of offenses. They appear in different sections of legislation, with different enforcement and consequences. You don’t find them lumped together like this:

Murder. Arson. Theft. And... rugs.

Some Christians make the same move with Leviticus:

“Look — just because they're in the same book doesn't mean they're treated the same. Clearly the sexual laws are grouped together. They’re separate from the dietary laws or the farming laws. Clearly, they’re different categories.”

Or, more commonly expressed these days (raise your hand if you’ve heard this):

“There are three different kinds of law in the Old Testament — moral, civil, and ceremonial. Civil and ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ (like the Temple system, the food laws, the Sabbath), but the moral law of God still stands.”

That argument might sound tidy — but I’ll come back to it later and try to show why I believe it’s mistaken, inconsistent, and ultimately unhelpful.

For now, let’s go back to our friends arguing about carpets and shellfish.

It’s true that Leviticus 18 contains a tightly grouped section on prohibited sexual relationships — including incest, adultery, same-sex activity, and bestiality. It’s separate from, say, Leviticus 11, which deals with dietary restrictions. In fact, I've heard some Christian apologists respond like this:

“If we’re going to throw out Leviticus’s sexual ethics because of shellfish, by that logic, we throw them all out. So are we also throwing out its prohibitions against incest? Or bestiality? Because those are right there in the same breath.”

Who’s cherry-picking now?

But even that — clever as it may sound — still concedes the wrong premise.
We’re still playing the game on the wrong field… using the wrong rules… in a stadium that was never built for us.

Because here’s the deeper truth:
Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) are not under Leviticus at all.
Any more than Americans are under British law.

What Jesus and the Apostles Said About the Law

Let’s be clear: the New Testament doesn’t merely suggest that the Old Covenant is over — it says so explicitly.

“In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
— Hebrews 8:13

The author doesn’t say parts of the covenant are obsolete. He says the covenant itself is.

This isn’t just about sacrifices or priesthood. This is about the entire Sinai covenant — the law given through Moses — which Jesus has now fulfilled and surpassed.

Jesus Himself said:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
— Matthew 5:17

He didn’t erase the Old Testament. He completed its story. He fulfilled the Law, just as He fulfilled the Prophets. Christians don't reject the Old Covenant — we revere it – but we revere it as fulfilled in Christ:

Jesus is the true and greater Adam.
Jesus is the true and greater Lamb.
Jesus is the true and greater Shepherd.
Jesus is the true and greater Temple.
Jesus is the true and greater Priest.
Jesus is the true and greater King.
And when it comes to the Law, Jesus is the true and greater Lawgiver.

But What About the “Moral, Civil, and Ceremonial” Distinction?

That’s a common framework in many Christian circles, especially in Reformed traditions. And I understand the appeal. It tries to make sense of which laws still apply and which don’t. On the surface, it sounds tidy and reasonable

But here’s the problem: The Bible never actually makes that distinction.

Categorizing like this can be helpful as a theological summary — but if it leads us to treat the Law as a buffet line, we’ve misunderstood its covenantal nature.

Nowhere do Moses, Jesus, or the apostles divide the Law into three neat categories. In fact the Law is consistently treated as a unified covenant. When Paul says in Galatians 5:3 that “every man who accepts circumcision… is obligated to keep the whole law,” he’s not distinguishing between moral and ceremonial. He’s saying: if you bind yourself to any part of the Law as law, you’re bound to all of it.

James 2:10 makes the same point:

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”

The Law was a covenant package, not a buffet line where you take what you like, and leave the rest. Not then, and not now.

Consider the Ten Commandments, for example — usually considered the heart of the “moral law.” But even here, the categories start to blur:

“You shall not murder” — Moral! See? Easy!
“You shall have no idols” — Moral! ... and... Ceremonial?
“... do no work on the Sabbath" — Ceremonial! Err... Civil...err... Moral?

They’re all presented together — with equal authority, as part of a single covenant delivered at Sinai. And that’s the point. The Law doesn’t sort itself neatly into categories. It stands or falls as a whole.

The Ten Commandments were part of the Sinai covenant, which Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3 is now “fading away.” That doesn’t mean murder is now acceptable — it means we no longer live under those covenant terms.

