Why Don't Christians Today Follow the Levitical Law?
Share
Being raised in the evangelical church, pastors and leaders would declare with utmost confidence how we’re not obligated to follow the Old Testament Levitical Law. And yet, they communicated this as an assumption. When pressed further, the answers became muddy.
As a young minister myself, I started exploring the biblical new covenant. I asked a group of ministers older than me, all with doctorate degrees in theology, “What’s the difference between the old covenant and the new?” They couldn’t give a straight answer, unfortunately.
We can clearly point to the commands of the Mosaic Law. Yet why are we free from them today? Exploring the difference between the covenants and the purpose of the Levitical Law shows us that it’s good, but now we have something far greater.
What Was the Purpose of the Levitical Law?
Given through Moses, the Levitical Law was a system of commands, rituals, and morality for the people of Israel after being delivered from Egyptian slavery. It’s primarily found in the book of Leviticus but also appears in Exodus and Deuteronomy.
The Law didn’t save people. God had already done that through the Passover and exodus from Egypt. Instead, the Levitical Law taught people how to live with God as a holy people, set apart from other nations and for the Lord.
God had the Israelites build a Tabernacle, a place for him to dwell among them. However, God is holy and people are sinful, so there needed to be a way for selfish and corrupt humanity to live in ongoing fellowship with God without him killing them. The Law did this. The Tabernacle itself separated God’s presence from the people with a thick veil before the Holy of Holies.
The moral commands revealed the sacred nature of how to love others as individuals with the image of God. These laws included how to honor family, treat others with justice, sexual purity, and showing mercy to the poor and stranger among them.
The rituals and sacrifices symbolized the repentance, worship, and cleansing God wanted to happen in the heart. Sacrifices provided a temporary covering for sin and taught how disobedience kills. During the Day of Atonement (or Yom Kippur), the holiest day of the year, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the whole of Israel.
These commands helped Israel live as a distinct people, focused on right worship to the one true God, a type of heaven on earth. The Law was for a people (Israel) and a place with borders (the Promised Land). God promised to provide for them abundantly if they would obey him; at the same time, he would remove them from the land if they rejected his covenant and the Law.
Most people who’ve read the Bible understand — it didn’t work.
How the Levitical Law Proved Insufficient in the Old Testament
The Israelites broke the first laws within days. Moses had been up on Mount Sinai with God for a short time before Aaron and the people willingly made an idol and worshipped it instead of the God who had just rescued them from Egypt and the Red Sea. The rest of the Old Testament follows this pattern. Israel or Judah would regularly fall into idolatry and sin, perhaps to return through the prophets.
These later prophets, beginning with Isaiah, pointed out the insufficiency of the Levitical Law. While the Law was holy, good, and given by God, the people often followed it through obligation and duty, empty rituals, while they did their own thing otherwise. The Israelites or Jews would perform the sacrifices and observe the festivals, thinking this was enough, but their hearts were far from God. The prophets consistently pointed out this hypocrisy, teaching how God wanted their love and devotion through complete obedience and justice. Otherwise, the rituals meant nothing.
God declares through Isaiah 1:11-17, “I have had enough of burnt offerings … Bring no more vain offerings … cease to do evil, learn to do good.” Though the people brought the physical sacrifices, they oppressed the vulnerable and poor. Also, Hosea 6:6 records God’s message, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Amos 5:21-24 communicates the same theme, when God says, “I hate, I despise your feasts … But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Through the prophets, God repeatedly rejected their religious ritual when it didn’t result in compassion for the marginalized and true devotion to God.
The prophets show how the Levitical Law couldn’t produce real transformation. Outward traditions couldn’t change the heart. The rituals were never meant to be the point. As symbols, they pointed to a greater need. People needed changed hearts, not just external ritual.
Therefore, the prophets also started talking about a different, future covenant. God promises a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34, one not written on stone but on hearts. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” The Lord promises the same covenant in Ezekiel 36:26-27, where he will give his followers a new heart and put his Spirit within them, empowering them to follow his commands from a transformed inner person.
As the Son of God, Jesus’ words regarding the Law shouldn’t surprise us.
What Did Jesus Say about the Levitical Law?
As Christ followers, what Jesus said about the Law matters to us.
Jesus affirmed the good and divine origin of the Law, but he declared how he had come to fulfill it all. “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Jesus himself followed, completed, and fulfilled the Law and the Prophets.
