God Defines Food, Not The Church

When people talk about “Christian freedom,” they usually mean freedom to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, and then shrug it off as “not a salvation issue.”

Christianity will fight to protect its right to eat whatever it wants long before it will fight to protect obedience to what God actually said. People act like the Levitical food laws are some weird side issue for Jews, but if you read the text honestly, God is the one who defines what counts as food, and He never limited that definition to ethnic Israel only.

So the real question is simple: who gets to tell you what is food, God or the Church.

Before anyone jumps in with “that was just for Israel,” notice Scripture never gives one set of food laws for Jews and a different set for everyone else, it just defines what is clean and what is not. I’ll come back to that later, but first we need to see how God defines food in the first place.

The place to start is where God Himself defines it. Leviticus 11:2 says, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘These are the living things which you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth.’” Right from the beginning, He does not say, “Eat whatever you want, just pray over it.” He says, “These are the things you may eat.” God is drawing a line between what is allowed on the plate and what is not.

Leviticus 11:7-8 makes it plain about one of the biggest idols on the Christian menu. “The pig, because it has a split hoof, and is cloven footed, but doesn’t chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses. They are unclean to you.” That is not health advice or a temporary suggestion. That is God saying, “This animal is not for you to eat, and I do not want you even handling its dead body.” No amount of brunch culture or church potlucks changes what He said.

Leviticus 11:46-47 wraps the whole chapter up. “This is the law of the animal, and of the bird, and of every living creature that moves in the waters, and of every creature that creeps on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the living thing that may be eaten and the living thing that may not be eaten.” God Himself says the whole point is to teach His people to “make a distinction.” There are creatures that may be eaten and creatures that may not be eaten. According to Him, the second category is not food at all.

Deuteronomy repeats the same standard. Deuteronomy 14:3 says, “You shall not eat any abominable thing.” A little later, Deuteronomy 14:8 says, “The pig, because it has a split hoof, but doesn’t chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat their meat. You shall not touch their carcasses.” God calls some things abominable and unclean, and He ties it directly to eating. If He says it is abominable and unclean to you, you do not get to turn around and bless it in Jesus’ name and call it dinner.

This is where people jump in with, “Yeah, but that was for Israel. We are Gentile Christians, we are not under that.” The problem is, the Torah itself does not talk like that. Exodus 12:49 says, “One law shall be to him who is born at home, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you.” God makes it clear that when someone joins themselves to His people, they do not get a lighter, Gentile version of obedience. Native born and foreigner stand under the same standard.

Numbers 15:15-16 pushes the point even harder. “For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner, a statute forever throughout your generations. As you are, so the foreigner shall be before Yahweh. One law and one ordinance shall be for you and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner with you.” God is not confused. One statute, one ordinance, same standard, forever. That means anyone who comes to serve the God of Israel is expected to live by the same instructions, not invent a separate Gentile diet.

Put together, these passages show that the “that was just for Jews” excuse falls apart. Torah was given to Israel first, but it was never designed as an ethnic private club. God expected the nations who come to Him to fall under the same holiness standard as Israel. That includes what is on the plate. There is no verse that says, “Here is the list of clean and unclean animals for Jews, but Gentiles can eat whatever moves.” That line only shows up in commentaries, not in Scripture.

God also connects this directly to holiness, not just to health. Leviticus 11:44-45 says, “For I am Yahweh your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy; and you shall not defile yourselves with any kind of creeping thing that moves on the earth. For I am Yahweh who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Holiness here is not some vague spiritual feeling. It is tied to not defiling yourself with the creatures God says are off limits. He redeemed them, then He told them how to live set apart, all the way down to what goes into their mouth.

Isaiah shows that this is not just an “Old Covenant” phase that disappeared at the cross. Isaiah 66:17 talks about end time judgment and says, “Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves to go to the gardens, behind one in the middle, eating pig’s meat, abominable things, and the mouse, shall come to an end together, says Yahweh.” This is not describing life at Sinai. This is looking forward to when God comes in fire and judgment. Pig meat and abominable things are still on the wrong side of His line. If the cross had erased the food laws, God would not still be grouping pig eaters together with those He is going to destroy.

Another passage people often bring up is in Mark 7. Jesus is confronting the Pharisees’ traditions. Mark 7:8-9 says, “For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men. He said to them, ‘Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.’” The whole discussion is about their extra handwashing rules, not about throwing out God’s list of clean and unclean animals.

Later, Mark 7:18-19 says, “He said to them, ‘Are you also without understanding? Don’t you perceive that whatever goes into the man from outside can’t defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, then into the latrine, making all foods clean?’” The “food” there is the normal clean food God already allowed, eaten without their added rituals. Jesus is stripping away man-made traditions that were choking out God’s commandments, not declaring unclean animals to suddenly be food.

So what do you do with the common New Testament passages Christians point to in response. A big one is Peter’s vision. Many treat Acts 10 almost like a permission slip, but they do that without paying attention to Peter’s own explanation. Acts 10:14-15 says, “Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.’ A voice came to him again the second time, ‘What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean.’” Rip those two verses out of context and it sounds like God is suddenly telling Peter to eat whatever is on the sheet.

But Peter does not walk away from that vision and start eating whatever was on the sheet. He tells you exactly what it meant. Acts 10:28 says, “He said to them, ‘You yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to join himself or come to one of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.’” Peter says the vision was about men, not about animals. God used unclean animals in the picture to break Peter’s understanding of the ancient Jewish man-made tradition that Gentiles were off limits. The point was, “Do not call these Gentile people unclean if I am cleansing them,” not “forget everything I said in Leviticus 11.” If Peter understood the vision that way, Christianity has no right to twist it into a license to ignore God’s food laws.

Another favorite proof text is the idea that “every creature of God is good.” 1 Timothy 4:4-5 says, “For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer.” Paul is not saying, “If it moves, fry it and eat it.” He ties it to being sanctified by the word of God. The word of God already told you which creatures are set apart as edible and which ones are not. The ones He labeled unclean are not sanctified as food by Scripture, so they do not suddenly become sanctified by prayer. You can thank God all day over something He never called food, but that does not make it obedient.

If you are trying to walk this out and people have questions or disagree, stay anchored in the text. Point them to where God actually defines food in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Show them Exodus 12:49 and Numbers 15:15-16, where God clearly says there is one statute and one standard for the native and the foreigner who joins His people. Take them to Isaiah 66:17 and ask why God is still speaking against those who eat what He calls abominable when He talks about the end. Then walk them through Acts 10 and let Peter explain his own vision in his own words.

Most will still cling to their traditions, choosing what their church has always done over what God actually said. That is what is happening every time someone shrugs at the clear words of Torah and insists their church has freedom to eat what God called abominable.

In the end, this is not about being part of a fringe movement. It is about whether you fear God more than you fear being different from Christianity. He has already told us what is food and what is not. If He is the one defining what is holy and what is not, then treating unclean animals as food is not liberty, it is rebellion dressed up in religious language.