Lately, I have been blessed by the writings of others regarding these passages of Scripture. There is a local church in Dallas, whose leaders and members have consistently presented sound biblical teaching. It is called Community Bible Chapel (CBC). It grew out of another biblically-sound church in Dallas called Believers Chapel. One of the members of CBC wrote the following comment on Leviticus 18:6–29, which I wanted to share with you today.

Now, while I appreciate his comments on the passage, I preface it with a reminder that these laws, as part of the Law of Moses, are not directly applicable to Christians today. However, all of them are also restated in the Law of Christ in the principles touching on sexual purity and exclusivity:

AI-Expanded Reflection

The introductory comment expresses gratitude for teaching that helps readers engage difficult Scripture, while warning that the Mosaic law must be related carefully to Christian life. Those two instincts belong together. A useful resource can deepen understanding without becoming an authority exempt from examination, and a passage can remain Scripture for the church without every command applying in precisely the same covenantal form.

Leviticus 18 gives Israel concrete boundaries within the call to holiness. The New Testament likewise addresses sexual conduct, marriage, and fidelity to Christ, but the claim that every rule in the chapter is simply repeated in the law of Christ is too broad. The regulation concerning menstruation, for example, is not restated as an identical explicit command in the New Testament. Christian application requires attention to the particular teaching of Jesus and the apostles, not merely a general assertion of continuity or discontinuity.

The same care applies to sanctions. Commands and penalties given to Israel within its covenant order are not automatically instructions for the church to administer equivalent civil punishments. First Corinthians 5 addresses communal discipline, while the gospel summons people from all nations to repentance and faith. A Christian sexual ethic must therefore distinguish the conduct it commends from the form of enforcement associated with ancient Israel’s national life.

The quoted study offers an organized account of relationships and responsibility, but its historical reconstructions and cultural predictions should be evaluated separately from its biblical citations. A memorable framework can help readers follow a chapter while also leading them to see a sequence the chapter itself has not stated. Careful reception asks which claims arise directly from the text, which are reasonable inferences, and which need evidence from elsewhere. Appreciation does not require treating those categories as equally certain.

A constructive reading will pay particular attention to the people the laws concern. Family relationships carry obligations of care and limits on the use of power. Marriage involves fidelity and responsibility, and the protection of vulnerable persons cannot be reduced to maintaining appearances. The New Testament’s account of holiness includes the Spirit’s fruit, mutual honor, and truthful repentance. These positive features should give substance to the boundaries being discussed.

The original’s gratitude for sound teaching can thus become a model of engaged rather than passive reading. We may learn from an author, preserve what is helpful, and still test a particular assertion against Scripture. The goal is neither automatic endorsement nor reflexive dismissal. It is a more faithful understanding of how God’s people are called to honor him and one another, with Christ’s teaching and saving work governing the movement from ancient covenant law to present discipleship.

Our human nature being what it is, permanent commitment is genuinely difficult for us. Our faithful God, however, calls us to it — and His faithfulness to His promise to bless His people has overcome even our weakness.

I understand where free-will advocates are coming from: we are not made as robots, and there is something fitting about an offering freely given. But I would want to add that our own will, left to itself, is not reliable enough to be the ground of our hope. Let us find refuge in the God who loves us and changes our hearts, so that we praise Him freely.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment's own framing — a will that has been changed, so that praise becomes free — is close to how both major traditions describe the outcome, even where they disagree about the process. The Reformed account speaks of regeneration preceding faith and a heart of stone replaced with a heart of flesh, drawing on Ezekiel 36. The Wesleyan account speaks of prevenient grace restoring a capacity that had been lost. Both hold that the freedom in view is not an unaided native capacity but something God supplies, and both would affirm the comment's closing line.

Where they part is on whether that enabling grace is given particularly and effectually to some, or extended to all and genuinely resistible. That is a real disagreement with real consequences, and it has been held in good faith on both sides for centuries.

We read in Leviticus 18:4–5 that Israel must obey God's regulations and decrees, and that whoever obeys them will find life through them.

Two things need to be remembered reading verses like these. First, these laws were not given to perfect the people of Israel. They were designed to show how sinful they were. As Romans 3:20 teaches, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. The reason is that the Law required perfect obedience. Israel could find life if they obeyed, but they could not do it, and so the Law became an instrument of death for them. Paul writes that the very commandment intended to bring life actually brought death (a reference to Romans 7:10), and that this inability is universal — Jews and Gentiles alike are under the power of sin (a reference to Romans 3:9).

