Leviticus 11

What’s Happening?

The offerings have been outlined. The priests have been consecrated. God has filled the tabernacle with his presence. Now God turns to the rest of Israel and teaches them how to live as his holy people in the world. If the priests are to be holy as God is holy, so must the nation.

Leviticus 11 sets up categories of clean and unclean animals. These are not moral categories. To be unclean is not to be sinful. It simply means something is unfit for God’s holy presence. To be clean means it is whole, rightly ordered, and able to dwell in God’s presence.

The logic behind these categories is not biological but symbolic. Clean things represent wholeness, unity, and life. Unclean things represent breakage, mixture, or disorder. For example, animals that are considered clean both chew the cud and have split hooves. This is the expected pattern. When an animal has one but not the other—like chewing the cud but no split hoof—it is unclean. The same is true of fish. Clean fish have both fins and scales. But if a fish has scales but no fins, or fins but no scales, the pattern is broken, and the fish is unclean.

Israel’s diet was meant to be a daily picture of God’s holiness. Just as God is whole, unified, and perfectly set apart, so his people should be whole, unified, and set apart from the nations. By eating only what was clean, Israel displayed to the world that their God is distinct. In the simplest sense: God is holy, therefore his people must be holy (Leviticus 11:44–45).

This way of life was also a picture of humanity itself. The nations had been created in God’s image, but they did not live as his image-bearers. Like fish with fins but no scales, they broke the pattern of what they were meant to be. Israel, by contrast, was to be a restored humanity, set apart to embody God’s holiness before the nations.

Where is the Gospel?

Jesus fulfills these laws by embodying the holiness they symbolized. He is not divided or disordered. He is the true and complete image of God (Colossians 1:15). In him there is no lack, no break, no contradiction—only perfect wholeness and holiness.

Jesus himself explained the true reality the food laws pointed to. In Matthew 15:11 he says, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out.” Eating clean food could never make someone truly clean. People were made in God’s image, and they were meant to image God in their words and actions. But their words and actions were corrupt, no matter how careful their diet. God is not chiefly concerned with what we eat, but with how we live. He wants us to be set apart in our lives, not just in our food.

Acts 10 then shows us the broader meaning of the food laws for the nations. Israel’s clean diet symbolized their separation from the nations, who failed to image the God in whose image they were created. But through Jesus, God declares, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15). All nations can now be made clean as they are fed by the new food of Jesus himself. They become like him and are remade into the image of God’s Son. The dividing wall is broken down. No nation is unclean if it is united to Christ.

That’s why at the Lord’s Supper, all are invited to eat. The meal once restricted to Israel is opened to the nations. By feeding on Christ, we are what we eat—we become holy as he is holy.

See for Yourself

I pray the Holy Spirit would give you eyes to see the God who calls his people to be whole, unified, and set apart. And that you would see Jesus as the one who makes people clean, feeds them with his own life, and transforms them into the image of God.