Is it a sin to drink alcohol? What does the Bible say about drinking alcohol? - Podcast Episode 73

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. As we continue our series of going through the top 20 questions of all time,

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I'm going to touch on another one of those today, and that is the question about alcohol. Is it a sin to drink alcohol?

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Should Christians drink alcohol? Should Christians drink beer, wine, harder stuff, et cetera, et cetera?

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So we're going to be discussing that today, and let me just start maybe by summarizing what our conclusion is, because we want to make that very, very clear, that the

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Bible absolutely, clearly, and explicitly condemns drunkenness, drinking so much alcohol that it impairs your ability to function normally, to make wise decisions.

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That is absolutely a sin. The Bible is also very clear that we should not be addicted to any sort of substance, versus in Corinthians, I will not be mastered by anything.

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So being addicted to alcohol, needing alcohol, craving alcohol, that is also a sin.

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But the alcohol itself, the substance, there is nothing inherently sinful about it.

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It is not wrong to consume reasonable, moderate amounts of alcohol, as long as it is not causing us to be addicted to it.

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So that's our conclusion, but maybe as we kind of go through the conversation today, we'll show you how we've come to that conclusion.

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So today I have Kevin, our managing editor, and Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com,

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so two of our regulars. So Kevin, why don't you touch on this a little bit? What are some of the scriptures that come to your mind when the subject of alcohol comes up?

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Well, I actually kind of looked at all of the scriptures that touch on alcohol use, and I divided them up into a couple different categories.

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One is the warnings that the Bible gives concerning alcohol consumption, and then the other category contained those passages where it seems like alcohol use is okay.

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So we have the warnings of scripture, and then we have sometimes alcohol is even presented as a blessing to people.

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And so I've got these two groups, but some of the highlights here in the warning side is

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Proverbs 20, verse 1, wine is a mocker and strong drink a brawler starts fights.

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Whoever is led astray by them is not wise. And so there's a warning, obviously, and also it seems to make a distinction between the fermented drinks and then the distilled alcoholic drinks.

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So the wine and the strong drink, and both of them are mentioned, and both of them are said to have the possibility of leading one astray.

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So the writer of Proverbs says, if you're going to be wise, you've got to be wise concerning this matter of alcohol use.

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Don't let yourself be led astray by alcohol consumption.

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Don't let yourself get carried away. Don't let it become a master to you.

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Don't lose control. But then we also have passages that don't warn against alcohol use, in fact, seem to encourage it.

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So for example, Paul writes to his protege, Timothy, in Timothy 5, verse 23.

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Timothy was obviously having some type of stomach problem, some digestive ailment, and Paul says to him, no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.

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So add a little wine to your diet, says the apostle Paul. And that's a hard verse to get around, to say that you just can't ever use wine, or you can't ever take alcohol in any form.

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A verse like this would seem to really counter that, and say there are some benefits to this, and the apostle

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Paul is actually prescribing this for Timothy. And so we've got the balance in Scripture that alcohol use in and of itself is not a sinful thing.

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It is acceptable, and it can actually have benefit, but you must be very careful and not let it master you.

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You must not let it take control. And there are some other passages that really contrast the control of alcohol and the effects that it has on us versus the control that the

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Holy Spirit has on us, and the effects that the Holy Spirit has on our lives.

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And maybe we'll touch on those here in a few minutes, but those are just some of the passages that deal with the warnings versus the benefits of alcohol use in Scripture.

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I think it will be good if we get a chance to talk about the personal application, because I think that really is where a lot of this comes down to with alcohol, is where individual persons are in their life and what they're going to do when it comes to the question of alcohol.

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I totally agree that you can see a lot of different aspects of the Bible stance on alcohol when you look at Scripture.

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And one of the things that you do see also is it's not that Christians have to be able to understand original language to understand the

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Bible, but there are times where knowing the specific words that are used are important.

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And when we look at the Old Testament, for example, we see, just as Kevin was saying, there is a difference between something like wine and a stronger drink.

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They didn't exactly have this sort of distilled spirits that we have today. And most of the alcohol that they had in the biblical era was not nearly as potent as what we have today.

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But there were substances that were pretty strong. And in Deuteronomy, it talks about the idea of using wine and strong drink, but it talks about using them in a positive sense.

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We see Psalm celebrates God's provisions for mankind in 104 .15. It talks about yagin, which is wine, and it talks about how it makes a person's heart glad.

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That's supposed to be a positive thing. A big one for me is Isaiah 25 .6.

