Food Laws for Christians
by Don McClain
Pork is not forbidden in Christianity. It was forbidden for those under the First Covenant, those governed by the Law of that covenant, but pork is not forbidden under the New Covenant.
Jesus taught that ritual impurity does not come from food: “'Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?' (Thus he declared all foods clean.)" (Mark 7:18–19 ESV).
Peter sees a sheet containing “all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds” and is told three times: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”
“By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”
“What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:13–15 ESV).
When the early church decided what to require of Gentile believers, the apostles did not impose the Mosaic food laws. They asked only that Gentiles “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality” (Acts 15:20, 29). Pork is not mentioned.
“One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.” Paul writes, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” and “Everything is indeed clean” (Romans 14:2, 14, 20). The chapter is mainly about not causing a weaker brother to stumble, but it treats all foods as permissible in principle.
“Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience” (1 Corinthians 10:25).
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink… These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16–17).
False teachers will “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving… For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (I Timothy 4:3–5).
These texts together form the New Testament case that Christians are free to eat any meat, including pork, provided it is received with thanksgiving and does not cause a fellow believer to stumble.
The majority historic Christian reading, however, treats the ceremonial food laws as fulfilled and no longer obligatory.
