One of our most precious possessions as the people of God is our liberty in Christ. As a glorious thing in the world, this Christian liberty is both assailed by the legalists and undermined by the libertines. Since we have shaken loose of the legalism that many of us grew up with, let us be on guard against the libertinism.
One of the best defenses we have of Christian liberty is that of a good testimony. Paul says that what we consider good we should not allow evil to be spoken of it (Rom. 14:16). We have just come through a season of celebration—many drinks were lifted in toasts, and many bottles of wine were given as gifts. This is as it should be—it is how God intended the world to function. But do not allow this good to become an evil.
But if you have gotten too loose in this, if you have grown accustomed to it in the wrong way, then perhaps you have begun to drink too much. We have been set free in Christ to drink, and we have been doing it for long enough, and a robust culture of drinking has grown up in our midst. This means that we are about due to be seeing our own home-grown drunks. Do you have questions about this? If you always limit yourself to just one drink, you won’t have questions. Right?
Or, one step shy of this problem, perhaps you don’t overdo it, but you joke about overdoing it. But there is nothing funny about the saints of God losing themselves in dissipation—the Holy Spirit is grieved by all such behavior. The Bible says not to—that should be enough.