Sipping and puffing Christians has been a point of controversy forever – well, maybe not forever, but for a very long time.
Essentially, anything we do to harm our bodies is sinful. Here are some scriptures to consider:
1 Cor 3:16-17 ~ “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”
1 Cor 6:19-20 ~ “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
2 Cor 6:14-18 ~ “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people." "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
Eph 2:19-22 ~ “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
I’m reminded of the tabernacle of old, the purification process the priests would have to go through before entering the tabernacle and the awe and fear they had of defiling themselves in the face of a Holy God. Did you know that so deep was their fear and awe of God that the High Priest was not allowed to sleep for 24 hours prior to the Day of Atonement for fear he would have a dream that would defile him? Purity and cleanliness was of utmost importance to the priest ministering in the tabernacle.
Since we are the tabernacle/temple of God, it would seem that the same emphasis on cleansing and purity would be expected of us. But it’s a little different … we have the blood of the Spotless Lamb that purifies us and cleanses us – there’s no way we can become pure enough to come face-to-face with the Most High God.
The Bible is very specific that we ARE the temple of God, the place of His dwelling. As natural men and women living in these imperfect bodies of flesh, the Holy cleanses us with the blood of the Sacrifice Lamb so He can set up His throne in our hearts.
But, He expects us to do our part. It’s not enough just to say, “I’m cleansed by the Blood!” and go on and do whatever we want that might defile our bodies. We’re told that “… to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17). We’re called to keep ourselves from sin:
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” (Rom 6:11-14)
So, is smoking sin? Let me ask you … is gossip sin? Is unforgiveness sin? Is lust sin? Is pride sin? Is fear sin?
Is drinking sin? The Bible is pretty specific about drunkenness … we are NOT to become drunk. But what about a glass of wine or a social drink … is it sin? I believe there is some consideration here that is more specific about smoking. God didn’t include smoking in the Word because it’s obvious that He gave us our bodies, not to destroy, but to be His temple – a place where He can dwell. But drinking is totally different.
If you look in the Bible at those who drank to the point of drunkenness, bad things happened. Noah was drunk, his son uncovered his nakedness and the enemies of Israel were born – the Canaanites. Lot got drunk and had incestuous relationships with his daughters. Being drunk has a very negative impact in scripture.
But is a glass of wine wrong? Did Jesus drink wine or strong drink? I don’t believe He did. There is great controversy over this, but I think the Word can be rightly divided and properly discerned to give us the answer we need.
First of all, as part of the Passover preparation, great effort was taken to rid the entire house of any remnant of yeast – yeast represents sin. The Passover wine was NOT fermented wine because fermented wine is made with yeast or leaven. Jesus, during the Passover celebration we call The Last Supper, drank “wine” but it could not have been fermented. Jesus was a devout Jew, followed Jewish customs and traditions. He even said He didn’t come to destroy the law but to fulfill it … He was the embodiment of the law – the Living Torah. How could the Living Torah partake of something that the Torah teaches against? Nope, it didn’t happen!
What about the wedding supper at Cana in Gallilee where Jesus turned the water into wine? Was that fermented wine? Look back at the scripture (John 2). The guests had already gotten drunk on the fermented wine. There were pots of water (these were Jewish people, mind you) … the pots were filled with water for ceremonial cleansings, water that had been sanctified by the priests and stored for their cleansings according to the law. Jesus used this water to turn into wine – a wine that was markedly different in taste and the Word says, “He thus received His glory, and the disciples put their faith in Him.” (John 2:11) What kind of Spotless (PURE, HOLY, and UNDEFILED) Lamb would turn pots of ceremonial cleansing water already sanctified by the priests into something that contained yeast (representing sin) so the guests would become more drunk than they already were? The "wine" he prepared for them was fruit from the vine ... sweeter than any wine they had ever tasted. Jesus said, "I am the vine". The wine he made at the wedding celebration represented divine fruit, making "glad the heart of man" (Psalm 104:15).
And, along those lines, why would we think that the Spotless (PURE, HOLY and UNDEFILED) Lamb of God would partake of something that represented sin? Heb 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin.” Get that … WITHOUT SIN! Nothing defiled Him! Not food, not drink, not lust, not pride … NOTHING defiled Him!
