What does the Bible say about gluttony?

Question 11083

The sin of gluttony is the one item on the traditional list of deadly sins that the modern church has quietly dropped. We preach against drunkenness, greed and lust with reasonable confidence, and then we hold a fellowship lunch. I include myself in that observation and I am not writing from a position of blamelessness.

So what does Scripture actually say, and how do we handle a subject that touches bodies, appetites and a great deal of shame without either ignoring it or turning it into a stick to beat people with?

What the Sin of Gluttony Actually Is

It is not being overweight. Body size is affected by metabolism, medication, illness, thyroid function, poverty, mobility and genetics, and Scripture nowhere makes waistline a spiritual indicator. Some of the most self controlled people I know are heavy and some of the most self indulgent are slim.

The sin of gluttony is a disordered relationship with food, in which appetite has been given an authority it should not have. The Hebrew term in Proverbs 23:21, zalal, carries the sense of being loose or wasteful, and it is paired there with the drunkard. Both are pictures of a life governed by consumption.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns against being among gluttonous eaters of meat, and Proverbs 23:2 offers the memorable advice to put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. That is deliberately shocking language, and it tells you that the writer regarded the matter as serious rather than as a mild social failing.

The New Testament Framework

Paul’s general principle applies here as it does to every appetite. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12). Food is good, given by God, received with thanksgiving. The question is never whether food is permitted but whether it is ruling.

Philippians 3:19 speaks of those whose god is their belly, which is the sin of gluttony described in its final form. Paul is talking about people whose lives are organised around appetite, whose minds are set on earthly things. That is idolatry with a dinner plate rather than a statue.

Self control appears in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and Paul describes disciplining his body and keeping it under control lest he be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:27). The New Testament does not treat the body as an enemy, but it does treat unchecked bodily appetite as a genuine spiritual danger.

Ezekiel’s Unexpected Diagnosis

One of the most striking references is easy to miss. Ezekiel names the guilt of Sodom as pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, and adds that she did not aid the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49). Overconsumption appears in the same breath as neglect of the poor.

That connection is uncomfortable and worth keeping. The sin of gluttony is not only about what happens to my body. It is about consuming without reference to anyone else, in a world where a great many people have too little. The prophets rarely separate appetite from justice.

Amos makes the same link when he denounces those who lie on beds of ivory and eat lambs from the flock while being unconcerned about the ruin of Joseph (Amos 6:4-6). Feasting itself is not condemned. Feasting in indifference is.

Why the Church Finds This Hard

Partly because so much of our fellowship happens around food, and nobody wants to be the person who spoils it. Partly because the subject is entangled with body image, and pastors are rightly afraid of doing harm. And partly, I suspect, because it convicts the people who preach as readily as the people who listen.

There is also the genuine danger of tipping into disordered eating. Teaching on the sin of gluttony that lands on someone with anorexia or bulimia can do serious damage, and I would rather say nothing than say something careless. Anyone struggling in that direction needs the National Alliance for Eating Disorder helpline and a doctor before they need a sermon.

So the subject requires care. But care is not the same as silence, and the effect of silence has been that a whole area of Christian self control has simply gone undiscussed for a generation.

Food, Pleasure and Gratitude

Scripture is emphatically not against enjoying food. God gave a garden full of fruit, commanded festivals that involved feasting, and Jesus was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard precisely because He ate and drank with people (Matthew 11:19). The accusation was false, but it was not made about an ascetic.

Paul warns explicitly against those who require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe (1 Timothy 4:3-4). Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. Any teaching on the sin of gluttony that produces guilt about a good meal has overshot.

The difference between feasting and gluttony is gratitude and government. A feast is received, shared and finished. Gluttony is consumption that never quite satisfies and therefore never quite stops, which is the signature of every idol.

Practical Discernment

Ask what food is doing for you rather than how much of it there is. Are you eating because you are hungry, or because you are anxious, bored, lonely or numbing something? Comfort eating is not a joke; it is a small liturgy of self soothing that puts food where God should be.

Ask whether you can go without. Fasting is the historic Christian test here, not as a diet but as a way of discovering who is in charge. If missing a meal produces disproportionate distress, that is information. I have written on the practice in my answer on fasting.

Ask whether your consumption has any reference to others. The Ezekiel link stands. Generosity is one of the most effective correctives to appetite, because it turns a life outwards, and a life turned outwards is much harder to organise around a plate.

Grace Before Discipline

If you recognise yourself here, start where Scripture starts, which is with forgiveness rather than with a regime. The sin of gluttony is not in a special category beyond the reach of the cross, and it is not a sign that you are less loved than the thin and disciplined believer beside you.

Then treat it as you would any other habitual sin: honestly, with help, and over time. Sudden and total reformation is rarely how sanctification works in any area. Small, sustainable change under the Spirit’s hand does more than dramatic resolutions that collapse. See my answer on mortification of sin.

And be gentle with other people. You do not know what medication someone is on, what they have survived, or what they are already fighting. The sin of gluttony is a matter for a person’s own conscience before God long before it is a matter for anyone else’s comment.

Feasting, Fasting and the Rhythm Scripture Gives

One of the reasons the modern discussion of the sin of gluttony goes wrong is that we have lost the rhythm Scripture assumes. Israel’s calendar contained genuine feasts and genuine fasts, and both were corporate, timed and purposeful. Food was neither constantly available nor permanently suspect.

We live differently. Food is available at every hour, in unlimited variety, engineered to be difficult to stop eating, and mostly consumed alone. That environment would have been unimaginable to any biblical writer, and it makes self government harder than it has ever been.

Recovering something of the rhythm helps more than resolutions do. Eat with other people. Mark real occasions with real feasting and enjoy it without guilt. And keep some practice of going without, so that the muscle exists when you need it. On the corporate side, see my answer on the types of fasting in Scripture.

And keep some perspective. A church that talks about the sin of gluttony constantly would be as unbalanced as one that never mentions it. This belongs in the ordinary run of teaching about self control and the government of desire, alongside money, anger, speech and the use of time, rather than being singled out for special attention or special silence.

I should add that the sin of gluttony has a public dimension for church leaders in particular. Titus requires an elder to be self controlled, and it is inconsistent to preach restraint in one appetite while conspicuously indulging another. That is said to myself as much as to anyone else, and I do not find it comfortable.

So, now what?

Take one week and notice why you eat rather than what you eat. Write it down if that helps. Most of us have never examined this at all, and the noticing is usually more revealing than any rule would be.

Then thank God properly for a meal this week, out loud, and give something away that costs you. Gratitude and generosity together do more against the sin of gluttony than willpower ever will. What is your appetite currently telling you about who is on the throne?

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31, ESV