What the Hebrew Text Says About Male-Male Relations

Introduction

There are only two verses in the Old Testament that explicitly mention male same-sex acts:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:13)

For most of my life, I assumed these verses were clear, their meaning fixed, their interpretation was settled by history and tradition. I believed the Bible spoke plainly here, and that faithful Christians had always understood these texts in only one way.

But something began to trouble me when I decided to revisit them. I realized that I was not reading these verses the way I read the rest of Scripture. With other, I gave careful attention to historical context, original language, and cultural setting everywhere else, but not here. These two verses were treated as exceptions. Their meaning was assumed rather than examined.

When I finally slowed down and looked closely at the Hebrew words, their grammar, and their literary and historical setting, I discovered the language was unusual. The phrasing was ambiguous. And the interpretations across Jewish tradition, the early church, and modern scholarship were far more diverse and unsettled than I had imagined. There was no single rabbinic consensus. No unified patristic reading. No uncontested scholarly agreement.

What I had assumed was clarity turned out to be complexity. What I had assumed was unanimity turned out to be disagreement shaped by culture, philosophy, and inherited tradition.

My plea in this article is not that you accept my conclusions. It is something more basic and more important. That we be willing to return again to the text itself. And that we allow Scripture, rather than tradition alone, to remain our highest authority.

So I invite you to look again.

What do these verses actually say in Hebrew.
What world were they written into.
How were they understood by early Jewish and Christian interpreters.
And how does Jesus himself teach us to read the law.

Not to defend a position.

But to seek the truth.

Part 1: The Torah

Before we visit the words and structure of the verses, it’s important to know they are part of a greater section, called the Torah, 613 commandments and instructions God gave Israel through Moses 3,500 years ago.

Ancient Law Codes

Israel’s Torah emerged within a legal culture shared across the ancient Near East. In the second millennium BCE, surrounding societies also preserved extensive law collections designed to regulate daily life and maintain social order. These included the Code of Hammurabi (Babylonia), the Laws of Eshnunna (Mesopotamia), the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (Sumer), the Hittite Law Code (Anatolia), the Middle Assyrian Laws (Assyria), and the Egyptian legal tradition grounded in the principle of Ma’at.

These systems addressed many of the same concerns found in the Torah, including property rights, marriage, inheritance, slavery, violence, sexual conduct, and economic obligations. Their primary purpose was to preserve social stability, protect hierarchy, and reinforce royal authority. Much of the Torah reflects the same ancient legal categories and communal priorities found throughout the region.

The biblical laws were not written in isolation, but within a broader ancient world shaped by covenant treaties, honor–shame systems, purity regulations, and clan-based social structures.

Moses and the early Israelite leaders lived in this same legal world, faced the same social challenges, and employed many of the same legal categories.

In this sense, Israel’s sexual regulations share formal similarities with surrounding cultures. They address concerns about kinship, inheritance, adultery, ritual purity, boundary maintenance, and the preservation of social order. Like other ancient law codes, they regulate conduct in ways designed to protect lineage, prevent disorder, and maintain communal stability rather than to articulate an abstract moral theory or a theology of personal relationships.

The Torah was Unique

What distinguishes Israel decisively from every other ancient legal system is not the presence of law, but the framework in which that law is given. The Torah is not merely royal legislation or civic regulation. It is a covenant document rooted in relationship. Unlike the law codes of Babylon, Assyria, or the Hittites, Israel’s law is framed within a treaty structure in which God is not only the lawgiver but the covenant partner who redeems, dwells among, and binds himself to his people.

The Torah includes commands to love God, neighbor, and stranger, rituals of forgiveness and restoration, and blessings and curses. No other ancient Near Eastern law code places divine relationship, mercy, covenant loyalty, and imitation of God’s holiness at the center of its legal vision. Unlike other countries, Israel’s law serves a relational purpose: protecting the integrity of a people whose life together is bound to the character and dwelling of their God. They were commands that shaped by Israel’s relationship with a holy, redeeming, and present God.

Where other systems primarily protect property, patriarchy, and social hierarchy, the Torah repeatedly centers the vulnerable, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, and the oppressed.

Categories of the Torah Law

The Torah itself does not divide its commandments into formal categories, but Jewish and Christian scholars have long recognized that these laws function in different ways and serve different purposes within Israel’s covenant with God. Understanding these distinctions is essential for responsible interpretation of specific commands.

Ritual Purity Laws

These laws governed access to sacred space. They regulated how to enter sanctuary, how to handle holy objects, or how to participate in worship. They included conditions such as recent childbirth, menstruation, sexual activity, contact with a corpse, certain foods, and symbolic boundary markers like mixed fabrics or mixed seed. Ritual impurity was not sin, nor did it imply moral guilt. It simply described a temporary state that limited participation in temple worship until purification occurred. Many scholars understand these laws as forming a symbolic system that taught Israel about God’s holiness. The New Testament later interprets this system as provisional and anticipatory, describing the purity laws as “shadows” pointing forward to Christ and his final work of cleansing (Hebrews 10:1).