It may reassure you to hear – I don't murder.

But the reason I refrain from murder is not because Moses prohibited it, any more than the reason I refrain from theft has anything to do with King Charles III.

I’m not under the Law of Moses.

The Law had its role — it was a tutor, a guardian, meant to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). But now that Christ has come, we’re no longer under the tutor (3:25!). We don’t take our cues from Mount Sinai. We take them from Jesus.

So when Jesus says, 

“You’ve heard it was said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say to you: everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21–22)

that's all I need to hear.

I’m not caught up wondering how to reconcile what Jesus says with what Moses said:

Is Jesus repeating the Law of Moses?
Explaining a deeper meaning to what Moses meant?
Reinterpreting Moses altogether?”

Those are all misdirections. The fact is this: Jesus says, “Here’s what you heard before — here’s what I say now.”

And because I'm in Christ – the true North of my moral compass is simple:
"What does Jesus say?"

So I follow the direction of the voice of God the Father on a different mountain, when Peter scurried around trying to figure out what to do about Elijah, and what to do about Moses, and God thundered from heaven regarding Jesus,

"This one is my SON. Listen to HIM!" (Matthew 17:5)

"But if we only listen to Jesus, people will get off easy!"

Tell me you need to read your Bible more without telling me you need to read your Bible more.

I think sometimes Christians worry that if we let go of Leviticus — if we “let people get away with” only listening to Jesus — we’re somehow embracing a lower standard.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Even a surface reading of the Gospels shows how you could almost distill Jesus’ entire conflict with the Pharisees down to this:

They thought keeping the Law of Moses made them righteous.
Jesus kept showing them it wasn’t enough.

He didn’t loosen the standard — He raised it to the heart.
The righteousness of Jesus' Kingdom exceeds the Law of Leviticus.
It's not a lower standard - It’s impossibly higher.

So maybe that fear — the fear of getting our ethics from Jesus rather than Leviticus — reveals something deeper:

Maybe we don’t know our Gospels as well as we think we do.

Maybe we’ve started to believe the world’s lie — and yes, it is a lie — that “Jesus never talked about sexuality.” That the New Testament “never addressed abortion.” That the Gospels “say nothing about gender.”

We believe those oft-repeated lies because we don’t know our Bibles well enough.
And because we haven’t anchored our convictions in Christ Himself, we go scrambling back to Leviticus.

But here’s the problem: Leviticus isn’t our covenant. Jesus is.
And if we knew Jesus better, perhaps we wouldn’t feel the need to borrow our authority from Moses.

Because Jesus may not have used the modern vocabulary we’ve invented — but the New Testament very clearly:

• affirms marriage as a one-flesh union between a man and a woman,
• regards children in the womb as fully alive and spiritually aware,
• and receives gender not as an arbitrary construct, but as a gift — rooted in creation, and worthy of honor.

Jesus does speak to all these things — just not in culture-war hot takes, rather in deeper, more heart-oriented ways than we might expect.

So How Should We Read Leviticus?

With reverence. With gratitude. As historical. As part of God’s holy, inspired Word. And yes, even revelatory regarding God's design.

But also with this understanding:

Leviticus was never meant to be your law. Jesus is.

The Old Covenant revealed God’s holiness — but it was temporary, preparatory, and national in scope. The New Covenant reveals God's holiness too — but now through Christ, and extended to all nations, written not on stone tablets, but on human hearts.

So yes —I believe, for example, that God's will for marriage is one man plus one woman for one lifetime.

But not because of Leviticus.

Because of Jesus — and the creation pattern He affirmed (Matthew 19:4–6).

Because of the apostles He sent — who taught clearly about sexual morality under the New Covenant (Rom. 1:26–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–11)*.

Because of the Spirit who now dwells in us, leading us into a holiness deeper than any written code (Gal. 5:16–25; Rom. 8:1–14).

Some will worry that this leads to moral chaos — that if we stop quoting Leviticus, we’ll have no solid ground. But the truth is, our ethical foundation doesn’t collapse — it gets deeper. Because it’s rooted in Christ, not code.

