What Does It Mean to Be Drunk in the Spirit?

Question 04038.

Being drunk in the Spirit describes a state, claimed in some charismatic meetings, in which believers stagger, slur their words, laugh uncontrollably, or behave as though intoxicated, all of it attributed to an overwhelming dose of the Spirit’s presence. It became widely known through the Toronto Blessing and similar movements of the 1990s, where the language of holy inebriation was embraced rather than avoided, and where being drunk on God was spoken of as a desirable and even normal experience.

The defenders are not inventing the vocabulary out of nothing, and that is exactly what makes the question worth handling with care. There is a verse that sets the Spirit and drunkenness side by side, and there is a Pentecost crowd that mistook Spirit-filled believers for men who had been at the new wine. So I want to look at those texts honestly rather than wave them away, and ask whether being drunk in the Spirit is genuinely what they teach or the very opposite of it.

Where Drunk in the Spirit Comes From

Two passages do most of the work for those who promote being drunk in the Spirit. The first is Acts 2:13, where the gathered believers are accused of being filled with new wine, and Peter answers that they are not drunk, since it is only the third hour of the day. The second is Ephesians 5:18, where Paul writes, do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. From those two texts the whole case is built.

On the surface the connection looks promising. One text places mockers who think the Spirit’s work looks like drunkenness, and the other sets the filling of the Spirit alongside the picture of wine. From there it is a short step to the claim that being drunk in the Spirit is simply what a fresh outpouring naturally looks like, and that staggering, slurring, and helpless laughter are the visible signs of a believer overcome by God. The trouble is that neither passage, read in its own context, will bear the weight that is placed upon it.

Reading Acts 2 Honestly

The Pentecost scene actually does the opposite of what the modern claim needs. The mockery in Acts 2:15 comes from outsiders who have no idea what they are seeing, and Peter immediately corrects them in the plainest terms. These men are not drunk, he says, as you suppose. The behaviour that struck the crowd as unusual was not staggering or laughter at all but coherent, intelligible praise in real languages that the hearers recognised as their own native tongues. The crowd was amazed precisely because they understood every word.

So Acts 2 gives us a Spirit who makes people more articulate, not less, more understandable across the barriers of language, not reduced to a slur. The charge of drunkenness is the error Peter rebuts, not the model he commends to the church. To take the sneer of the scoffers and turn it into the goal of worship is to read the passage exactly backwards, and being drunk in the Spirit ends up resting on the very misunderstanding that the apostle was at pains to demolish. If anything, Pentecost stands as a rebuke to the practice rather than a charter for it.

Reading Ephesians 5 Honestly

Paul’s instruction in Ephesians 5:18 draws a contrast, not a comparison. He is not saying that the Spirit makes you tipsy in some holier way. He is saying that instead of the loss of control that comes with wine, you are to be filled with the Spirit. The Greek behind filled is a present continuous passive imperative, be being filled, an ongoing yielding of yourself to the Spirit’s gracious direction rather than a single overwhelming jolt.

What follows tells you plainly what that filling produces, and it is nothing like being drunk in the Spirit. The very next lines describe addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with the heart, giving thanks always, and submitting to one another out of reverence for Jesus. That is the fruit of being filled with the Spirit in Paul’s own mind, and it is a picture of self-possessed, ordered, grateful love, the exact opposite of the chaos that drink brings to a man. The Spirit restores the mastery that wine destroys; He does not imitate its effects.

Self-Control Is a Mark of the Spirit

There is a deeper reason I cannot accept being drunk in the Spirit as a true description of the Spirit’s work, and it lies in the fruit of the Spirit. When Paul lists that fruit, the final item is self-control, enkrateia, the very mastery of oneself that drunkenness destroys. Intoxication is the textbook picture of self-control surrendered, the will loosened, the tongue unguarded, the body unsteady. A state that deliberately mimics drink is therefore not a fuller dose of the Spirit but a counterfeit of His chosen effect upon a life.

I find it telling that nowhere in the New Testament is a believer ever commended for losing command of himself under the Spirit. Quite the reverse, Paul tells the Corinthians that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, meaning that even those carried along to speak God’s word remained in full possession of themselves. The Spirit never overrides the very self-mastery He is at work to produce, and any practice that prizes the loss of it has misread Him badly. Being drunk in the Spirit asks us to admire as spiritual what the Spirit is labouring to heal.

What About Joy and Exuberance?

None of this is a plea for cold, joyless, buttoned-up worship. Scripture knows a gladness in the Spirit that can look extravagant to a watching world. David danced before the ark with all his might. The early believers in Acts 2:46 ate together with glad and generous hearts. There is a real and holy exhilaration in knowing God, and I would never want to quench it or make the house of God a place of gloom. The issue is not whether the Spirit brings joy, because plainly and gloriously He does.

The issue is whether that joy looks like the incoherence of drink or the deep, intelligent gladness of people who know whom they have believed. Genuine spiritual joy does not need to manufacture the symptoms of intoxication to prove itself, and it is not the same thing as being drunk in the Spirit. It can be overflowing and still ordered, tearful or laughing and still leaving a believer able to give a clear reason for the hope within. When laughter or staggering becomes the very point of the meeting, and the gospel content quietly drains away, the warning lights ought to come on.

A Word of Caution and Care

I do not doubt that sincere believers have been swept up in being drunk in the Spirit and have wanted nothing but more of God. My concern here is a pastoral one. Movements built on these manifestations tend over time to prize the sensation above the Saviour, and they leave people chasing ever stronger experiences while their grasp of Scripture grows thin and brittle. That is a poor trade for any soul to make. Test the spirits, Scripture says, and the test is whether Jesus is exalted and His word obeyed, not whether the room felt electric for an hour.

If you have been part of such a setting, I would not have you despise everything that happened there or doubt that God ever touched you in it. I would have you measure the whole of it by the word, hold fast to what is good, and quietly let go of what cannot be defended from the text. The Spirit, the pneuma, will never lead you away from the self-control He is patiently forming in you, and a worship that leaves you more like Jesus and more steady in the truth is worth a thousand nights of feeling drunk on an atmosphere.

A Closing Caution Worth Keeping

So weigh the whole movement with a steady eye. The Spirit who fell at Pentecost made men plain and clear, and the Spirit who fills us now makes us masters of ourselves under God, never less. That alone should keep us from prizing the look of a stagger over the substance of a settled, sober joy in Jesus, and from treating an imitation of drink as though it were the gift of God.

So, now what?

Ask of any worship setting the simple questions Paul himself asks. Is Jesus being exalted here? Is the body being built up? Is self-control being honoured rather than surrendered? Those questions will steer you more safely than any thrill ever could, and they cost you nothing but a little courage to ask.

Pursue the real filling of the Spirit, which is a daily yielding of yourself to His direction, and let the joy that follows be as full and free as it likes. You will find that it makes you more yourself under God, not less, more clear-headed rather than less, and that is a far better and more lasting thing than any imitation of being drunk could ever offer you.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

Ephesians 5:18 (ESV)