License, Legalism, and Liberty in Between

Introduction

By the grace of God, we have seen a genuine Christian community grow up in our midst over the years. We have wanted to be a Bible people, which means Christian liberty on issues like alcohol, and so we have not allowed the traditions of men to place any extra-biblical restrictions on us. God gave wine to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), God urges the purchase of strong drink with our tithe money (Dt. 14: 26), and the Lord Jesus Himself uses wine in His establishment of the sacrament of the new covenant (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). In addition, He made about 160 gallons of wine at Cana, which would have been odd behavior for a teetotaler (John 2:7-11). “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—“Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle”” (Col. 2:20–21, NKJV). So never let a legalist bind up your liberty in Christ.

But our liberty in Christ has a left flank also, and in a community like ours, and in times like ours, it is far too easy to leave that flank exposed. I am talking about the threat of license, which in the name of liberty abuses God’s grace even more than does the legalist.

The Text

“I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of: For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:14–17).

Summary of the Text

Sin is always located in the heart of man, and never in the stuff (v. 14). The sin which is located in the heart of an individual is not contained there, but flows out into community in order to grieve and destroy others (v. 15), others for whom Christ died—and for whom you refuse to die. So do not slander your “good thing” through the instrumentality of your selfish rationalizations (v. 16). For the kingdom is not all about what you pour into your mouth, or refuse to pour, but rather the Spirit’s gift of righteousness, peace, and joy (v. 17).

Let Not Your Good Be Slandered

Every time a Christian has too much to drink, he is slandering the grace of God in Christ. He is inviting the world, and the legalists, and the devil, to pour contempt all over God’s gracious gifts. What such a person does is take the world’s acceptance of drunkenness, combines it with the liberty of true Christian community, and then carves out space for his own indulgence.

One word for excess (anachusis) is used once in the New Testament (1 Pet. 4:4). The apostle Peter refers to the world of unbelieving Gentiles, given over to lust, drunkenness, revelings, parties, and the like. And living this way in “excess of riot,” they believe that living moderately is just plain weird. And members of the covenant can be foolishly swayed by them, which is why Peter warns us (Deut. 21:20; Prov. 23:21).

Living reasonably is the most unreasonable thing in the world to these people. As I once wrote on another occasion . . .

“Drunkenness is of course as empty as the bottle afterwards . . . Whether this better-living-through-chemistry approach comes through liquid, smoke, needle, or straw, the result is always a vacuum. A fool will always find various ways to dig his way down, but when he gets there he is always at the bottom of a hole” (Joy at the End of the Tether, pp. 26-27).

A Greater Yes

We have noted that the foundation of every form of free government is self-government. Fools and blockheads cannot build a free society. We cannot govern ourselves collectively unless we know how to govern ourselves individually. And we cannot learn self-government apart from a work of the Spirit of God.

This applies to every area where self-indulgence is a temptation, but there is a place where Paul highlights the principle involved while talking about wine.

Notice how he reasons in a “this, not that” kind of way. Where the Spirit works, the result is joy and music. Where the Spirit is absent, or somehow grieved, the human heart consistently wants some kind of exhilaration anyway, and will seek out ways of buying it in a bottle.

So the prohibition is not a killjoy prohibition. We are told not to be drunk with wine in the same spirit that a mother would tell her son not to eat a bag of chips a half an hour before dinner. She has been preparing a meal that she knows will be a joy to him, and she has been working on it all afternoon. She doesn’t want him to come in right before the meal to wreck it with some poor substitute. She says no, not because she loves saying no, but rather because she is offering something far better.

This is how the Lord speaks to us. He says no to drunkenness, and He does so because He is offering us something far better. The Bible teaches us a lot about the principle of delayed gratification. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11, ESV). Those who are wise embrace this principle—they would much rather have great joy in the harvest than the easy pleasures of laziness in the time of plowing.

Coming to Christ at the Table

The first mention of wine in the Bible is on the occasion of Noah’s drunkenness. The last mention of wine in the Bible is in the context of a condemnation of Babylon’s slavery to luxuriousness. It is not really surprising that many Christians have come to regard wine with suspicion. Other drinks are safer, less wild, less susceptible to dangerous corruptions. In other words, other drinks are less like the gospel.

In the message of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and in the declaration that He, the risen one, is now at the right hand of God the Father, we have massive scope for misunderstanding, abuse, confusion, and more. The gospel is a lot like wine—potent.

We come to this Table every week, not to domesticate it, making it more like our mundane selves, but rather so that it would make us potent. God gives us the wine of the new covenant to drink, so that we would be transformed, not so that it would be.

Some might want to say that the wine of the new covenant is automatically safe, that it is not possible to get drunk on it. But the behavior of the Corinthians tells us otherwise on one level, and all the strange doctrines that have spun out of the Christian faith on another level says the same. But the solution to this problem is not to retreat to a watered-down gospel, or a grape juice gospel. The solution is to accept from this meal what God is giving us in it—nothing more and nothing less. And this is what God gives us here—He gives us Christ Himself.

So for those who have gotten sloppy at this point . . . put down your rationalizations, put down the bottle, and take a full draft of Christ’s obedience.

Preached at King’s Cross in Moscow