*[Some argue that New Testament prohibitions only address exploitative or coercive relationships, such as pederasty or temple prostitution. But anyone engaging objectively with the context and language used — especially ἀρσενοκοῖται (arsenokoitai) and μαλακοί (malakoi) — will find that argument exceedingly difficult to sustain.]

But Doesn’t Rejecting Leviticus Leave Us Without a Moral Foundation?

Not at all. We're not lawless without Leviticus. We're under a better law.

First of all - As I just argued above, in saying "Leviticus is not our covenant" we're not "rejecting Leviticus" altogether.

And arguing that our ethics don't come from Leviticus is not the same thing as saying they don't come from the Bible at all.

We don’t believe everything in the Bible is a command to us in the same way. We don’t build arks. We don’t stone rebellious children or Sabbath-breakers. We don’t bring animal sacrifices. Not because those commands weren’t real — but because they belonged to a different covenant. And that covenant has been fulfilled in Christ!

So no - we don't get our ethics from Leviticus. That's not a slip into moral relativism. And it's not antinomianism.

Can you imagine someone saying to an American:

“You’ve rejected British law — why are you an anarchist?”

It’s nonsense. It's a non sequitur. It doesn't follow.

I’m not under British law because I don’t live in Britain.
I’m not under Leviticus because I'm not party to the Sinai Covenant.

But that doesn’t mean I have no laws or no Lord.

It means I live under the authority of Jesus — the risen King — who has given us a new covenant, a new heart, and a new way to walk in obedience.

The New Testament is not lawless. It’s full of moral instruction — not as a list of external regulations, but as the Spirit-empowered life of those who walk with Christ.

Paul says we are now under “the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21 ; Gal. 6:2).
He also calls it “the law of the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2), and “the law of faith” (Rom. 3:27).
James, the Lord's brother calls it “the law of liberty” (James 1:25; 2:12).

That’s where our moral foundation lies now — not in the old covenant code, but in the person of Christ, the teaching of the apostles, and the Spirit who writes God’s law on our hearts (Jer. 31:33; 2 Cor. 3:3).

Yes — we are still called to holiness.
We still obey.
But we obey as sons and daughters, not as servants under Sinai.

So Here’s the Heart of It

As soon as we start arguing, “Well, this law in Leviticus still applies, but that one doesn’t,” we’ve already conceded the wrong premise.

We’ve accepted — maybe without realizing it — the idea that Leviticus is our guide for Christian ethics.

But it’s not.

That’s not how Jesus framed it.
That’s not how Paul taught it.
That’s not how the New Covenant works.

So when we try to defend, for example, a biblical view of marriage by saying,“Well, the sexual laws are different from the shellfish laws,” we’ve already conceded the wrong ground.

We’re answering a question we don’t need to answer, within a framework we don’t actually believe.

And maybe the most tragic part of the whole conversation is this:

Too many of us treat Leviticus and the rest of the Mosaic Law not only as our own Christian code of ethics, but increasingly as a standard the unbelieving world must meet to be accepted by God. But that’s exactly what Jesus warned the Pharisees about:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees; hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces." (Matt 23:13)

Too many of us hold the Mosaic Law up as a standard for the unbelieving world — a bar they must clear in order to be accepted by God.

But that’s the opposite of the gospel — literally.

The Law was never meant to earn God's grace, but to show people how desperately they need it.

Not to raise the bar for entry — but to drive us to the only One who can carry us over it.

The gospel is not, “Change, so that you can come to God through Christ.”
The gospel is, “Come to God through Christ — and He will change you.”

When we argue from the wrong covenant — we don’t just weaken our ethics.

We risk distorting the gospel itself.

Leviticus isn’t our covenant.
Jesus is.

And as Christians, we should know this.

Our covenant wasn’t given on stone tablets, shouted back and forth between mountains, and ratified by animal blood sprinkled on a book, a tent, and a people.

Our covenant was given when Jesus took bread and broke it, saying,
“Take and eat.”

It was sealed when He lifted the cup and declared:
“This is the new covenant in my blood.”

That’s the covenant we live under.
That’s where our ethics come from.
And that’s the ground we stand on.

So no, I don’t look to Leviticus to define Christian ethics — not because I reject the Bible, but because I follow the Bible’s own story, all the way to Christ.