John Chapter 2 – Jesus is at a wedding and turns water into wine. Isn’t it wrong for people to get drunk? Why did He do this?
This is a very good question, and many people ask it. Here’s my understanding of the whole alcohol/drinking/drunkenness problem:
- Acutally, The Bible does not say it is wrong to drink alcohol.
- There are many well-meaning people who think when Jesus made water into wine it wasn’t actually alcoholic in content, but I think that’s too big a stretch. Most people in Jesus’ day (and before) drank wine with their meals, because the water of the day was not clean, and would easily make people sick. The wine (because of the alcohol content) was not so full of germs as the water.
- The Bible does say drunkenness is wrong. To drink wine to excess is what is wrong. Drunkenness would be defined as drinking so much alcohol a person is not making coherent decisions, or is feeling free to act in sinful ways.
- So, in answer to your question, Jesus turned water into wine because they needed it for the wedding – but it was each person’s responsibility to monitor their own drinking limits.
Does that help? It might not answer every possible angle of your question, but maybe it gives you a good starting point to continue to think it through.
Bible Studies by Kathleen Dalton 