Civil and Judicial Laws

These laws regulated courts, judges, restitution, slavery, land rights, inheritance, warfare, and criminal justice. They defined how Israel was to function as a political and legal community in the land. This category is about how to enforce the moral ideas. It includes fines, corporal punishment, ritual exclusion, and capital sentences. The New Testament treats these laws as belonging to Israel’s old covenant legal system and not as binding on the church (Acts 15). The church does not carry forward Israel’s civil courts, temple-based punishments, or death penalties.

Moral and Ethical Laws

These laws addressed justice, harm, and exploitation within human relationships. They include prohibitions against murder, oppression, theft, adultery, false witness, abuse, and child sacrifice. While ritual purity laws were temporary, these commands express enduring moral concerns about faithfulness to God and the well-being of others. Jesus deepened and clarified these commands by emphasizing inner intent, mercy, and love of neighbor. The apostles consistently reaffirmed their moral logic under the law of Christ, even as covenant penalties and ritual enforcement were no longer applied. The form of the law changed, but its moral purpose endured.

Universal Commands

A smaller group of biblical teachings is presented as applying not only to Israel but to all humanity. These include the covenant with Noah (Genesis 9), which establishes basic moral obligations for all nations, the command to love God and love one’s neighbor (Deuteronomy 6; Leviticus 19, reaffirmed by Jesus), the pursuit of justice, mercy, and righteousness, and the consistent prohibition of idolatry. These commands are repeatedly treated throughout Scripture as timeless and trans-covenantal. They are affirmed across both Testaments as expressions of God’s enduring moral will for all people.

Why These Distinctions Matter

Before interpreting any specific law in Leviticus, we must first ask what kind of law it is, what purpose it served within Israel’s covenant with God, and how the New Testament itself teaches us to carry that law forward in light of Christ. Without these distinctions, it becomes easy to treat every command as if it functioned in the same way, applied to the same audience, and carried the same authority in every era. But Scripture itself does not read the law that way.

Only after identifying the category and covenant function of a law can we responsibly ask what a particular command was intended to regulate and whether it was meant to function as a universal moral prohibition or as a covenant-specific boundary within Israel’s holiness code.

The Purpose of the Torah Law

The Law served several interwoven purposes within Israel’s covenant life.

Physical and Communal Well-Being

The Law protected the community physically and ritually through regulations concerning skin diseases, bodily discharges, food preparation, and household contamination. These laws had real practical effects for hygiene, disease prevention, and communal stability in a Bronze Age desert society, even as their primary function remained theological and symbolic within Israel’s worship life.

Relational and Social Justice

The Law also taught Israel how to care for one another. Laws concerning debt, land, inheritance, fair treatment of the poor and the foreigner, and prohibitions against theft, deception, and exploitation were designed to promote justice, restrain oppression, and form a moral foundation for covenant community life. These commands shaped a society marked by responsibility, mercy, and accountability before God.

Spiritual and Covenant Formation

Above all, the Law revealed the holiness of God. Through its commands, rituals, and sacrificial system, Israel learned that God desired their sanctification and faithfulness. In Christian theology, these laws are later understood as pointing beyond themselves toward the need for forgiveness, restoration, and ultimately redemption.

The Law also marked Israel as distinct among the nations. Their way of life was intended to reflect the character of their God and to display to surrounding peoples that the Lord was unlike the gods of the ancient world. Israel’s covenant obedience was meant to function as a witness, showing what it meant to belong to a holy and faithful God.

Part 2: The Text

There are only two verses in the Torah that explicitly prohibit a male–male sexual act. These two verses carry extraordinary interpretive weight, because so much theological certainty rests on so little text.

One Rule in Two Places

• Leviticus 18:22: Ve’et zakhar lo tishkav mishkevei ishah, to‘evah hi.
  Translation: And with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination
  
• Leviticus 20:13: Ve’ish asher yishkav et-zakhar mishkevei ishah, to‘evah asu sheneihem, mot yumatu.
  Translation: And a man who lies with a male the lyings of a woman, both of them have done an abomination; they shall surely be put to death.

Understanding the Words

Ishah – the status of a woman

This word means woman, but not in the biological sense, which would be neqevah (female). The word ishah functions, instead, as a social–legal category: “wife / woman under male authority”. It regularly implies a role, status, position, and legal belonging. Women were legally attached to a household (either father or husband), not a free independent legal person and always under male authority. The word refered to the sexual and social position/role assigned to a wife.

Mishkevei – the role of a woman

This long debated word is the unusual plural form for mishkav (a lying place, often a euphemism for sex). It appears three times in the Bible: Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13 (the verses in question) and in Genesis 49 (a context where it speaks of violating the sexual role of the father). When Biblical Hebrew refers to the act of intercourse, it normally uses the verb “to lie with” (shakav) or the singular noun mishkav. Biblical scholars agree that the fact that this law uses mishkevei ishah instead, points to a role, not an act. It points to a violation of sexual status, a male occupying the culturally defined sexual role of a woman. In ancient Near Eastern sexual ethics, a “woman” was the property of the man, the penetrated, the subordinate, the owned sexual role. A “man” was the owner, the penetrating, and the dominant role. The term “treating a man like a woman” was a profound insult in their day. It signaled a lowering of the man’s social status, violating social boundaries, and disrupting the patriarchal honor system.

