Question And Answer

Leviticus 3:17 speaks of a perpetual statute for the children of Israel. Is this in any sense binding upon the people of God today?

"Perpetual" here implies an indefinite, but not necessarily unlimited, period of time. The perpetual statute for Israel under the Old Testament, referred to in Leviticus 3:17, concerned fat and blood of peace offerings. The instruction of the statute is qualified in Leviticus 7:22-27. Even the fat of beasts which died naturally and fell prey to wild animals was also forbidden to be eaten. The eating of blood was forbidden too, and eating carried the penalty of death. In the case of blood, this statute was a reiteration of the commandment given to Noah. "Flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat" (Gen. 9:4).

Under the New Covenant, God's people have no commandment to fulfil in respect of the fat of sacrifices of animals nor concerning the fat of ox, sheep or goats eaten during our normal daily lives. We do, however, have laid upon us by the Jerusalem council "no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled" (Acts 15:28,29). Some matters which were capital offences under the law are matters of abstention today, not of course under the terms of the Old Covenant, but on the higher, spiritual plane of the New Covenant.

unknown | Aug 1987
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