Is Drinking Alcohol a Sin? | Rapp Report Daily 0042 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to The Rapid Bull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Wine, Strong Drink, and the First-Century Context

As we had a question that was emailed to us, can Christians drink alcohol? This week we want to address that question. Yesterday we saw that there is a distinction in the first century between wine and strong drink and that people did drink wine commonly for the fact that they wanted to kill dysentery in the water.

Jesus Turned Water into Wine

Now, we know that Jesus created water into wine and we know that that wine did contain alcohol because we see that even at the wedding feast, the person in charge was surprised by the good tasting wine, saying that people bring the bad stuff later after people have drunk.

And so this clearly shows that they had this wine and knew that it had some alcohol content to it. The question is, is alcohol itself a sin? No, you do not see that in scripture. You see drunkenness as sin.

Paul’s Counsel to Timothy on Wine for His Stomach

In fact, Paul encourages Timothy in 1 Timothy 5 .23, he says, no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. In other words, he's telling him to drink a wine to prevent the dysentery because to try to keep his testimony, Timothy was having only water and he was getting sick.

Paul is encouraging him to have wine for his stomach sake. In other words, drink a little bit to kill the dysentery. Wine served that purpose. And so it is not always a sin.

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