• Jacob Milgrom (Anchor Yale Bible, Leviticus) says it’s a technical phrase which likely refers to the sexual role of a woman, not simply intercourse.
  
• Saul Olyan (Journal of Biblical Literature) says the prohibition concerns a gender role and violation of status hierarchy.
  
• Martti Nissinen (leading scholar on sexuality in the ancient Near East) explains that the phrase reflects a hierarchy sexual role.
  
• Phyllis Bird (professor Emerita of Old Testament Interpretation at Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary) says the prohibition concerns making a male occupy the sexual status that culturally belonged to a woman, thereby violating gender hierarchy rather than addressing sexual orientation or covenantal relationships.

Scholars argue that the command to not lie with a male “as with a woman” reflects the role of domination, not “puzzle pieces”. Same sex sexual acts in the ancient world usually involved unequal power, not mutual relationships. Documented examples include incest between an adult family member and a minor, slave master and slave boy, and temple prostitution (regardless if it was same-sex or not).

Zākār – the anatomy of male

The Hebrew word zākār is the ordinary term for “male,” referring simply to biological sex. It is an anatomical designation used for both humans and animals, regardless of age, as in Genesis’ creation language (“male and female”), Leviticus 12:2 (“gives birth to a male”), and Isaiah 66:7 (“gives birth to a son”).

In the ancient Mediterranean honor–shame system, penetration was associated with dominance and masculinity, while being penetrated was associated with feminization and loss of status. For this reason, the cultural offense addressed in Leviticus is not expressed through the word zākār itself, but through the role language “the lyings of a woman.” The concern reflected in the phrase is not the pairing of two males as such, but the inversion of sexual status and the humiliation of a male by assigning him the sexual role culturally reserved for a woman, a role associated in that world with social inferiority and loss of honor.

This word is very different to the word ish that the zachar lies with, which means an adult man (pointing to the status and rights of a person, not the gender).

Ish (’îš) – the role of a man

This word is commonly translated “man,” but the meaning is not biological or anatomical. It refers to a status or a role, specifically an adult male as a social and legal agent, someone with status, authority, and responsibility within the household and the community. The term is frequently used for a husband, a landowner, a legal subject, or a man acting with agency in covenant and court contexts.

Neither verse speaks of “man with man” (’îš–’îš), two adult males of equal social standing. Instead, verses use ’îš–zākār (an adult male with legal status and agency with a biological male). The grammar assigns legal adult responsibility and dominance to only one them, while the other takes on the woman’s role. This explains why Leviticus 20:13 addresses the legal liability of the ’îš explicitly and treats the act as a violation of covenant order rather than as a mutual relationship between equals.

This law seems to be regulating the misuse of sexual power and the violation of gendered status roles (which was a common thing in that day), not the existence of covenantal same-sex partnerships, a category unknown in the biblical legal world.

Not a rule for women?

One striking and often overlooked feature of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 is that neither verse address women. Elsewhere in these chapters, sexual prohibitions involve both men and women. Women are stated explicitly.

But in this case, the rule does not apply to women. Even though female-female sexual behavior was known about in the ancient Near East and could easily have been included if the goal were a universal moral prohibition, this rule exclusively regulates male behavior.

It’s important to understand that in ancient Near Eastern, law codes were either “inclusive” or “exclusive”.

• Inclusive laws we intended for all members of the community, both men and women are named.
  
• Exclusive laws were intended for a specific group, gender, situation, or abuse. These situational or role-specific laws were addressed only to the group whose behavior is being regulated. These were common for priestly, ritual, or cultic boundary laws, where the concern is not universal ethics but regulating a particular behavior tied to purity, status, or temple practice.

The absence of any female parallel here signals that the law is targeting a particular male context rather than defining a general rule about same sex relationships. This suggests that the concern is not a universal sexual ethic, but a specific male practice being addressed within their context. Recognizing this does not answer every interpretive question, but it does place an important limit on how these verses should be read.

The Structure of the Text

These Leviticus verses appear within a Chiastic Structure.

One of the oldest known literary structures in human writing that appears in the oldest surviving texts in the world, writing in a Chiastic Structure dates back 2nd millennium BCE. It was a common teaching method that is found throughout the ancient world and all throughout Scripture. Even Jesus used chiastic structures in many of His teachings and Paul seemed to love them as he used them in all of his letters.

It’s a writing structure the author uses to make one main point. Instead of moving an idea in a straight line from beginning to end, the text is arranged like a mirror or an arch.

The pattern looks like this:

A
 B
  C
   D
  C′
 B′
A′

The author places the most important theological idea at the center. Everything on the outside leads inward toward that central claim, and then echoes outward again.

The first and last sections interpret each other.
The second and second to last interpret each other.
It creates a theological frame around the central truth.

In Western writing we usually put the main point at the end. In Hebrew writing, the main point is often placed in the middle, where the author wants your attention.

An famous example of a Chiasm is the the Flood narrative (Genesis 6 to 9):

A. God resolves to destroy the earth
 B. Noah builds the ark
  C. Animals enter the ark
   D. The flood begins
    E. God remembers Noah
   D′. The waters recede
  C′. Animals leave the ark
 B′. Noah builds an altar
A′. God promises never again to destroy the earth

The center is not the destruction.
The center is: “God remembered Noah.”
That is the theological heart of the story.

