This passage helps us to think about clean and unclean. For the Christian, the new covenant believer, there is no food that is impure in and of itself. No hairstyle that is more godly than another, no clothing which is special or sinful. The civil and ceremonial laws of the old covenant have come to an end. Their purpose has been fulfilled in Christ, and they are no longer to be applied in exactly the same way today.

Certainly, there are principles behind these laws that remain. The Lord still wants us to be holy as he is holy. We must continue to live in a manner that conforms with biblical morality. That will have an influence on what we choose to eat and the clothes we wear. It will have an influence on our hair style and life choices—we want to promote what is natural, a culture of life rather than death. The point of the matter is simply that there is no specific dress code which we must follow, neither is there a specific diet that will bring you closer to God. The so called Daniel Diet is a may and not a must, and it is not a must if it is done for religious reasons.

The church is a place where we live in the freedom that has come from Christ’s work of cleansing (see Galatians 5:13–25).