Everybody’s Asking — Episode 3

Should a Christian Get Tattoos?

Most people land in one of two ditches on this question. Today we try to find the road — by going to the history, the text, and the principles God has given us.

I have a personal history with this topic. At eighteen years old, infatuated with tattoos and the Christian rock culture of the late nineties, I got my first tattoo as soon as I legally could. At nineteen, I had a genuine salvation experience, and the Word of God became something different to me. It wasn’t just a guidebook for Christian living, but the very voice of God. Authoritative. Binding. Final.

The pendulum swung hard. I went from “anything goes, my heart is right, we live under grace,” to a much more searching, principled approach to how I live before God. And this topic has been part of that journey.

I share that not to make this about me, but because I want you to know I’m not coming at this from the outside. I understand the pull. I understand the culture. And I understand the questions that come afterward.

Here’s what I’ve observed: most people land in one of two ditches on this question. The first ditch is “Leviticus says no, end of discussion.” The second ditch is “it’s all grace, don’t judge me.” Neither one is a complete biblical answer. So today we’re going to look at the history, the text, and the principles, and let you think it through carefully before God.

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The Leviticus Passage: What It Says and What It Means

This is the verse most people cite, so let’s start here and deal with it honestly:

“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

This is the only direct biblical reference to marking the body, and context matters enormously. The broader setting of Leviticus 19 is God drawing a clear line between Israel and the pagan nations surrounding them. The practices forbidden here were specifically connected to pagan mourning rituals and idol worship in Canaan and Egypt. In Canaan, this practice was specifically connected to the worship of the fertility god Baal,¹ and the connection to that worship is made explicit in Scripture:

“And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”

1 Kings 18:26–28

After their manner. Cutting the body was part of their culture of worship. God was drawing a deliberate line of separation from that practice.

The interpretive question is this: is Leviticus 19:28 a universal moral prohibition, or a ceremonial separation command tied to a specific pagan context? Unlike commands Paul reaffirms in the New Testament, this one is never directly restated for the church age. That is relevant, but it is not the end of the discussion.

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The History: Where Tattoos Actually Come From

When a new trend enters Christian culture, the first question worth asking is: where did this come from? Not because the origin automatically determines the verdict, but because it informs the question and helps us see what philosophies we may be unwittingly participating in.

Tattooing is one of the oldest known human practices — one of the oldest known physical examples belongs to Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified body dating to approximately 3250 BCE.² Historically, scholar Wilfrid Hambly concluded that tattooing originated in connection with ancient rites of scarification and bloodletting, associated with religious practices intended to put the human soul in harmony with supernatural forces.³ In Egypt, tattooing was connected to priestesses and pagan goddess worship. The actual tattooing process was so bound up with ritual that it could only be performed by priests — associated with beliefs that were secrets known only to the priestly caste.⁴ The body was used as a canvas for communicating status, religious affiliation, and group identity.

With the rise of Christianity across the Roman world, tattooing became increasingly associated with paganism and the criminal class, and was prohibited in Europe under the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine.⁵ The practice was carried into Western culture largely through sailors who encountered it among tribal peoples.

None of that means that a person getting a tattoo today is consciously worshipping Baal. But God’s consistent call is to ask whose methods and philosophies we are following:

“…for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

2 Corinthians 6:14–17

The history alone doesn’t close the case. But it is a serious consideration that most people getting tattoos have never thought about for a moment.

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The Principle of the Body’s Ownership

Before we go any further, we need to settle the most foundational question of all: whose body is this?

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Romans 12:1–2

Notice what Paul specifies: your bodies. Not just your heart. Not just your intentions. The physical body is what is to be laid down before God as a living sacrifice. This is the baseline of reasonable Christian service, not extraordinary spirituality, but the minimum expected response to the mercy of God.

The body is the vehicle through which all other stewardship flows. Your time, your witness, your service, your relationships. All of it flows through the body God has entrusted to you. When you present your body to God as a living sacrifice, you are acknowledging that it is not yours to do with as you please. It is His altar.

“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

The body is not our own. It is God’s property, inhabited by His Spirit, purchased with His Son’s blood. Good stewards do not treat someone else’s property as if it were their own. They ask: what would the Owner want done with this?

“For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Romans 14:8

This is not merely a doctrinal statement. It is a stewardship statement. Every decision about the body is a decision made with something that belongs to the Lord.

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The Permanence Principle and the Judgment Seat

Here is a point that almost never comes up in this conversation, and it should: almost every liberty decision can be reversed. This one generally cannot.

The believer who eats meat offered to idols can stop. The one who drinks can put down the glass. But a tattoo follows you for life. It affects your appearance, your testimony, and your options for ministry for decades.