Jesus didn’t discard the law — he completed its purpose by living it perfectly and revealing its true intent.
In the same passage, Christ expands the Law, revealing the true law of the heart he came to bring. Jesus said several times, “You have heard it said … but I say to you.” As an example, he took the command to not murder and addressed anger as the core issue (Matthew 5:21-22). He did the same with adultery, pointing to the problem of the heart that caused the external act of sin. Jesus called his followers to have what Jeremiah and Ezekiel talked about — a righteousness of the heart resulting in obedience.
Like the prophets before him, Jesus challenged the Jewish leaders who abused the Law, leaders who taught a legalistic system and ignored mercy and justice, the heart of God. He exposed their hypocrisy, teaching how obedience to God must come from love. Christ challenged the Jewish idea of the Law several times, like healing on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6) or eating with tax collectors. Jesus didn’t break the Law, he fulfilled it through meeting the needs of the poor, showing compassion, and calling people to deep spiritual renewal, or being “born again.”
Jesus ultimately fulfilled the Law and sacrificial system by offering himself as perfect, one-time sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10). Jesus didn’t reinterpret the Law; by fulfilling it, he now embodies it. He is the Law-giver. Through his work, believers don’t follow the Law for righteousness but walk by the Spirit – the law of Spirit and life, the law of liberty – transformed from the inside out.
What Did the New Testament Apostles Say about the Levitical Law?
The New Testament writers made clear distinction between the Levitical Law and the work of Christ. The Law had a purpose but was never meant to bring salvation.
Paul had been educated as a Pharisee in the Law, but he had persecuted Christians and Christ before his conversion. More than anyone, he knew the danger of the Law. Paul affirmed it as good but failed to justify sinners. “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). In fact, Paul argued that while the Law came from God, he designed it to fail in order to prove the need of a greater gift, Christ (Galatians 3:24).
Hebrews shows how the Law “was but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Hebrews 10:1). In Christ, we have the substance of those symbols. As Hebrews and Paul argue, why would we return to the empty rituals that couldn’t change anyone? The book of Hebrews points out how much more glorious the new covenant is than the old.
At the same time, the New Testament writers clarified how God’s moral standards remained. Jesus and the apostles upheld the calls to love, justice, righteousness, living set apart, and sexual purity. Paul often repeated Old Testament commandments against stealing, murder, adultery, and idolatry (Romans 13:8-10, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
However, Paul and the apostles rejected any value for ritual obligations like circumcision, eating clean foods, or the temple sacrifices. They were no longer necessary for righteousness. Colossians 2:16-17 encourages the believers (Jews and Gentiles) to not let people judge them according to “food or drink or with regard to a religious festival … these are the shadow of things that were to come; the reality is found in Christ.”
In the new covenant, Christ broke down all barriers to dwell with God. The Spirit lives in our hearts more than God did in the Holy of Holies. Therefore, those rituals have no meaning or need. And we follow the moral code through following the righteous God it’s based on. Through the Spirit, living by faith, believers can live right and set apart the way we were meant to be.
Why Don’t Christians Follow the Levitical Law?
First, the Law was never meant to be the final way to live with God. The Law failed since it relied upon human effort to perform it, and humanity remained corrupt and sinful. God used the Law to show the danger of the curse, the Fall, and empty human ability. “What the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son” (Romans 8:3). The Law demanded righteousness, but we couldn’t do it. Why would we cling to such a system?
Second, Jesus fulfilled the Law completely. Therefore, following him, we do follow the Law, as the person the Law was based on. Now it’s relational, as God designed it to be from the beginning, in the Garden. Christ is the perfect sacrifice, the ultimate high priest, and the goal of the entire Old Testament Law. Walking with him, we also fulfill the Law. Not by external rules but through the Spirit.
Third, we have something exponentially greater, the new covenant, and God didn’t design this covenant to fail. It is eternal based on his complete work, and the new covenant will last forever. Hebrews 8:6 teaches us how Jesus “has obtained a ministry that is as more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better.” We no longer live under a written code but in the Spirit, who empowers us to love God and others rightly, the whole heart of the Law (Romans 13:10).
We don’t need shadows and symbols, not when we have something truly and eternally real – Christ himself. He is our righteousness, our access to God, and our power to live holy and righteous. The Levitical Law served a particular purpose, pointing to our need for Jesus. Let’s go to him as the Law calls us to.
Peace.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/tomertu
