Pastor John, almost daily we get email questions from listeners about tattoos.

What if anything does the Bible say about tattoos?

There's one explicit reference to tattooing in the Bible.

Leviticus 1928, it says, you shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo

yourselves.

I am the Lord.

Now that should at least give us a few minutes of pause, but of course there are two reasons

at least why that does not settle the matter.

One is that we are no longer under the mosaic law, right, a Roman 7.

You have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another

to Him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

So we are not under the law as a list of rules that makes us right with God.

We are now brought into relationship with Christ and our behavior flows like fruit in the

service of God.

Or verse 6 of Roman 7, now we are released from the law having died to that which held

us captive so that we can serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way

of the written code.

So first reason why Leviticus 19 doesn't settle the matter is because we Christians are

not under the law.

Here's the second reason.

In that situation, probably cutting yourself for the dead and prohibiting tattoos was

not because touching the skin in this way is intrinsically evil.

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