How did humanity come into this condition? Paul explains that it traces back to Adam: sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death came to all because all sinned (a paraphrase of Romans 5:12). David writes that he was sinful from birth (a reference to Psalm 51:5). People are not born into this world morally neutral.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The claim about the Law's purpose is one Paul does make, and the citations support it. Worth adding a complementary strand Paul also holds, since the two together prevent a caricature: he describes the law as holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), and says the problem lies in us rather than in it. The law reveals sin the way a mirror reveals a smudge — the mirror is not the failure.

It's also worth noting that Leviticus 18:5 is quoted in the New Testament in two different directions, by Paul in Galatians 3:12 to contrast law-keeping with faith, and by Jesus in Luke 10:28 to tell the lawyer that doing this he will live. The verse is doing real work in both places, which suggests the relationship between obedience and life in Scripture is not as simple as either "keep this and be saved" or "this was only ever designed to fail."

On the doctrine of inherited sinfulness, the traditions differ in how they describe the mechanism and the extent — Augustinian and Reformed accounts, Eastern Orthodox accounts of inherited mortality rather than inherited guilt, and Wesleyan accounts paired with prevenient grace all read Romans 5 seriously and arrive at somewhat different formulations. What they share is the comment's actual point: no one arrives morally neutral, and no one is in a position to be justified by performance.

One day a year, no one but the priest was to do any work. On that day, the Day of Atonement, the priest had to be cleansed first. Then he made atonement for the Holy Place, then for himself and his household, then for the nation — with blood and burnt sacrifices, and with a goat that carried their iniquities out into the wilderness. The people were cleansed from all their sins on this day, once a year.

Today we see all of this combined in the person of Christ. He became the high priest who not only offered atonement but became the sacrifice Himself.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The two goats are the striking feature of this chapter and are easy to collapse into one. Both are presented before the LORD, and lots are cast. One is killed, and its blood is brought into the Most Holy Place. The other is kept alive, has the people's sins confessed over it with hands pressed on its head, and is led away into the wilderness by a man appointed for the task.

Two different things are being shown, which is presumably why one animal could not do it. The first is the cost — atonement requires a death. The second is the removal — the sin does not merely get paid for, it goes away, out beyond the camp, carried by something else. Hebrews picks up the first and the Psalms the second, in the line about transgressions being removed as far as the east is from the west. The comment is right that Christ fulfills the whole picture, and the picture had to be drawn twice to be complete.

In this reading, we reach the Day of Atonement — still the most sacred day for Jews today. Just as many nominal Christians attend church only on Easter or Christmas, apparently synagogues fill with otherwise secular Jews on Yom Kippur.

Leviticus 16:8–10 describes Aaron casting lots for two goats — one for the LORD, sacrificed as a sin offering, the other, the scapegoat, presented alive before the LORD and then sent into the wilderness, carrying the people's sins to a remote place (a paraphrase, including v. 22).

The two goats represent two distinct aspects of atonement — this is where the concepts of propitiation and expiation originate. Propitiation means appeasing or satisfying God's just wrath; expiation means removing or taking away guilt. The two differ in their object — propitiation's object is a person, God; expiation's object is a thing, sin. Some translations (like the KJV and NASB) render the underlying Greek word, hilasterion, as "propitiation," while the NIV translates it as "sacrifice," perhaps for easier readability.

The first goat's death and spilled blood accomplished propitiation for sin — God's wrath toward the nation's sin appeased and satisfied through that sacrificial blood. As Paul writes, having now been justified by Christ's blood, how much more will we be saved from God's wrath through Him (a paraphrase of Romans 5:9)! John similarly writes that Christ Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only ours, but the whole world's (a paraphrase of 1 John 2:2).

The second goat, sent into the wilderness, carried away Israel's sins, removing them from God's sight — accomplishing expiation. Isaiah similarly says the LORD laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6), and the Psalmist says God has removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west (a paraphrase of Psalm 103:12).

Christ accomplished what a single goat alone never could, and what millions of animal sacrifices across the centuries never could either — these goats were always only pointing forward to what the Messiah would fully accomplish. Through His perfect life and spilled blood, He expiated our sin, removing it from us, while His blood simultaneously provided propitiation, satisfying God's just wrath.

So many people today live their whole lives ignoring that God's wrath is coming (cf. Colossians 3:6). For those who choose to ignore this revealed truth, there's no propitiation available for their guilt — the entire book of Revelation concerns exactly this coming wrath.