Leviticus has a Chiastic Structure

Leviticus has it’s own chiastic structure and the center of that is the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), the moment when God’s dwelling presence is restored and preserved among his people.

• A. Laws about sacrifice and priests (Lev 1–7)
  • B. Ordination and priestly holiness (Lev 8–10)
    • C. Clean and unclean, purity laws (Lev 11–15)
      • D. Day of Atonement (Lev 16)
    • C. Holiness and purity in daily life (Lev 17–20)
  • B. Priestly holiness and vows (Lev 21–22, 27)
• A. Sacred times and offerings (Lev 23–26)

The opening chapters (1-5) describe how Israel may approach God through proper sacrifice, while the closing chapters (17-16) warn against idolatry and describe the consequences of unfaithfulness to our covenant with God, with explicit and implicit condemnations of foreign worship, goat-demons, Molech sacrifice, and land defilement.

The center is about reconciliation and repair, about renewing closeness between God and his people, about restoration, communion, hope, and the renewal of life with God dwelling among his people.

The two verses (18:22 and 20:13) appear in the second section that strongly focuses on idolatry and pagan worship. This context helps explain why the word to’evah is used here.

Ancient Writers Understanding of the Verses

A number of ancient, medieval interpreters, early Jewish and Christian sources associated the Levitical prohibition to exploitative, age-asymmetrical male relations, pederasty, incest, and sexual abuse of youths.

• The Didache condemns paidophthorḗseis (“corruption of boys”).
  
• Epistle of Barnabas interprets Leviticus as corrupting boys.
  
• Jewish and Christian writers link the Levitical language to boy-molesting practices common in the Greco-Roman world.
  
• Rabbinic sources in the Babylonian Talmud associate the prohibition with pederastic incest, incestuous or hierarchical penetration.
  
• Both Moses Maimonides and Moses ben Nachman (Ramban) discuss the verse within frameworks shaped by pederasty and exploitation.
  
• Early modern translators sometimes reflected this understanding, as in the 1545 Luther Bible, which renders Leviticus 18:22 as “You shall not lie with boys as with a woman.”
  
• Philo of Alexandria in his discussion of sexual prohibitions in Leviticus through the lens of “the love of boys”.
  
• Hellenistic Jew Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE- 50 CE) wrote a commentary on Leviticus 20:13 about “the love of boys” and that “both giver and receiver are worthy of death in accordance with the Law.”

Part 3: The Context

Cultural Context – Idolatry

Leviticus 18 and 20 warnings are not presented as isolated moral instructions.

They are framed by explicit warnings against adopting or imitating the religious practices of Egypt and Canaan. So to understand what the warnings out, we must look at the actions the warnings are speaking about.

Idolatry in the ancient Near East was often bound up with religious ritual, especially same sex rituals:

• Fertility worship included ritualized same sex sexual acts performed in temple settings as offerings to the gods.
  
• Hierarchical and exploitative sexual rites were especially common, including ceremonies involving adult men, enslaved youths, feminized male priests, and cultic prostitution.
  
• In Mesopotamian religion, Inanna temples employed biologicaly male priests known as the gala or kalû (often young boys), who would dress and act in feminine ways to performed sexual ritual roles with adult men. In some documented rites, they would themselves to be penetrated by adult men as part of temple ceremonies conducted before the statue of the goddess, in order to bring blessing, fertility, and divine favor. These encounters were often exploitative, shaped by status, domination, and religious obligation.

This ancient world was about an honor and status system in which penetration signaled dominance and feminization. To treat a non-slave free Israelite male as a woman in a ritual or cultic setting was a profound violation of social and covenant order.

These laws were written within a historical world shaped by idolatry, honor–shame hierarchies, purity systems, and patriarchal structures of dominance.

Many scholars argue that, rather than addressing mutual adult partnerships, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 reflect an ancient gender-hierarchy framework concerned with role inversion, ritual impurity, and surrounding pagan sexual customs, not sexual orientation or covenantal relationships.

Toʿevah Context – Idolatry

Both verses describe the act as a toʿevah, traditionally translated “abomination – a thing that causes disgust or hatred”. This term is used throughout Scripture under one of two categories: Cultic / Ritual (Idolatry) or Ethical / Moral Abomination.

All of the major lexicons place the uses of toʿevah in Leviticus 18 and 20 within the Cultic/Ritual (Idolatry) category. Even the most conservative Hebrew lexicons and evangelical reference works agree with this. These include

• Brown–Driver–Briggs, one of the most widely used traditional lexicons
• The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the OT by Koehler–Baumgartner
• Theological Wordbook of the OT (a conservative evangelical Lexicon)
• Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament
• Strong’s and standard evangelical study Bibles

Examples of toʿevah references to idolatry include: Deuteronomy 23:18 and 1 Kings 14:24 speaking of male temple cult prostitution (idolatry), Ezekiel 16’s references Jerusalem’s spiritual infidelity, prostitution with other gods (idolatry), and Malachi 2:11 speaking of turning to other gods in unfaithfulness (idolatry).

If we put our two Levitical verses in question to the side for now, all other references to toʿevah speak specifically of idolatry, except for two: Deuteronomy 24:4 & Ezekiel 22:11, which speak about unfaithfulness. And even that unfaithfulness speaks of idolatry. Why is that?