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It talks about a banquet that God is going to give. And it's talking about him taking away reproach and removing tears.

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And one of the things that it says that God's going to provide is wine. And it uses words for wine that specifically imply something that's aged, something that has an alcoholic content to it.

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So you see this positive attitude towards that. But there again, we do have this warning that we cannot be drunk.

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And that's the thing that Scripture routinely condemns. It constantly tells us we're supposed to be mastered.

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We're not supposed to be addicted. We're not supposed to be drunk because of wine.

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That by itself is sort of an interesting idea, because the Bible doesn't feel the need to tell us mass murder is wrong, because one act of murder is already said to be wrong.

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It doesn't tell us that grand theft is wrong, because it already tells us that theft is wrong.

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But in terms of Scripture, it doesn't tell us every sip of alcohol is wrong. It tells us that drunkenness is wrong.

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Now, for me, the passage that does the most to summarize this idea that alcohol in and of itself is not something sinful is when

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Jesus creates wine at the wedding in Cana. And that's John chapter two. Here again, we sometimes hear some misinformation about how

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Jesus was possibly creating grape juice and that it was nothing more than just pressed juice from fruit and it wasn't actually alcoholic.

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But the gentleman who was sort of running the wedding, when he picked up the wine that Jesus made, he referred to it using a word that is exactly the same word that's used other places in the

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New Testament to refer to drunkenness. What he said was, he said, this is the kind of really good wine that we would typically put out first at a banquet.

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And then later on, once people are a little bit tipsy or drunk, then we would put out really, really cheap wine.

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Well, at the moment, this would have been the time where people might have put out the cheap wine, but that's not what was there.

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And the point of that is that this gentleman was saying that the stuff that Jesus had created, this actual substance, was the kind of thing that could have produced drunkenness.

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Obviously, that doesn't mean that Jesus is promoting drunkenness. When he performed a miracle to give

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Peter a coin from a fish, Jesus wasn't promoting greed. So just because he's creating that substance does not mean that he's endorsing drunkenness.

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But I think that makes a very, very clear point that all alcohol in and of itself is not a sin.

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However, we can say the same thing about a great many things. We can say the same things about sugar and fat and fast cars and sharp knives, things like that.

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There's a lot of things in the world that have good uses that we still have to handle with a certain level of caution and a certain level of care.

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And we can't separate those things from each other when we look at this as Christians. Excellent points, both

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Kevin and Jeff. Stuff that I've thought about and processed is I've, similar to you, come from a background where my entire church experience has been in churches where alcohol is absolutely wrong.

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You shouldn't drink anything at all, ever. And then coming from that to the point of,

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I don't drink. I mean, it's extremely rarely that I will have a alcoholic drink to the tune of, sometimes

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I go years in between tastings because honestly, I just don't really like the taste. And to me, that's why it's not a temptation, not even to even abuse alcohol, to even use it at all.

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I'd rather drink something that doesn't have alcohol in it because I think it tastes better. But it got questions.

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When we look at the questions we get, or even different people that I've counseled or tried to encourage, so many stories start out with, well, so I got drunk.

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And then they proceed to tell you horrible things that have absolutely ruined their lives.

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And to me, that's a powerful motivation is the last thing I want to do is to be out of control and to do things

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I wouldn't normally do. And to me, whenever I hear one of these stories of scripture, I always want to go to is in Proverbs chapter 23, verses 29 to 35.

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Let me just read this passage because to me, this describes the dangers of alcohol better than anything else.

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Proverbs chapter 23, verses 29 to 35. Who has woe?

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Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause?

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Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long after wine, those who go to try mixed wine, do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.

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In the end, it bites like a serpent and it stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things and your heart will utter perverse things.

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You'll be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast.

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They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt. They beat me, but I didn't feel it. When shall I awake?

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I must have another drink. So to me, this is a powerful reminder of how many things can go wrong when we abuse alcohol to the point that we're out of control.

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We say things, we do things that we don't mean, that we would not normally do, and that can have disastrous consequences.

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So if there's any warning about the abuse of alcohol, to me, this passage in Proverbs is the one that always sticks in my mind.

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All you got to do is turn on a show like Ridiculousness or do some surfing on the web and you'll run across these videos of people just doing crazy, stupid things.

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And you watch what they do, and a lot of these people are obviously getting themselves injured and pulling these stunts.

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And you think, what were they thinking? And I think the subtext to all of this is there is probably alcohol involved in some form, because when people start imbibing too much, they start doing things that they would normally never do.

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And this is part of the warnings of Scripture. Don't be fooled by this.

