Bible Q&A
In your answering the question of bible wines, you closed with the statement, "It is a Baptist publication supporting the view that the Lord never drank an alcoholic beverage. I don't think they prove the point, but it has a lot of good information." I was wondering if you might believe that Christ might have drank fermented wine. If so, why? I believe that the lord would not partake of anything unclean or defiled, and surely a fermented wine would be both unclean and defiled due to the decaying that takes place in the fermenting process. I was just wondering what you think. Thanks.
Thanks for the question.
There is nothing in the scriptures that prohibit or condemn drinking fermented wine. It does condemn getting drunk and everything associated with it.
An elder is to be "not given to much wine." Grape juice would hardly need such a limiting qualification. (1Tim.3 and Titus.1)
The Jews called Jesus "a glutton and a wine bibber." That means a man constantly at the table and the bar. This of course is slander and exaggeration due to his going to sinner's houses for meals. But it does suggest that he ate and drank what everyone else ate and drank.
Jesus was called a Nazarene but he was not a Nazirite, like Samson, "He shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb."
It does not appear that Jesus had a problem eating or drinking anything that was allowed in the law.
Mk.7:18-23
18 So he said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him,
19 because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated.” (thus purifying all foods.)
20 And he said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man.
21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.
23 All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”In the flesh, Jesus was a Jew. It would be highly unwise to make him out to be anything else. He ate and drank what every other Jewish man ate and drank.
Fermented food is not unclean or defiled. The Israelites under the Law ate cheese, leavened bread and wine which are all fermented foods. They ate unleavened bread at certain feasts when God specified to do so, which symbolized their purity of heart and mind before God and also the haste in which it was prepared originally.
We eat unleavened bread in the Lord's Supper because that is the bread that the Lord had at the Pascal feast which he gave to his disciples. It is still a matter of doubt what kind of drink they had at that table. Since it was an "unleavened" meal made in haste, I would not have a problem with someone saying that it was probably grape juice reconstituted from a concentrate, which is what we use to this day in the Supper.
Larry White
BACK