For those of us in Christ, we cling to the atonement found in Him alone, eagerly awaiting entry into the promised land where there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The propitiation-versus-expiation distinction this comment draws so carefully is worth extending with one more detail: unlike every other sacrifice in the Levitical system, no human hand actually kills the scapegoat — it's simply released alive into the wilderness, carrying the sins away rather than paying for them through death. That's a meaningful difference from the first goat's blood sacrifice, and it maps precisely onto the theological distinction this comment already draws — propitiation requires a death satisfying justice, while expiation requires only removal, distance, and disappearance. Christ's single sacrifice, remarkably, accomplishes what took two separate animals and two separate mechanisms to even symbolically represent under the old system.

I wonder, reading through all these regulations — what if someone couldn't afford the conditions of a sacrifice needed to atone for their sin? Did that mean the rich had better access to God than the poor? With this many laws, how could anyone remember them all — or were some laws considered greater, superseding others, or simply overlooked in practice? And were these laws only ever meant for the children of Israel, with everyone else excused through good behavior and simple ignorance of laws given specifically to Israel? Has anyone even asked these questions before?

Yujin responds... Excellent questions! On the matter of rich versus poor in worship — the Day of Atonement sacrifices were made for the whole nation by the high priest, with provision made for that sacrifice separately. For individual sacrifices, the poor were permitted to offer birds instead of bulls. Since this community depended on God's provision generally — their livelihood in the Promised Land itself depending on His gift of rain — God would presumably supply the poor as well as the rich with what they needed to worship Him. In fact, the Law itself promised that if Israel remained obedient, there need be no poor among them at all, since God would richly bless the land they were given to possess (a paraphrase of Deuteronomy 15:4). The reality, though, was that they wouldn't remain faithful, so there would always be poor among them (cf. Deuteronomy 15:11) — making generosity toward the poor all the more necessary, especially since the community bore some responsibility for that very condition.

The rich never had better access to God than the poor. Numerous passages instruct God's people to care for the poor and foreigners in their land (e.g., Exodus 23:6, 10–12; Leviticus 25:35–36, 39–40; Deuteronomy 15:1–18). Consider how Scripture consistently describes God Himself: defender of the fatherless and widows (Deuteronomy 10:18; Psalm 10:16–18; 40:17; 68:5; Jeremiah 22:16); protector of the poor (Psalm 12:5); rescuer of the poor (1 Samuel 2:8; Psalm 35:10; 72:4, 12–14; Isaiah 19:20; Jeremiah 20:13); provider for the poor (Psalm 68:10; 146:7; Isaiah 41:17); savior of the poor (Psalm 34:6; 109:31); refuge of the poor (Psalm 14:6; Isaiah 25:4). Scripture also promises blessing to those who bless the poor (Psalm 41:1–3; 112; Proverbs 14:21; 19:17; 22:9; 14:31; 28:27; Isaiah 58:6–10), and judgment against those who oppress them (Deuteronomy 27:19; Proverbs 17:5; 21:13; 22:16; 28:27; Isaiah 10:1–4; Ezekiel 18:12–13; 16:49).

On the matter of remembering so many laws — priests, leaders, and parents were meant to repeat them constantly, everywhere, in every possible way, precisely so they'd become deeply known. This is the heartbeat of Deuteronomy 6:1–8, teaching these commands to children, discussing them at home and on the road, morning and night, binding them as visible symbols on hand and forehead, writing them on doorframes and gates (a paraphrase). These laws may seem long and tedious to remember — but consider that the U.S. tax code alone, binding on every American, runs to around 60,000 pages. Compared to that, the Mosaic Law is a drop in the bucket.

Finally, on whether the Law was meant only for Israel — the Jews were certainly given a special privilege, chiefly because they were entrusted with God's own words (a paraphrase of Romans 3:2). This Law was given for the Jews and those who joined their community, while the nations had creation and conscience alone to guide their awareness and worship of the one true God. Even so, neither Jews nor Gentiles could be justified by law of any kind — Scripture teaches these laws only reveal humanity's sinfulness and universal need for grace. Paul directly answers whether Jews were somehow better than Gentiles: not at all, since both groups alike stand under sin (a paraphrase of Romans 3:9). In fact, God has bound everyone over to disobedience, specifically so He might extend mercy to all (a paraphrase of Romans 11:32) — not meaning every single person will be saved, but that His mercy reaches all without distinction, everyone He's chosen to save through faith in Jesus Christ.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The bird-sacrifice provision Yujin mentions is worth naming specifically, since it's a concrete, built-in accommodation directly addressing this comment's own opening worry — Leviticus 5:7 explicitly allows someone who "cannot afford a lamb" to bring two doves or pigeons instead, with the sacrificial system itself scaling to income rather than setting one fixed, potentially prohibitive cost for everyone. That detail confirms the answer given here isn't merely theological reassurance — the Law contained an actual mechanism ensuring genuine poverty was never, by design, a barrier to approaching God through the prescribed means.