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Alcohol consumption may be fine in and of itself, but you've got to be careful. It does make a fool out of many, many people.

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And I also just want to say a quick word to our brothers and sisters in Christ who take the position of absolutely no alcohol.

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I'm actually one of you. I have never had a drink of alcohol, and I have no plans to ever drink.

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But that's my position. I also understand that that is a personal conviction of mine. When I became a pastor, a couple decades ago,

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I had to make a decision. Was I going to hold the line on, on the alcohol consumption, which was how

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I was raised, or was this going to be a hill that I was going to die on kind of thing?

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Well, I went to Scripture, and I started studying Scripture. And from the Bible, I cannot honestly say that taking a drink of alcohol is a sin.

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Scripture is plain that taking that drink is not necessarily sinful, but it is the drunkenness that is condemned in Scripture.

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And so that's my position. I leave it up to personal conviction, and people can make their own decision on this in regards to their own alcohol consumption.

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And they just follow the Holy Spirit on this, and I will stay out of the matter unless they're getting drunk.

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And then I might step in as a pastor and say, hey, this isn't right. This drunkenness is not right.

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But it's a matter of personal conviction. And personal conviction is important because it's personal, and individual people have their own individual approaches to this.

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My experience with alcohol is not one where I can say I've never had any. I've had plenty.

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I've had too much in my past. And I understand the danger of that for that reason.

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I also look at Scripture, and I cannot see something in there that says that every single sip of alcohol is a sin.

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However, you can recognize the warnings in Scripture. And unfortunately, in my life, I've also seen exactly what that means.

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Now, what that means for me is that I look at alcohol, and I say, I understand where there's a potential weakness.

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So I have reason in my life to look at alcohol and say, this is something that in theory, would not be a sin.

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But for somebody like me, is that a risk that's really worth taking under most circumstances?

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Now, again, that hasn't stopped me from having, say, a sip of champagne at a wedding, or something like that, something that's literally not noticeable to the body.

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But there's temptation at times to say, boy, wouldn't it be nice to take the edge off of a really difficult week or a hard circumstance?

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Well, that's exactly where people start to get themselves in trouble. And that's why for me, in my circumstance,

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I've sort of taken on a similar, we call it a teetotaling sort of an approach.

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I just don't drink. I don't drink socially. I don't drink for fun. I just do not consume alcohol.

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Not because I believe that there is something inherently evil or sinful or wrong about it.

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But because I know that for me, my personal conviction within my life and my relationship with the substance is that it's just not a risk worth taking.

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I'm also in a position where I'm not where people were 2000 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or even 500 years ago,

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I have plenty of options. Besides alcohol, I don't necessarily have to drink strongly diluted wine, because the water is not safe.

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I'm blessed to live in a place where I've got plenty of things that I can drink. That doesn't mean everything's good for me,

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Red Bull and Mountain Dew will kill you. But there's there's things I can drink without having to go to alcohol.

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Now there's there's also the question of the strengths and what that means. But that's sort of a different sort of a different conversation that can be had.

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But for me, the personal conviction is not necessarily an issue of something being sinful.

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It's just an issue of saying I recognize what this represents for me. And it's just not a risk that I have any need to take.

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One thing that's interesting about alcohol to me is experiences I've had in other cultures, where alcohol is basically like water.

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I mean, for example, the time I spent in Italy, where everyone,

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Christians included, are drinking a glass of wine with a meal, or just like socially, it's just so different in other cultures than even here in the

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United States. And going there, it can almost be offensive to not drink, like, oh, what's wrong?

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And then opens up all sorts of questions. And so that's like one of those awkward situations that happens. I mean, we don't really get exposed to something like that here in American culture.

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I mean, you can in certain places, but some other countries, I mean, alcohol is so, so common, that it's almost like the reverse.

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I'm risking offending people if I don't drink. But in situations like that,

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I've found I don't want to drink. But I also don't want to offend anyone. I don't want people to think

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I'm judging them. I've just used the, I guess, excuse that I have a history of alcoholism in my family.

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And so I've chosen not to drink, which is an entirely true statement. It may not be my primary motivation, but it's part of the equation.

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And with that statement, I've never had anyone then be offended, like, oh, I completely understand.

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So maybe that's a useful tool for someone else to add to their toolbox, that if you're ever in a situation where you feel a little pressure to drink, or you don't want to have to explain your entire conviction on the matter, that might be something you can say, obviously, if it's true, which most people have.

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An alcoholic, it's somewhere in their family. So just things like that, where even if you have this conviction, you don't always have to communicate it fully when it's possibly going to cause other people to be awkward around you.