In the prophets, adultery and divorce are metaphors for idolatry. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, we see them correlating Israel worshiping other gods to adultery, and imaging that covenant betrayal to sexual unfaithfulness: Israel is an unfaithful wife because of idolatry (Hosea), God says he “divorced” Israel because of her idols (Jeremiah 3), and there is graphic sexual language describing idol worship (Ezekiel 16 and 23: ). Idolatry is the ultimate marital betrayal and marriage is the primary metaphor for covenant faithfulness. Jesus treats divorce and remarriage as a serious covenant betrayal (Matt 5, Matt 19, Mark 10), not in purity law, but about permanence and faithfulness. He relates the unfaithfulness to marriage as our unfaithfulness to God. This would relate to idolatry, not being faithful to the one and only God. Unfaithfulness = Idolatry.

If the Hebrew Scriptures place toʿevah within idolatry, foreign worship, covenant betrayal, sacrifices offered to other gods, and rituals that blur Israel’s exclusive loyalty to the Lord. What could these two verses be speaking about? The strongest sexual language in Scripture is repeatedly deployed in service of a deeper theological concern, the protection of exclusive covenant loyalty to God. “Abomination” names practices that threaten that loyalty, whether through idol worship, cultic ritual, or the symbolic unmaking of covenant bonds. Even when it appears in a sexual or marital law, it remains anchored in the logic of covenant contamination rather than in a universal sexual ethic.

So if we considered this overarching theological imagine within the context of Deuteronomy 24:4 & Ezekiel 22:11, why is that remarriage called a toʿevah? It is because sex is happening, or because a covenant bond is treated as disposable
(which in biblical theology is functionally the same category as idolatry).

Deuteronomy 24:4 & Ezekiel 22:11 are both heterosexual cases, and yet they are called an abomination. Is it the sex, or is it about breaking covenant order mirrors Israel’s unfaithfulness to God? This sits inside the same symbolic universe as idolatry. In this symbolic world, sexual language does not primarily exist to condemn sex. It exists to describe the deepest betrayal imaginable, the breaking of covenant loyalty to God.

Deuteronomy Context – Idolatry

It’s interesting that in a book that renews and summarizes Israel’s laws, Deuteronomy restates most of the core ethical and moral commands of the Torah, but does not restate Leviticus 18:22 or 20:13 in it’s moral teaching.

The only related reference appears in Deuteronomy 23:17–18, where the concern is explicitly the male (zachar) involved in cult idolatry prostitution associated with pagan worship.

“None of the zachar of Israel shall serve in an illicit shrine. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 23:17–18).

Here, zachar (meaning “male”) refers to males who are shrine prostitutes. The surrounding context reinforces this interpretation, as the verse immediately goes on to condemn the earnings from such practices being brought into the temple.

If young boys were the common prostitute slaves in the pagan temples, it is interesting that Deuteronomy spells it out for us: instead of the male lies with boy verse, it tells us about men prostituting in the temple.

This selective omission suggests that the Leviticus verses were not treated as central, universal moral commands but remained situated within a holiness and cultic framework concerned with guarding Israel from foreign religious practice.

Part 4: The Application

Is the Levitical Law for us?

The law was given to a specific people at a specific time in history in order to set them apart (Leviticus 20:26; Exodus 19:5–6; Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 14:2).

The New Testament teaches that we are now under a new covenant and no longer bound by the old covenant law (Romans 6:14; Galatians 3:24–25; Romans 7:6; Hebrews 8:13; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Ephesians 2:14–15).

Paul taught that

• Jesus is the end of this law (Romans 10:4).
• The old law acted as a guardian only until Christ came (Galatians 3:23).
• The first law was abolished in order to establish the second (Hebrews 10:9).
• The law is obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old and ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13).
• We are no longer under the law but under grace (Romans 6:14).
• A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16).
• That before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian (Galatians 3:23-25).
• That all who rely on works of the law are under a curse (Galatians 3:10).
• That we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (Romans 7:6).

The old covenant law served the purpose of revealing sin and pointing humanity to the need for a Savior, but that through Jesus that old law was fulfilled, completed, and brought to its intended goal (Matthew 5:17; Galatians 3:19–24; Romans 3:20; Romans 10:4; Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 10:1; John 1:17).

Who Should Follow the Levitical Law?

Who should follow the laws in the Torah? Which laws should be followed?

This is not a new debate.

The early church wrestled deeply with this question, and the debate reached its climax at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, when some believers insisted that non Jews must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses in order to be saved.

The apostles rejected this demand not because the law was unimportant, but because they recognized that God himself had already acted apart from the law by giving the Holy Spirit to uncircumcised Gentiles through faith alone (Acts 15:7–9).

Peter argued that placing the yoke of the law on Gentile believers would test God and burden them with a covenant that even Israel had been unable to carry (Acts 15:10). James then concluded that God’s purpose was to welcome the nations without requiring them to become Jews, fulfilling the prophetic promise that Gentiles would seek the Lord as Gentiles (Acts 15:13–19; Amos 9:11–12).

