It's a bit harder to disobey a verse like Ephesians 4.22
if you have it permanently stamped on your skin.
They said, but if we bind these words on our hands
and heart in a more literal sense,
we will have a harder time ignoring the truth.
You think anybody has Leviticus 19, 28 tattered on them?
In fact, people, listen to this, this just floored me.
He says, in fact, people in the New Testament,
because they're trying to encourage you to say,
hey, this is a good idea.
They're gonna give you some examples of people
who did something similar.
He says, in fact, people in the New Testament
often took the words of Deuteronomy 11, 18 to the heart.
They would literally, by means of phylacteries,
strap words of scripture to their foreheads and arms.
Who's that referring to, the Pharisees?
So they say, hey, we have people in the New Testament
who would, they had phylacteries,
they would put scriptures on their forehead
and on their arms, you're giving a horrible example.
They're using Pharisees as an example
as a way to justify getting tattoos.
And you know what, people like the Calvinists,
people like Jeff Durban, people like James White,
people like, you know, these Reform theologian type people
who advocate for tattoos, that's what they are,
a bunch of modern day Pharisees.
Only difference is, instead of putting a box
on their forehead and putting, you know,
the Torah on their forehead, they just had it on there.
They put a tattoo on their body
instead of putting it in their heart.
Kicking it back to the Old Testament, they said.
When arguing against Christians getting tattoos,
believers can often cite Leviticus 19, 28,
which seems to indicate that God doesn't want his people
to cut their body in any way,
piercings, et cetera, and get tattoos.
One, of course, must consider the cultural,
contextual clues for this rule.
Several of the Old Testament laws
just applied to the cultural context,
as do some of the New Testament.
Yeah, but you know, because God
was basically trying to get them to be different
from the people who were getting tattoos back then.
There's no one like that today.
I don't know about you, but as I write this article,
I have a braid in my hair, 1 Timothy 2.9,
and my ears pierced.
But the existence of Christian tattoos
can also serve as a reminder
that the old covenant in the Old Testament,
the one that required the Israelites to follow laws
such as avoiding tattoos, has passed away
thanks to God's work on the cross
and through his resurrection.
Yeah, Jesus died on the cross.
He resurrected, so you can get yourself a tattoo.
He died on the cross, resurrected,
so you can just cut your body and mark it up
and just desecrate your physical body.
That's why he died on the cross for us.
It is he.
Stupid.