What about alcohol?

Question 12003

Few subjects generate more heat and less light among British believers than Christians and alcohol. Some congregations treat total abstinence as a settled biblical command. Others treat drinking as so unremarkable that they never mention it at all. Both are avoiding what Scripture actually says, which is more careful than either position and rather more demanding.

I want to lay out the evidence, name the genuine liberty, and then press the responsibilities that come with it. Liberty without responsibility is not what the New Testament means by freedom, and the subject of Christians and alcohol is a good place to see why.

Wine is treated as a good gift

The Bible does not prohibit alcohol. Psalm 104:15 lists wine that gladdens the heart of man alongside bread and oil as provision from God’s hand. Deuteronomy permitted the tithe to be spent on wine and strong drink for rejoicing before the Lord, which is not the language of a reluctant concession.

Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, and the master of the feast remarked on its quality. He was accused by his critics of being a drunkard and a glutton, an accusation that would have been absurd if he had been known for abstinence. The Lord’s Supper was instituted with a cup, and Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthians for getting drunk at the table settles the question of what was in it.

The Greek word oinos is used throughout, and the argument that it must mean unfermented juice does not survive contact with the texts. Warnings against drunkenness only make sense if the substance could intoxicate. So on the plain evidence, Christians and alcohol are not automatically in conflict.

Drunkenness is consistently forbidden

The other side of the evidence is just as clear. Ephesians 5:18 says do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. Galatians 5:21 lists drunkenness among the works of the flesh. Proverbs 20:1 says wine is a mocker and strong drink a brawler.

Proverbs 23 contains an unsparing description of the drinker’s morning after, complete with the woe, the sorrow, the wounds without cause, and the resolution to seek another drink as soon as he wakes. Anyone who thinks the Bible is naive about alcohol has not read that passage with any attention at all.

Scripture also records the wreckage. Noah’s drunkenness humiliated him and divided his family. Lot’s daughters used wine to engineer something appalling. Elders and deacons are required not to be given to much wine, and kings are warned that drink will make them forget what has been decreed. The pattern is consistent, and it is the reason the question of Christians and alcohol cannot be settled with a shrug.

Christians and alcohol: liberty with a leash

Putting those two bodies of evidence together gives a position of genuine freedom with real limits. A believer may drink. A believer may not get drunk. Beyond that, Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 govern, and they are considerably more searching than most of us find comfortable.

Romans 14:21 says it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. Paul does not say your liberty is void. He says that love ranks above liberty, and that a Christian who insists on his rights at another believer’s expense has understood neither.

In practice that means the question is never only what am I free to do. It is what effect does my freedom have on the person beside me. If a recovering alcoholic is coming to dinner, the wine stays in the cupboard, and a Christian who cannot manage that has a problem larger than the drink.

Reasons to abstain that are not legalism

Plenty of believers choose not to drink, and I want to defend that choice against the charge of narrowness. Some abstain because alcoholism runs in their family and they will not take the risk. Some because they minister among people for whom drink has been devastating. Some because they know their own weakness, which is wisdom rather than weakness.

Nazirite vows in the Old Testament involved abstaining for a season as an act of devotion, so there is biblical warrant for voluntarily giving up something permitted. None of that makes abstinence superior, and the person who abstains should not treat drinkers as compromised. Romans 14 cuts both ways: do not despise, and do not judge.

What crosses the line is claiming that Scripture forbids what it does not. When a church teaches that Christians and alcohol can never mix, it adds to the word of God, and it also loses credibility with anyone who has read the Gospels. Teach the wisdom, teach it honestly, and let people apply it in their own households before God.

One more caution for those who abstain and then let it slip into contempt. I have heard sermons in which drinking was treated as the mark of a worldly Christian, and the effect on the congregation was not holiness. It was concealment. People simply stopped mentioning it, which is exactly the condition in which a real problem grows undisturbed.

Questions worth asking yourself

Here are the ones I would put to anyone weighing this. Could you stop for a month without difficulty? If the answer is no, or if the question itself makes you defensive, that tells you something worth knowing. Paul said he would not be enslaved by anything.

Why do you drink? Enjoyment of a good thing at a table with people you love is entirely legitimate. Drinking to numb anxiety, to sleep, or to get through an evening with your own thoughts is a different matter, and it is the road that leads somewhere bad. On that see my answer on whether addiction is a sin or a disease.

Who is watching? Your children are forming their view of Christians and alcohol from what happens in your house, and young believers in your congregation are doing the same. That is not a reason for pretence, but it is a reason for thought.

The wider damage, and why it belongs here

Any discussion of Christians and alcohol that stays at the level of personal preference is missing most of the picture. Drink is implicated in a very large share of the violence, the road deaths, the family breakdown and the hospital admissions in this country, and pastors see the consequences arriving in the study long after the evening has been forgotten.

That does not make the substance evil, any more than the misuse of money makes money evil. It does mean the believer should hold the subject with a certain seriousness rather than as an opportunity for point-scoring against the other camp. There are people in every congregation for whom this is not a debating topic at all.

It also gives the church something useful to say. A community where nobody needs a drink to talk honestly, where lonely people are actually invited in, and where failure can be admitted without disgrace removes several of the reasons people drink too much in the first place. That is a better contribution than another argument about whether Christians and alcohol can ever mix.

Filled with the Spirit instead

The contrast Paul draws in Ephesians 5 is worth dwelling on, because he sets drunkenness against being filled with the Spirit rather than against sobriety. Both involve being under an influence that changes how you behave. One dulls and degrades, the other produces singing, thankfulness and mutual submission.

That comparison exposes what people are often reaching for. Drink is used to relax, to belong, to escape, to find courage. Every one of those is a real need, and every one of them is met better elsewhere. See also my answer on the misuse of that language in being drunk in the Spirit.

So the deepest question about Christians and alcohol is not how much is permitted. It is what you are looking for when you reach for the glass, and whether the answer is something a glass can actually supply. For the wider framework see my answer on Christian ethics.

So, now what?

If you drink, decide your limits before you are in the situation rather than in the middle of a good evening, and be the sort of guest who happily goes without when it would help somebody. If you abstain, do it without making it a badge, and be careful how you speak about believers who see it differently.

And if reading this has made you uneasy about your own drinking, that unease is worth listening to rather than arguing with, because it rarely arrives without cause. Tell one person, today, and ask them to check in with you next month. Who would you trust with that conversation, and what has stopped you having it so far?

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18, ESV)