The council therefore ruled that salvation comes through the grace of the Lord Jesus, not through observance of the Mosaic law, and that Gentile believers were not required to keep Israel’s ceremonial regulations but only to observe a few temporary guidelines to preserve fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians (Acts 15:11, 19–21, 28–29).

This decision established that the old covenant law was no longer the basis of belonging in God’s people, and that faith in Christ, not Torah observance, marked membership in the new covenant community.

Understanding the Law Through the Prophets

The prophets make unmistakably clear that God’s deepest concern was never ritual perfection but the transformation of the human heart.

Again and again they warn that sacrifices, purity laws, and religious observance mean nothing when they are separated from mercy, justice, and compassion.

• Isaiah declares that God is weary of offerings and festivals and instead calls his people to seek justice, correct oppression, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:11–17).
• Hosea summarizes God’s desire by saying, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).
• Micah asks what the Lord truly requires and answers, “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
• Amos thunders that God hates solemn assemblies when justice does not roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream (Amos 5:21–24).
• Jeremiah warns that trusting in the temple and ritual obedience without changing one’s ways is self deception, and that true covenant faithfulness means protecting the vulnerable and refusing oppression (Jeremiah 7:1–7).
• Ezekiel proclaims that God desires repentance and a new heart rather than the punishment of sinners (Ezekiel 18:23, 31). In this prophetic vision, the law is not abolished but clarified and redirected, away from external performance and toward mercy, justice, faithfulness, and love, revealing that the heart of God’s covenant has always been relational rather than merely ritual.

Understanding the Law Through Jesus

Jesus addressed this issue with the Pharisees. Lay teachers and interpreters of the Torah, they were concerned with the strict and careful application of the Levitical Law. They were so concerned that people not break any of the 613 commands in the law, that they created an extra 1500 rules to protect them.

Sadly, not only did they not read the verses in context, but they focused on the outward actions, rather than the heart or the principle of the rule. They misunderstood the message, misinterpreted the purpose and put that heavy burdens people (Matthew 23:4).

Jesus’ primary conflicts with the religious leaders of his day was that they were adding their traditions to the rules.

“You nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” Matthew 15:6

Jesus confronted them, not for breaking the law, but for adding to it, misusing it, or weaponizing it against others.

That same pattern has repeated throughout Church history. When the Bible is ambiguous, we become uncomfortable, we fill gaps with assumptions, create doctrines that don’t exist and confuse human judgment with divine will.

Understanding the Law through Paul

Paul is the single most important interpreter of the Law in the New Testament. No New Testament writer reflects more deeply on the purpose and limits of the Law than the apostle Paul.

A former Pharisee trained in the strictest traditions of Torah, Paul did not reject the Law as evil or mistaken. Instead, he taught that the Law had a holy and necessary role within God’s saving plan, but that its role was temporary and preparatory.

The Law, Paul explains, was given to reveal sin, restrain wrongdoing, and expose humanity’s need for grace, not to produce righteousness or bring life on its own (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:19).

Paul insists that the Law cannot make anyone righteous before God. The Law diagnoses sin but does not heal it. Obeying the law does not save us (Romans 3:20; Romans 7:7–13). He explains that the Law functioned as a “guardian” or tutor, but once Christ arrived, believers were no longer under that guardian (Galatians 3:24–25). Paul says that the old system of commandments and ordinances has been set aside because their purpose has been fulfilled (Ephesians 2:14–15; Colossians 2:14). Paul is clear that Christians are no longer bound by the laws of the old covenant. They no longer define the people of God (Romans 2:28–29; Galatians 5:2–6; Colossians 2:16–17).

What now matters is “faith working through love” and life in the Spirit (Galatians 5:6; Romans 8:1–4).

He explains this does not equate to moral chaos, because the true fulfillment of the Law is love: “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” he writes, and summarizes the commandments in a single principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14). If we love God and love our neighbour, we keep the law. The goal is not rule keeping but transformed hearts, shaped by the Spirit into lives marked by mercy, justice, patience, kindness, and self giving love (Galatians 5:22–23; 2 Corinthians 3:3, 6).

Paul does not use the Law as a weapon to condemn, but as a witness to grace.

The Law reveals the problem and Christ provides the cure.

Today, the Spirit writes God’s will not on stone tablets but on human hearts. In Paul’s theology, belonging to God is no longer determined by ritual boundaries or purity codes, but by faith, love, and the new life created in Christ.

It’s no secret that we do not follow most Levitical laws

• Do not wear clothing made from two different kinds of fabric (19:19)
• Do not plant two different kinds of seed in the same field (19:19)
• Do not trim the edges of your beard or round the corners of your hair (19:27)
• Do not touch the skin of a dead lizard or mouse (11:29–31)
• Do not touch a crawling insect (11:41–44)
• A priest who has a broken foot may not come near the altar (21:18–21)
• Anyone who eats fat must be cut off from the people (7:23–25)
• Anyone who curses their father or mother must be put to death (20:9)
• A man who sleeps with a woman during her menstrual period must be cut off from the people (20:18)
• Do not eat shrimp, lobster, clams, or any shellfish (11:9–12)

Are the Sexual Rules Different?

Some people say that the only rules to continue today from the Levitical Law, are the sexual rules. If that were the case, how do we chose from the sexual laws?

