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Drinking is not a sin for Christians or for anyone else. Now, excessive drinking, drinking with no self control, is a sin for everyone. But the simple consumption of alcohol carries no sin with it. So often people want to place the sin in the object, rather than in themselves, shirking responsibility; they decide that the beer, wine etc. is sinful, not seeing their own lack of self control as the real problem.

My mind has long been boggled as to how Christians can claim alcohol to be sinful. I always wondered, what do they say to Jesus? Would they want to be grouped with those people that are spoken of in Matthew 11:19, "The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."

Jesus turned the water into wine at the Wedding in Cana, told to us in John 2. And the men were not amazed, declaring, "Why have you saved your best grape juice to the last." (Welch's was big even back then, eh?) Instead they said, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus also used wine at the Last Supper, declaring "This is my blood." Therefore, it is right for us to use wine for communion, as my church does weekly. Wine is so much more potent, reminding us of the potency of Christ. Christ is not weak grape juice, Christ is wine. And yet some would claim that wine is "sin by the thimbleful", seemingly directly denoting wine used in communion.

Not only is Jesus our example of godly drinking, but in the Old Testament wine is spoken of as a blessing, not something to be shunned. Isaac blesses Jacob in Genesis, saying, "May God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness- an abundance of grain and new wine."

The Bible does prohibit the drinking of alcohol by Nazarites in Numbers, but this only goes to prove those people wrong that would claim that the wine of biblical times was virtually nonalcoholic. Obviously alcohol had some risk with it, and so was just to be avoided by those who were dedicated for a time to God. Once they had completed the time of their separation they were permitted to drink alcohol again.

So, if we take Christ, as well as Scripture from the Old Testament, as our example, as of course we should always do, we come to the conclusion that drinking in moderation is not a sin.

Learn more about this author, Rebecca Hurt.
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