i'll drink to that - or not?

Our local congregation recently had to wrestle with the question of alcohol as we hosted live broadcasts of the World Cup here in Germany. The eldership decided serving alcohol at these events was appropriate but some members did not. Apparently the SBC is on the side of those members in that they promote total abstinence.

John Piper, as usual, brings a balanced and Biblical perspective - 25 years ago. Piper himself abstains from alcohol and encourages all to do the same. Shortly after moving to Bethlehem Baptist he successful led a campaign to change the churches constitution to not require abstinence.

... The amendment before the church this Thursday is to replace the sentence about total abstinence from alcohol with a such broader commitment that would require a good deal of heart searching and Biblical self-examination. It would read as follows: "We engage … to seek God's help in abstaining from all drugs, food, drink and practices which bring unwarranted harm to the body or jeopardize our own or another's faith." I wish I could help everyone see that the reason I support this amendment so strongly is not to encourage, but to avoid a great evil. Alcohol abuse is a great evil in our land. And no one can reasonably construe the proposed amendment to countenance such abuse. Not only that, I regard total abstinence generally as a wise and preferable way to live in our land today. It's the way I live, and the way I will teach my sons to live. The proposed amendment is not designed to encourage anyone to drink alcoholic beverages. It is designed to drive us to Biblical, spiritual self-examination in view of the stupendous fact that we are God's dwelling and are called to love one another and to build up faith wherever we can. The requirement of total abstinence, on the other hand, is heeded by millions of unbelievers and unspiritual church attenders. It is a regulation that requires no inner love to God or love to the church. The proposed amendment, however, drives us to God because it makes us ask, why abstain. It makes us face the deep issue of whether we are following a tradition or whether we love with all our heart the holiness of God and the spiritual welfare of our fellowmen.

... the main reason the proposed amendment will help us avoid evil and the chief reason I support the amendment is that it helps guard us from an unbiblical legalism and exclusivism. ... First, legalism means treating Biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God's favor. In other words legalism will be present wherever a person is trying to be ethical in his own strength, that is, without relying on the merciful help of God in Christ. Simply put, moral behavior that is not from faith is legalism. The legalist is always a very moral person. In fact the majority of moral people are legalists because their so-called Judeo-Christian morality inherited from their forefathers does not grow out of a humble, contrite reliance on the merciful enabling of God. On the contrary, for the legalist, morality serves the same function that immorality does for the antinomian, the free-thinker, the progressive, namely, it serves as an expression of self-reliance and self-assertion. The reason some Pharisees tithed and fasted was the same reason some German university students take off their clothes and lie around naked in the park in downtown Munich. The moral legalist is always the elder brother of the immoral prodigal. They are blood brothers in God's sight because both reject the sovereign mercy of God in Christ as a means to righteousness and use either morality or immorality as a means of expressing their independence and self-sufficiency and self-determination. And it is clear from the N.T. that both will result in a tragic loss of eternal life. So the first meaning of legalism is the terrible mistake of treating Biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God's favor. It is a danger we must guard against in our own hearts every day.

The second meaning of legalism is this: the erecting of specific requirements of conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture and making adherence to them the means by which a person is qualified for full participation in the local family of God, the church. This in where unbiblical exclusivism arises. There is no getting around the fact that the church does not include everyone. We do exclude people from membership because we believe worship should imply commitment to the Lordship of Christ the Head of the church. But exclusion of people from the church should never be taken lightly. It is a very serious matter. Schools and clubs and societies can set up any human regulations they wish in order to keep certain people out and preserve by rule a particular atmosphere. But the church is not man's institution. It belongs to Christ. He is the Head of the Body, and he alone should set the entrance requirements. That is very important!