Pastor Paul Chappell recounts the story of a pastor friend who tattooed his arm as a young man before going to Vietnam. Years later he said: “If someone would have showed me Leviticus 19:28 as a teenager, it would have made a difference. I look back on that decision of nearly forty years ago with regret. While I do not have anything worldly or profane on my body, the connotation is worldly and has affected my ability as a servant of Christ. To this day, I constantly wear long sleeves to cover the tattoo.”⁶

Forty years of long sleeves. That is what a permanent decision looks like across a lifetime of ministry. I’ve come across many Christians who have deeply regretted their decision to get a tattoo when they were young. And the permanence raises a deeper question, because one day we will give an account:

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

2 Corinthians 5:10

The things done in his body. We will stand before the Lord and give account not only for what we believed but for what we did with the body He entrusted to us. This is not the judgment of condemnation, it is the judgment of stewardship. The question it raises is worth sitting with: when that day comes, will you be able to say you were a faithful steward of the body God gave you?

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The Obligation to Others

Here is something the “don’t judge my liberty” argument consistently overlooks: this decision does not only affect you.

To your parents:

For many young people, getting a tattoo is an act of self-assertion. I know they wouldn’t want this, so I’m going to do it anyway. But the Bible doesn’t frame that as freedom — it frames it as rebellion and a failure of honor:

“Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise).”

Ephesians 6:2

Honoring your parents is not a childhood command that expires at eighteen. It is a lifelong principle. A decision made in deliberate defiance of parental wisdom is not an exercise of Christian liberty. It is a failure of biblical honor dressed up as independence.

To your spouse:

In marriage, the body takes on an additional dimension of belonging:

“And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”

Mark 10:8

“The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.”

1 Corinthians 7:4

In marriage you are no longer your own in an additional sense; you belong to one another. A permanent mark on your body is a permanent mark on the body your spouse shares life with. And for the single believer: you don’t yet know who God has for you. Don’t assume the person you will marry will celebrate a permanent decision you made carelessly before you met them.

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The Stumbling Block Principle

This is the one I learned from the inside. When I was in the Christian tattoo culture, I began to notice something that troubled me: the tattoos, even the ones with Christian symbolism, drew attention to me, not to Christ. And that is a problem, because the calling of the believer is not to point people to himself.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John 3:30

If a liberty draws attention to me rather than to God, that is a problem, not necessarily because the act is a sin, but because the effect is self-glorifying. Modesty, in its biblical sense, is not only about how much skin is showing. It is about whether you are directing attention toward yourself or toward Christ.

“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.”

Romans 14:13

“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.”

Romans 14:21

The selflessness Paul models across 1 Corinthians 8–10 is staggering. He spends three chapters full of examples of limiting his liberties for the sake of influencing others. He refused a salary from the church so nothing would hinder the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:12). He made himself servant to all to win as many as possible (1 Corinthians 9:19). He put himself under the law to reach those under the law (1 Corinthians 9:20). And makes a powerful statement at the end of chapter 8:

“Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

1 Corinthians 8:13

Paul was willing to forgo eating meat for the rest of his life, if need be, just to have an influence on others.

We can get so consumed with “my liberty” and “don’t judge me” that we forget entirely what our liberty might do to a weaker brother — or to a lost person watching. The greatest criticism the lost world levels at Christians is hypocrisy. When our lives look indistinguishable from the world, we hand them that criticism and they are right to use it.

This was the Laodicean problem. The very name Laodicea means the “rights of the people.” They were so consumed with their own rights and liberties that Christ was outside the church knocking — rather than at the center of it.

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The Principle of Conviction

“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

Romans 14:5b

“And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”

Romans 14:23

For the believer, the question is not only whether something appears on a list of catalogued sins. It is whether it is done in faith — fully persuaded, thoughtfully, before God. There are two ways to invite divine judgment on a liberty decision:

Ignorantly — making the decision without ever taking the time to examine it biblically. You never asked the question. You never sought about it. You never researched it. You just did it. That is not faith. That is carelessness cloaked as freedom.

Carelessly — you saw the cautions, you heard the concerns, and you dismissed them because you wanted to do what you wanted to do. Regarding various topics, I’ve heard people say “I know what the Bible says, but…” That is a dangerous place to live.

The question is not merely “is this a sin?” It is: can I do this fully persuaded, in faith, to the glory of God?

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

1 Corinthians 10:31

Consider cigarettes. The Bible never mentions them. But the principles of the temple, stewardship, testimony, and stumbling blocks all apply — and nobody seriously argues that smoking is spiritually neutral. The same framework that guides us there guides us here.

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Bringing It Together

Can we call tattoos an outright sin? The Scripture does not give us a clear, direct New Testament prohibition — and we must be careful about declaring sin where God has not explicitly done so. To go beyond what the Word says is its own kind of error.

But can we say that getting a tattoo is wise, edifying, and glorifying to God for the believer? That is a much harder case to make.

This is not a “don’t judge me” issue. This is a “He must increase, but I must decrease” issue. The believer with a genuine heart to serve — one who has truly said it’s not about them but about others and about God’s glory — will not find these questions burdensome. They will find them clarifying.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

Romans 12:1

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