A Sabbath-keeping Church of God member decided to be provocative, with one picture he posted to Facebook in May 2018. The clearly-photoshopped image shows U.S. Senator Charles Schumer's body covered with tattoos – apparently an effort to suggest he supports the MS-13 gang of Latin America, which President Trump opposes.

Then the member wrote a comment which went beyond politics, and moved directly into the Bible. He cited the image as a reason why young people should NOT get tattooed. I responded with a one-line comment about Jesus Christ, and the thread then went in a direction that the original poster called “deep and crazy.”

Why would I connect Jesus with MS-13 and a U.S. Senator? Well, my point was not to connect with them at all. My thought related to the comment about marking your body. The Lord received several. These days, many people desire them on their own bodies – but should they? And if you get some now, will you have to live with them forever? Even beyond the grave?

Tats For You?

There's no doubt that tattoos have grown popular in the 21^st century – not only for gang members, but athletes and regular citizens. As of 2017, they could be found on 30 percent of U.S. college graduates and 60 percent of “blue-collar workers.”

They're so popular that church groups are addressing them more than ever, often with tones of warning. I even heard a speaker bring up tattoos during the Days of Unleavened Bread, based on I Thessalonians 5:22: “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (KJV). Yet obviously, some people see no evil in them at all.

The man who started the Facebook thread (as far as I know, he's not ordained as a minister) cited the most commonly-mentioned verse on this topic. “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves,” advises Leviticus 19:28. Only the oldest Bible translations use a word other than “tattoo” - and those words are significant, as we'll note later.

Yet did you know a leader of the old Worldwide Church of God (now Grace Communion International) had a tattoo? I saw it with my own eyes at a Feast of Tabernacles – on one of the arms of Joseph W. Tkach. I never asked him about it, but presumed he obtained it before baptism while serving in the U.S. military during World War II.

Search the GCI website for “tattoo” these days and you'll find no instruction for or against them. But you will find an essay called “Majors and Minors” where tattoos are mentioned in passing. That title actually describes one aspect of this issue. Is art on your arm really that big a deal? Or is resistance part of the modern process for people to “come out of this world,” as Revelation 18:4 warns?

The Contemporary English Version's rendering of Leviticus 19:27-28 is thought-provoking: “I forbid you to shave any part of your head or beard or to cut and tattoo yourself as a way of worshiping the dead”. You may have seen people with “Christian tats,” such as crosses or Bible verses. But The New Bible Commentary: Revised (1970 ed.) notes the only Torah mention of tattoos is in a section with several “heathen warnings to be condemned....”

Matthew Henry's commentary on these verses gets quite blunt. “...The heathen did so to pacify the infernal deities they dreamt of.... Those whom the God of Israel had set apart for himself must not receive the image and superscription of these dunghill deities.”

I write as a person with no tattoos at all, and no desire to obtain one. The thought of needles cutting into my flesh for several minutes strikes me as simply too painful. It also strikes me as silly to try to argue away a clear command of the Lord – even though some church youth may be trying.

He Took the Marks

Gesenius's Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon notes the Hebrew word translated as “tattoo” in Leviticus 19 is “stigma”. That word may look familiar. It can refer in English to the negative public image or reputation of an individual. But in theology, it also is the root of stigmata – the marks put on Jesus Christ during His crucifixion.

Many Roman Catholics consider the sight of similar marks on people today as a miraculous sign. It's not our purpose here to explain those things. But the marks of the Lord came to mind when I saw the Facebook post. I wrote a comment that Jesus's wounds would remain “forever” - and that brought a challenge from a woman, seeking Scriptural backing for that claim.

I replied by pointing to “doubting Thomas.” The disciple declared when it came to Christ's resurrection, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, I will not believe it” (John 20:25). Several days later, Jesus gave Thomas that very opportunity, saying, “Stop doubting and believe” (verse 27).

Luke 24:40 adds Jesus “showed them [the disciples] his hands and feet” - and also His side, according to John 20:20. Why would He do this unless there were stigmata to see, proving His identity after the resurrection?

While I didn't admit it at the time, my thinking about eternal scars on our Lord on Facebook was rooted in what many mainstream ministers and Christian songs say. The NIV Study Bible explains John 20:20 this way: “Jesus.... was no phantom, but a real man with a real body. He had been dead, but was now alive.”

