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This page looks at what the Bible says about tattoos, and how a law given to Israel speaks to Christians now. If you already have tattoos and wonder what God thinks of you, read the part for you first. If you cut or hurt yourself, that is not the same thing as a tattoo, and you should not carry it alone. Call 988 or text 988, and read If You Are Not Safe.
What Leviticus 19:28 Says
One verse in the Bible speaks to marks on the skin.
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:28 (KJV)
A verse must be read where God put it. Just before it, Israel is told not to use enchantment or observe times, and not to round the corners of the head or mar the corners of the beard (Leviticus 19:26-27). These were the ways of the nations around Israel, in their sorcery and in their grief. Moses gives the reason in Deuteronomy.
Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.
Deuteronomy 14:1-2 (KJV)
The heathen cut themselves for their dead, and the prophets of Baal cut themselves till the blood gushed out upon them (1 Kings 18:28). Israel was not to grieve or worship like that. The word translated marks is found nowhere else in the Old Testament, so its exact sense is not certain, and whether for the dead reaches to the marks as well as the cuttings is debated. What is plain is the reason God gives. I am the Lord. Israel belonged to him, and was not to carry the signs of other gods or of hopeless grief.
Which Kind of Law Is It?
Leviticus 19 holds very different laws side by side. It says, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (19:18), and a line later forbids a garment mingled of linen and woollen (19:19). No one thinks those bind us in the same way. The Confession says the moral law, summed up in the ten commandments, binds all men forever (WCF 19.5). Then it names two other kinds.
Beside this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a Church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament.
Westminster Confession of Faith 19.3
Israel’s judicial laws, the civil laws of her nation, expired with that state, and bind others now only as far as their general equity requires (WCF 19.4). So which is Leviticus 19:28?
Reformed teachers ask whether a law is rooted in creation and the ten commandments, or whether its reason lies in Israel’s being set apart from the nations as a picture of the holiness Christ would bring. Many answer that this law belongs with the beard and the mingled cloth. It marked Israel off from her neighbors, and that wall came down in Christ. But they see a moral duty folded inside it. Do not take on the marks of false gods. Do not sorrow as others which have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). God’s people are still a peculiar people (1 Peter 2:9), but now by holiness of life and not by the cut of the beard.
Other faithful teachers hold that the ban on marks still binds, as a moral law guarding the body God made, and they counsel every Christian never to be tattooed. Still others call it ceremonial but think its general equity weighs so heavily against tattoos that a believer should not get one.
These are godly men, and they do not all land in the same place. This page will not settle more than Scripture settles. No one may bind you where God’s Word has not, or loosen you where it has. The questions below bind every believer, whichever view he holds.
Pictures Are Not Permits
Some say God approves of tattoos because he said, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:16). That is a picture. God is saying he cannot forget his people, any more than a man could forget what is cut into his own palm. What it shows is real and very sweet, but it is not a ruling on tattoos. When Paul says, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus (Galatians 6:17), he means the scars of his beatings for Christ (2 Corinthians 11:24-25). Reading a figure as a permit is as careless as reading Leviticus 19:28 without its setting.
Your Body Belongs to God
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (KJV)
Paul wrote this about sexual sin, but it reaches every use of the body. The temple is a picture, and what it pictures is real. The Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, and Christ paid for your body with his blood. You are a steward, not an owner, and no Christian may say, It is my body, so it is my business.
But the verse does not by itself forbid every change to the body. Christians cut their hair and have surgery, and the verse does not say which changes honor God. It does not hand you the answer. It tells you whom you must ask, and that the answer matters.
Christian Liberty and Its Limits
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.
Westminster Confession of Faith 20.2
Where Scripture has not forbidden a thing, the church may not make a new law and lay it on your neck. But the Confession says at once that those who, under pretense of liberty, practice any sin or cherish any lust destroy the very end of liberty, which is to serve the Lord in holiness and righteousness (WCF 20.3). Paul said, Ye have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another (Galatians 5:13).
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.
1 Corinthians 10:23 (KJV)
Expedient means helpful. Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). And whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). If you cannot get a tattoo with a clear conscience, you must not get one.
Questions to Ask First
- Why do I want it? To be admired, or to fit in? Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain (Proverbs 31:30).