• Sex during menstruation is a sin Leviticus 18:19, 20:18
• If a priest’s daughter is sexually immoral, she must be burned to death – Leviticus 21:9
• A woman who cannot prove her virginity on her wedding night is to be stoned to death Deuteronomy 22:20–21
• Polygamy is allowed Exodus 21:10
• A rapist must marry his victim and pay the father Deuteronomy 22:28–29
• Any couple caught in adultery should be executed Leviticus 20:10
• A widow must marry her brother-in-law Deuteronomy 25:5
• A spiritual leader may only marry a virgin Leviticus 21:13–14
• Priestly rituals required after ejaculation (Leviticus 15:16–18)

Even the argument that “we must follow only the sexual rules” falls apart the moment we realize we’re already not doing that.

This Is Not Liberal Theology

What is being described here is not progressive liberal theology. It is not a modern attempt to weaken Christian morality.

It is the teaching of the New Testament and the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, the conviction that justification comes by faith alone and not by works of the law, that true holiness flows from a transformed heart shaped by love rather than from external conformity to legal codes.

Even today, conservative evangelical churches officially affirm these doctrines. Southern Baptists confess justification by faith alone. We are under a new covenant. Purity laws are fulfilled in Christ and are no longer binding. In formal statements of faith, seminaries, and confessions, these principles are not disputed. They are foundational.

And yet there is a quiet tension between what many Christians confess and how they often live.

In doctrine, they proclaim grace.
In practice, they frequently rely on law.

They affirm freedom in Christ.
But they build rigid boundary systems to regulate behavior.

They preach transformation by the Spirit.
But they depend on fear and external enforcement to keep people in line.

This gap does not usually come from bad theology. It comes from deep human anxiety. Grace is harder to manage than law. Love is harder to regulate than rules. A Spirit led conscience cannot be easily monitored or controlled. Systems built on stability and order naturally drift back toward external regulation, even while professing faith in internal transformation.

The result is a quiet contradiction. Churches proclaim freedom while practicing control. They teach justification by grace while disciplining by law. They affirm the new covenant while continuing to operate as though the old one still governs belonging and holiness.

Paul understood this danger very well. That is why he warned believers not to return to slavery after being set free, not to rebuild the system Christ had fulfilled, and not to submit again to a yoke that could never produce righteousness.

Paul’s concern was not that grace would lead to moral collapse, but that fear would lead the church back into legalism disguised as faithfulness.

What is being proposed here does not weaken Christian ethics. It restores them to their proper foundation. Holiness does not disappear when law recedes. It deepens. Obedience does not vanish when fear fades. It becomes sincere. Righteousness no longer flows from surveillance and punishment but from love, gratitude, and the quiet work of the Spirit within the heart.

This is not the abandonment of Christian morality.

It is the recovery of the gospel.

And it stands not at the margins of the Christian tradition but at its very center.

Part 5: The Fear

Why this scares people

For many believers, especially in highly structured conservative traditions, the Law has often functioned as a fence that defines acceptable behavior, a boundary that separates insiders from outsiders, and a system for managing conduct within the community.

Clear rules create clear lines.

This is not a new method. The Rabbis did this, when they tried to explain old laws. The Pharisees did this, when they added 1500 rules to the existing 613 commands in the Torah. Leaders want clarity. Followers want clarity.

People want safety. They want to know who belongs, who doesn’t, and what must be avoided.

When moral authority is grounded in written commands, leaders can point to fixed standards, enforce discipline, and preserve order with confidence. It’s easy. It’s safe.

For this reason, statements such as “the law was temporary,” “we are no longer under the law,” “love fulfills the law,” and “the Spirit now guides the heart” can feel deeply unsettling.

Many immediately hear a threat to moral stability. If the written code no longer governs behavior, will anything restrain sin. If rules are no longer the foundation, will boundaries disappear.

If the Spirit replaces external law, who decides what is right. Beneath these questions lies a fear that without rigid structure, chaos will follow.

At an even deeper level, the anxiety is not primarily about morality but about control. For centuries, religious communities have relied on law as a tool for shaping behavior and maintaining authority. Rules make people predictable. Fear keeps people compliant. External enforcement allows institutions to regulate belief and conduct with relative efficiency.

This fear is not new. The apostle Paul himself encountered it constantly. He understood that when he said believers were no longer under the law, many would immediately worry that moral boundaries had disappeared. That is why the opening of Romans 6 is so revealing. After proclaiming that salvation comes entirely by grace, Paul imagines the objection forming in his readers’ minds. “What shall we say then. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound.” Paul anticipates the protest. He answers. Paul’s solution is not external control but internal transformation. They are no longer slaves to sin but participants in a new life shaped by the Spirit. The question is no longer, “What rules must I obey,” but, “Who have I become in Christ.” Instead of controlling conduct, God renews the heart. Paul trusts that a heart transformed by grace will produce better holiness than a life governed by fear.

This is the radical claim of the gospel. True righteousness does not come from external enforcement but from new life in Christ. And this is the freedom Paul believed was stronger than any law.

The Gospel Threatens This Entire System

Paul’s vision of the new covenant relocates moral authority from external regulation to internal transformation.