Legendary Protestant pastor Charles Spurgeon contended in 1859 (in a sermon admittedly filled with non-Biblical presumptions) that Jesus has wounds in heaven now as “trophies of His love.... scars of honor”. There's no definitive Bible verse saying that, but the indirect evidence of Scripture is there.

One verse cited by mainstream ministers for this is Revelation 5:6. The apostle John “saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain....” We've noted elsewhere that the apostle saw this in a vision (9:17). So it's unclear how literally we should take this description. It's logical to think it matches the stigmata view – but for all we know, it could look better or worse.

As I pondered over this section of the article, God reminded me of something during prayer. Jesus received many more marks than the traditional stigmata, when His physical body was flogged (John 19:1). Were those wounds gone – wounds that left the Lord “disfigured beyond that of any man.... his form marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14)? Christ only had to point the disciples to places where He was nailed and speared.

Forever Marked?

But all of this led to a more personal question, which a woman asked me on Facebook. Will we (including believers) have scars and markings on our resurrected bodies in the Kingdom of God, the way Jesus displayed His – even any tattoos?

The apostle Paul looked forward in faith to receiving “a spiritual body,” as opposed to our current “natural body”. He described that new body as being “raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power....” (I Corinthians 15:42-44)

The NIV Study Bible comments here that Paul is referring to “a physical one similar to the present natural body organizationally, but radically different.... similar to Christ's resurrected, glorified physical body.” Yet nothing is said about a different appearance.

But consider some words of Isaiah, which seem to be prophetic and millennial: “The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted” (Isaiah 30:26). Jeremiah goes farther to write the Lord “will restore you to health and heal your wounds....” (Jeremiah 30:17)

In our age, it's possible to have tattoos removed from your skin at clinics. I'd like to think God would do the same thing with a resurrected body, since He can heal in the same way He wounds (Deuteronomy 32:39). I certainly expect He would heal scars left by abuse or warfare. At least we know from Revelation 21:4 they will bring “no more....suffering.... or pain.” (CEV)

Take This, Not That

When you saw the word “marks” in the title of this article, something very different from these things may have come to mind. Let's address that as we conclude.

There's one kind of mark that believers in God are warned not to obtain. It's back in Revelation, where a dangerous beast “forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17). People who take it risk “the wine of God's fury” to be “tormented with burning sulfur” (14:9-11).

Many people have speculated through the years about what this mark might be. In my lifetime, the speculation has ranged from bar-coding on supermarket products to microchips under your skin – and even the old West German currency. I will not dare to join that guessing game. Instead, I ask if you have a different kind of “mark” - one that COG groups don't mention as much.

“He shouted to the four angels, 'Don't harm the earth or the sea or any tree! Wait until I have marked the foreheads of the servants of our God,'” says Revelation 7:2-3 in the CEV. Nearly all other Bible translations have “sealed”. But Strong's Exhaustive Concordance notes the Greek word sphragizo can mean “to stamp (with a signet or private mark....)” - not that far from its description of the Greek word for mark, charagma.

How do believers obtain this mark, which is mentioned by an angel? Based on a similar mention in Ezekiel 9:4, it's given to people who “sigh and that cry” (NIV “grieve and lament”) over serious sins in Jerusalem. But these are also people who serve God – and they certainly must think about both the Father and the Lamb of God, because both names constitute the mark (Revelation 14:1).

The name of the Lamb will remain on the foreheads of God's servants into the Kingdom, and seemingly forever. “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads,” promises Revelation 22:4.

Conclusion

During my school years, some classes admittedly would become boring – and I'd doodle words or pictures on my hand or arm with a ball-point pen. I've outgrown that habit. But I wonder if I really should have, after reviewing some seemingly prophetic words of Isaiah.

“One will say, 'I belong to the Lord'; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand, 'The Lord's,' and will take the name Israel,” says Isaiah 44:5.

Now this is a marking that truly means something. My grade-school doodles could be removed with soap and water. But the “Lord's mark” on the hand and the Lamb's name on the foreheads apparently will be there to stay.