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So this whole situation can just be tricky, is what I say.

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But ultimately, what we're trying to communicate here is that you need to develop your convictions based on scripture.

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You need to study what the scripture says about alcohol, then come to your own personal conviction on whether you drink at all, or whether you abstain at all.

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And if you come to the conviction of drinking in moderation, you will hear no objection to that from us.

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But just a warning to be careful. Be careful how it appears to others. Be careful you don't cause someone to stumble, which is something we haven't really talked about much in this episode, but plenty of other times we have.

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Be careful. And most importantly, build your convictions on scripture, not on what the culture around you is doing.

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I think that's a good point, Shay, to contextualize this issue according to culture.

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And I guess we're basically approaching this from the 21st century American culture.

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But that's a good point, Shay. I also want to bring in just briefly here Ephesians 5 and verse 18, which says this, and do not be drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.

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So again, we have the prohibition against drunkenness. It's not a prohibition of consumption, but drunkenness.

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Do not be drunk with wine, that's debauchery. But here's the contrast, be filled with the

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Spirit. And so I think this is a beautiful contrast, and it helps us understand so much that we see the effects that alcohol over -consumption can have on people, and it's not pretty, and then we see the effects that the

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Holy Spirit has on a person. And that is a beautiful thing. And so we don't come under the control of any substance.

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We don't allow alcohol to control us. We allow the Holy Spirit to control us. What does the world really need?

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The world doesn't need any more drunks. The world needs people who are filled with the Holy Spirit and are walking according to His commands and His guidance.

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And I think Ephesians 5 and verse 18 is a wonderful passage for us to keep in mind.

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And I do think culture applies in a couple different ways. One of the ways that it does apply, you know, and to Shea, to your point, if people really want to have a conversation about issues with alcohol, when it comes to at least the biblical perspective, is there is something to be said for the level of potency that we see in modern drinks.

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There were strong drinks. There were things in biblical times that had a higher alcohol content than wine.

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But insofar as I know, they didn't have anything like something like we would consider Everclear, where you've got an alcohol percentage that's just extraordinarily high.

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There is a difference between having a sip of wine, for example, versus taking shots of something like whiskey.

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There's definitely a higher potency behind that. So it's worth considering also that there is a difference sometimes in the level of risk that comes with some of these things.

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There again, that doesn't mean, doesn't automatically say that those things are sinful in and of themselves, but it is a reason for caution.

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And that's the reason why, at least for me personally, and it's something that I'm not afraid to recommend to other persons.

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I don't want to wind up causing myself more temptation than I need to. I'm well aware that every single addiction story, everywhere, always starts with one time

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I tried. Again, that doesn't mean that those substances by themselves can't have a good use, but there is a logic behind saying you really can't become an alcoholic if you never have that first drink.

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And at least for me, with other options available, not wanting to cause a stumble, not wanting to provide a poor example, recognizing that I'm dealing with something that's a little more powerful than necessarily people would have had in that day.

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For me, it's just not a good idea. There are a thousand and one different reasons for me as a Christian believer to not drink that don't require me to say the

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Bible says it's a sin because it doesn't. It just tells me that I need to be careful. And that caution is what causes me to take the position that I take.

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Yeah. So Jeff, Kevin, thank you for the points you brought up.

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It's fun when we're all of a very similar conviction, even though maybe we've arrived there through different paths.

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But I hope this conversation has been encouraging to you as well. And again, let me just summarize that scripture is explicitly clear that drunkenness is a sin and that allowing yourself to become addicted to any substance is also sinful, but alcohol itself is not inherently sinful.

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So our encouragement to you is to study the scriptures, examine the different passages to talk about alcohol, both in positive and negative ways, and then come to what your personal conviction is and then live by that conviction.

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Avoid drunkenness, avoid addiction. But if you believe that God is leading you to drink in moderation on occasion, there is absolutely nothing in scripture that would forbid that aside from things you need to think about causing other people to stumble, which is causing someone else to be tempted to do something that maybe they can't handle or causing offense to someone who is firmly convicted that drinking is a sin.

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So it's a tricky issue. Alcohol is not inherently sinful, but there are enough warnings, enough dangers, enough risks associated with it that choosing to abstain entirely is a completely valid viewpoint.

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So in our conversation, our goal is we want you to study these passages for yourselves and to come to the conviction through prayer, through the leading of the

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Holy Spirit about what your individual personal conviction should be for you. So hope this conversation has been edifying and encouraging to you.