- Is it rebellion? If part of the pleasure is that it will upset your parents, the motive is already sin.
- Will I want it when I am old? What seems deep at twenty may shame you at sixty.
- Where will it go? A mark placed to draw eyes to what should be covered is immodest (WLC 139).
- What does it say? Nothing occult, obscene, cruel, or mocking of holy things belongs on a Christian (Philippians 4:8).
- What does it tie me to? A believer may not wear the badge of a gang, a false religion, or a sinful way of life.
- What will it say to others? Think of your witness and of the weaker believer (1 Corinthians 8:9). Love sometimes gives up what liberty allows.
If You Are Young and Living at Home
Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6:1-3 (KJV)
In the Lord means in all things lawful. A parent who says no to a tattoo is not commanding sin. Children owe willing obedience to their parents’ lawful commands and counsels (WLC 127). While you live under your parents’ roof, their decision is your answer, even if the law of the land would let you go ahead. Getting one in secret breaks the fifth commandment. A tattoo will still be possible in five years. Broken trust is harder to mend.
Parents, give your reasons, and be honest about which are God’s law and which are your own judgment. Provoke not your children to wrath (Ephesians 6:4). See also The Teen Years.
What About Piercings?
Abraham’s servant put the earring upon Rebekah’s face as a gift for a bride (Genesis 24:47). When God pictures his rich grace to Jerusalem, he says he put earrings in her ears (Ezekiel 16:12), and he would hardly use what is wicked in itself to picture his own kindness. But earrings were also bound up with idols. Jacob’s household buried theirs with their strange gods (Genesis 35:4).
So jewelry is not sin in itself. Ask the same questions of it. A plain earring and a face full of metal meant to shock do not say the same thing. Some piercings leave lasting marks and deserve the same care as a tattoo. Young people at home should again honor their parents’ decision.
If You Already Have Tattoos
Maybe you got them before you knew Christ, or as a believer and now wish you had not. Hear this plainly. You are not a second-class Christian.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)
The ink is still in your skin, but you are not who you were. Whatever your old life held, such were some of you, but ye are washed (1 Corinthians 6:11). The blood of Christ purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). Ink cannot reach where that blood has washed.
If your tattoo was a matter of liberty, there is nothing to repent of. If you got it in sin, out of rebellion or vanity, confess that sin to God by name. The sin was in the heart, and the heart is what Christ forgives. If you do not yet know him, read The Gospel. He receives sinners as they are.
If a tattoo shows something sinful or obscene, love for God and your neighbor will want it out of sight. Cover it with clothing, or have an artist work it into something clean, or have it removed if you are able. But removal is never a condition of grace. Christ does not wait for clear skin before he receives you, and no church should either. If you are unsure, talk with your pastor.
How the Church Should Receive Them
James warns the church that seats the man with a gold ring in a good place and tells the poor man in vile raiment to stand. Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4). Skin is no different from clothing here. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
The tattooed man who walks into your church may be a new believer, or a sinner God is drawing, or a brother of forty years in Christ. You cannot tell by looking. Do not stare or lecture. Learn his name and sit with him. Many have known years of scorn from Christians. Let your church be where that ends.
What to Do
- If you want a tattoo, wait. Give it a long season, and pray through the questions above.
- Ask the right people. If you live at home, abide by your parents’ answer. If you are married, decide it with your husband or wife.
- Keep your conviction without binding others. If you think tattoos are forbidden, do not treat believers who differ as rebels. If you think they are allowed, do not press your liberty on the weak or the young.
- Deal honestly with what you have. If a tattoo you have is sinful in its message, cover it this week. Then stop carrying shame that Christ has already carried.
- Welcome the stranger. Next Lord’s Day, look for the person who looks least like your church, and greet him first.
One risen body still bore marks. Thomas said he would not believe unless he saw in his hands the print of the nails (John 20:25), and the risen Christ showed him. He was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5). Every mark of shame we carry, on the skin or in the conscience, he carried to the cross. And he will finish his work in our bodies too.
Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
Philippians 3:21 (KJV)
Vile here means lowly and weak. Whatever your skin carries today, if you are his, he will raise your body and make it glorious, to stand with him forever.