Under the Old Covenant, if a man took a vow of Nazarite, he was to abstain from any alcoholic drink. The priests who ministered in the temple (those from the priestly tribe) were forbidden to drink any fermented drink. If we are kings and priests unto the Lord, what should we think about fermented drink?
I realize that many will disagree with this, but I just ask you to seek the Lord using the FULL counsel of the Word. We can’t take isolated verses and build a doctrine on it any more than we can take an isolated verse and declare something clean that is unclean. There is enough precedence in the Word to prove that the child of God is to abstain from fermented drink.
For some it goes further than that … personal conviction enters into this as well. God specifically revealed to me that drinking is wrong for me. But, for me to look down on a brother or sister for drinking with a haughty or prideful attitude is just as wrong as the actual act of drinking.
We are to afford to others the same mercy that has been afforded to us.
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load.” (Gal 6:1-5)
In other words, we have to watch our own hearts even when we see someone else doing something we know to be wrong lest we enter into sin with our own attitudes!
© Jan Ross 2007
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1 comment:
I think Jan Ross makes many truthful, important and insightful points. Her ultimate conclusion is so true, however I could not disagree more with the notion that Jesus did not drink fermented wine especially as the last supper is concerned and I believe this is an important point worthy of our attention. First and most importantly, the idea that the wine which we drink in remembrance of Christ might not have been fermented diminishes the power of the spiritual and prophetic symbolism of our partaking in the Christian communion. Fermentation (yeast) represents sin. Fermentation is rot, it is unclean, it stinks, it causes fruits to perish and just like sin it can start small but can spread and contaminate the things that come into contact with it. In fact in the same way fermentation causes fruits to perish, sin causes us to perish or to rot to death physically and spiritually. It does not say in the New Testament that God sent us his only son so that we might not “die”, but rather that we might not “perish”. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s this process of perishing that more accurately describes our life (and death) in sin.
However Christ as a man was pure. He was the ultimate sacrificial lamb, without defect or blemish. Just as unleaven bread is without fermentation, Christ (and the body of Christ) is without sin. This is the very reason why we (should) eat unleavened bread in remembrance of Him and of the power and purity of this sacrifice. This was not just any death or any sacrifice, but the sacrifice of sacrifices. It is a universal spiritual truth among all religions that the purer the sacrifice, the greater the reward, or the greater the atonement or appeasement. When we eat bread with yeast, we symbolically understate the purity and greatness of the sacrifice that was made for us.
Wine however has been fermented. When Christ died and the sacrifice was made, for this short period of time he took upon himself our sins. It is said that he literally became sin, (our sins). So much so that God literally turned his back and abandoned Christ on the cross. It was Christ’s blood that was shed and it is said that his blood washed away our sins. In the same way wine carries the contaminate of its fermentation, it is this cleansing blood that took on our sins and in doing so it was contaminated by our sins. So if and when we drink unfermented wine in remembrance of Him we miss the point that Christ’s spilt blood washed away our sins, and we therefore symbolically understate the power of this atoning sacrifice.
This is the most central and important point of the Gospels and of our Christian faith. To not properly recognize this only dilutes the message of the “good news”. Therefore it is only proper that we celebrate this victory with unleaven bread and with fermented wine.
So we can see that it was indeed fermented wine which was drunk by Christ in the last supper.
And secondly, (I could be wrong but) I believe it is the height of naivety to think that there would have been vast amounts of fresh unfermented wine sitting about in the days before refrigeration. As a matter of pure practicality grape juice just would not have been available for Christ and his disciples to drink, as fruit juice is highly “perishable” and spoils quickly. But fermented wine would have been available in greater amount as it can easily be stored for later consumption. It just would not have been plausible for Christ and his disciples always to drink only unfermented wine.
It is clear throughout the bible that the Lord uses the physical world to show us the nature of spiritual principles. The Jews were the first ones to really get this notion. It is not a coincidence that unleaven bread has no fermentation and wine does. Neither is it a coincidence that Christ gave us this example so that we might better understand the nature of this sacrifice. If he had meant to say “unfermented grape juice”, this symbolic act of communion would lose much of its significance.
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