Did Jesus Drink Wine?
Posted by: biblenotes <biblenotes@...>
From: Martin Overfield
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000
Did Jesus Drink Wine?
I thought this subject might be appropriate as we approach New Year's
celebrations.
"Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until
that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Matthew 14:25)
At times, when I have had conversation about the awful evil of drinking
alcoholic beverages, several people have made it a point to tell me that
Jesus drank wine. They say this in such a way as to inform me. All the
while they are making an excuse for their abuse of alcohol or that of
someone close to them. Such abuse used to be called "drunkenness". By
the way, the Bible has much to say about the sin of drunkenness. It even
states that such sin will keep one from inheriting the kingdom of God.
"Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I
tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do
such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:21)
Does one think that the intoxicating substance that keeps people out of
the kingdom will be part of the celebration for those who safely enter it?
This would be to charge Christ with great inconsistency, if not hypocrisy!
Isn't it amazing how easily people remember the things in the Bible
that SEEM to justify their sinful living, while they completely forget -- or
maybe never read -- the things which clearly show God's prohibition and
judgment of the very same behavior?!
Yet, the question still remains and is legitimate: Did Jesus drink
wine?
Some may even ask it in sincerity, maybe with some confusion on the issue.
I have a commonly used answer: Yes and no. Yes, Jesus drank wine, but
He did not drink the type of wine that people commonly use in our day. In
other words, He did not drink that which would tend to make one become
intoxicated, nor did He partake of anything that would influence others to
sin against God, which would tend to harm themselves and others. For He
"did no sin" (I Peter 2:22).
Here is a very clear explanation about the "wine" that Jesus drank. I take
it from Smith's Bible Dictionary from the very end of the article under the
entry WINE:
"The use of wine at the paschal feast was not enjoined by the law, but had
become an established custom, at all events in the post-Babylonian period.
The wine was mixed with warm water on these occasions. Hence in the
early Christian Church it was usual to mix the sacramental wine with water.
"The simple wines of antiquity were incomparably less deadly than the
stupefying and ardent beverages or our western nations. The wines of
antiquity were more like syrups; many of them were not intoxicant; many
more intoxicant in a small degree; and all of them, as a rule, taken only
when largely diluted with water. They contained, even undiluted, but 4
or 5 percent of alcohol. -- Canon Farrar"
Here is the reason why the Bible speaks of them that "tarry LONG
at the wine" (Proverbs 23:30). It took a lot of drinking of the common
biblical wine -- of the type with alcohol content -- to actually become
drunken (unless it was mixed especially for the purpose of intoxicating
more quickly) -- to have one's faculties ill-affected by the alcohol
content.
"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath
babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
"Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in
the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a
serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women,
and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that
lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a
mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have
beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again."
(Proverbs 23:29-35)
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby
is not wise." (Proverbs 20:1)
I believe, in light of God's Word, that Welch's grape juice is much more
like the wine that Jesus drank than the wretched substances for which people
make excuse today.
Yours In Christ,
Martin Overfield
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