... I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves. And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism. If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment, after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement. Satan is so sly. "He disguises himself as an angel of light," the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 11:14. He keeps his deadliest diseases most sanitary. He clothes his captains in religious garments and houses his weapons in temples. O don't you want to see his plots uncovered? I want Bethlehem to be a place Satan fears. I want him to be like the emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes." And we will be the babes (not in thinking! 1 Cor. 14:20) who say, "Look, he thinks he is clothed in white, but he is naked and ugly."

Listen as I uncover one of his plots. Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn't look like one. Alcoholism makes men fail; legalism helps them succeed in the world. Alcoholism makes men depend on the bottle; legalism makes them self-sufficient, depending on no one. Alcoholism destroys moral resolve; legalism gives it strength. Alcoholics don't feel welcome in church; legalists love to hear their morality extolled in church. Therefore, what we need in this church is not front end regulations to try to keep ourselves pure. We need to preach and pray and believe that "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither teetotalism nor social drinking, neither legalism nor alcoholism is of any avail with God, but only a new creation (a new heart)" (Gal. 6:15; 5:6). The enemy is sending against us every day the Sherman tank of the flesh with its cannons of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. If we try to defend ourselves or our church with peashooter regulations we will be defeated even in our apparent success. The only defense is to "be rooted and built up in Christ and established in faith" (Col. 2:6); "Strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy" (Col. 1:11); "holding fast to the Head from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together … grows with a growth that is from God" (Col. 2:19). From God! From God! And not from ourselves.

He then sums up Col 2.16-23 in five wonderful observations ...

First, "Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink." The consumption of food and drink is in itself no basis for judging a person's standing with God or standing in God's family. To be sure Paul had to deal with the abuse of food and drink; the problem of eating meat offered to idols and the problem of drunkenness (1 Cor. 8, 11:21; Rom. 14). But his approach to these abuses was never to forbid food or drink. It was always to forbid what destroyed God's temple and injured faith. He taught the principle of love, but did not determine its application with regulations in matters of food and drink. This is also the aim of the proposed amendment to the Church Covenant.

Second, verse 18, "Let no one disqualify you insisting an self-abasement and worship of angels etc." The false teaching at Colossae had two parts: it called for angel worship on the one hand and strict ascetic regulations on the other. Both of these were erected as requirements for those who wanted to qualify for "fullness of life" (2:10) or full participation in the spiritual community. Paul denounced both requirements. Their theology is wrong because all the fullness of deity dwells in Christ (2:9) not angels. And their ascetic regulations regarding food and drink are useless because they are only shadows of reality and lead to being puffed up.

Third, the source of life and purity and growth is not through religious visions (2:18) and regulations about food and drink, but as verse 19 says, through "holding fast to the Head (Christ) from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God." The only hope for spiritual growth and health in the body of Christ (Bethlehem Baptist Church) is personal cleaving to Christ the Head, not exclusivist regulations.

Fourth, verses 20 and 21, "If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, 'Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch' (referring to things that all perish as they are used) according to human precepts and doctrines?" The implication of these verses is that a church which erects regulations about food and drink as a means of judging or disqualifying, does not yet know what it means to die with Christ and be freed from the powers of the world. It seems to me that this is exactly what I said earlier: wherever authentic, joyful, confidence in Christ diminishes, regulations are brought in to preserve what the power of Christ once created. If you erect enough regulations and build a big enough endowment, an institution can endure for decades after the spiritual dynamic that brought it into existence is gone.

But, and this is the fifth and final point, (verse 23), "These regulations though they have an appearance of wisdom in promoting vigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body nevertheless are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh." The entrance requirement of total abstinence at our church may secure for us a membership with one common attitude towards alcohol, but it is no help in making us a pure people who do not live according to the flesh (Rom. 8:13). On the contrary, by imposing a restriction which the N.T. never imposes this entrance requirement in principle involves us in a legalism that has its roots in unbelief. It is a sign of the faded power and joy and heart righteousness that once was Bethlehem, and, God helping us, will be again.

Amen! I'd like to see this heart applied more broadly.

HT: Vince

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