Instead of fear, it appeals to love. Instead of compulsion, it trusts the Spirit. Instead of control, it calls for conscience shaped by grace.

This shift removes the church’s ability to govern holiness through force or surveillance and places responsibility inside the believer’s heart. That transfer of authority is profoundly destabilizing to systems that depend on rule enforcement to maintain order.

The fear, then, is not simply that people will sin more. The fear is that institutions will lose the ability to control who belongs, who is righteous, and who must be excluded.

The gospel is offensive.
Not because of who it excludes.
But because of who it includes

Paul himself encountered it constantly. Again and again his opponents accused him of promoting lawlessness. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound” was not a theoretical question but a real objection raised by anxious believers who feared that grace would destroy moral restraint.

Paul’s answer was not to re-impose the law but to insist that life in the Spirit produces a deeper and more authentic holiness than the law ever could. Transformation was his solution. Yet transformation is unpredictable. It cannot be standardized. It cannot be enforced by policy. It cannot be controlled. A Spirit led conscience may challenge traditions, resist unjust authority, and expose systems that confuse obedience with righteousness. For institutions built on stability and uniformity, that kind of freedom feels dangerous.

Why Sexuality Becomes the Battleground

This anxiety becomes especially intense in debates about sexuality and identity because sexual boundaries have long functioned as some of the most powerful markers of belonging in religious communities. Few areas of life are as visible, as emotionally charged, or as easily regulated as sexual behavior. What people do with their bodies becomes a public signal of loyalty, purity, and conformity. When rules governing sexuality are clear and strictly enforced, communities gain a simple way to distinguish insiders from outsiders, the faithful from the unfaithful, the pure from the impure.

History shows how deeply this pattern runs. In the Middle Ages, sexual regulation became one of the primary tools by which the church preserved social order and ecclesial authority. Clerical celibacy, strict marriage laws, prohibitions against nonconforming sexual behavior, and elaborate systems of confession and penance were not only moral teachings but mechanisms of control. Sexual discipline allowed the church to regulate family life, inheritance, social status, and even political alliances. To violate sexual norms was not merely to commit a private sin but to threaten the stability of the entire moral and social system. Orthodoxy was enforced not only through doctrine but through the policing of bodies.

This pattern did not disappear with the Reformation. Although Protestants rejected many medieval systems, they often retained sexual boundaries as essential markers of godliness and community membership. In many traditions, sexual conduct became one of the clearest tests of obedience because it could be monitored, judged, and disciplined more easily than pride, greed, cruelty, or injustice. Sexual sin was visible. It could be named. It could be punished. It provided a convenient line by which leaders could define holiness and preserve authority.

For this reason, sexuality continues to function as a symbolic battlefield where far more than personal behavior is at stake. When sexual rules are questioned, communities do not merely fear moral decline. They fear the unraveling of the systems that have long sustained identity, hierarchy, and cohesion. If long standing sexual boundaries fall, what remains to mark who belongs. If the rules that regulate intimacy are reexamined, what other rules might follow. If bodies are no longer governed by fixed codes, how will order be maintained.

At a deeper level, sexual boundaries often carry the weight of collective anxiety about difference, disorder, and loss of control. Sexuality touches creation, reproduction, gender, family, inheritance, and power. It is tied to fears about chaos and contamination, about blurred lines and threatened hierarchies. By regulating sexuality, communities reassure themselves that the world remains stable, that categories remain intact, that identity remains secure.

This helps explain why debates about sexuality so often provoke reactions far more intense than debates about wealth, violence, racism, or injustice, even though the prophets and Jesus repeatedly placed greater moral weight on mercy, justice, and care for the vulnerable. Sexual rules are not simply ethical guidelines. They are boundary markers that protect the structure of the community itself. To challenge them feels like an attack not only on morality but on belonging, authority, and survival.

In this light, the modern conflict over sexuality is not primarily about sex. It is about fear of losing the mechanisms by which communities have long defined holiness, preserved power, and maintained cohesion. It is about who gets to decide what is pure, who is inside and who is outside, who speaks with authority and who must submit.

And that is why sexuality becomes the battleground.

Not because it is the greatest moral issue.

But because it is the place where identity, control, and belonging are most visibly at stake.

Conclusion

These two Levitical texts have carried an extraordinary weight in modern Christian debate, even though they are brief, linguistically unusual, and placed inside a holiness framework shaped by Israel’s struggle against foreign worship and covenant contamination.

When we slow down and read them in Hebrew, in literary context, and in the world they were written into, the easy assumption of clarity becomes much harder to defend.

The phrase “the lyings of a woman” signals role and status language, not modern categories of orientation or covenantal partnership. The term toʿevah overwhelmingly belongs to the vocabulary of cultic boundary violation, and the structure of Leviticus itself places the Day of Atonement and the preservation of God’s dwelling presence at the theological center. This should call us all into an intellectual honesty and moral caution.

These verses cannot be treated as self-evident proof texts for condemning loving adult relationships, especially when the New Testament itself teaches the church how to handle Torah through Christ, through the Spirit, and through love that fulfills the law. Whatever one’s final convictions, Scripture does not permit us to build certainty on thin evidence, or holiness on fear, or righteousness on exclusion.

This is not a call to abandon Scripture.

It is a call to return to it.