Conversations that Christians have about drinking alcoholic beverages usually revolve around Bible passages that never condemn drinking wine, but warn against abusing it. Examples include Isaiah 5:11, Amos 6:6, and Proverbs 20:1—just to name a few. And apologists have sufficiently dealt with them.
There is one verse, however, that doesn’t get as much attention. That’s Ephesians 5:18. There, St. Paul writes, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.”
Now, you might think this verse supports the view that wine is okay as long as we don’t abuse it. In fact, many apologists have used it to this end.
But the Gospel Broadcasting Network beg to differ. In their video “What Does the Bible Say About Drinking Alcohol?”, they argue that this passage describes drunkenness not as an end state, but a process that begins the moment you take a sip.
We can’t quote the entire clip here, so I’ll have to summarize it. I’ll leave it up to you to check out the video for the entire argument.
Basically, the idea is this. Paul uses an inceptive verb—methuskō—when he says, “Don’t get drunk.” And an inceptive verb in Greek describes the beginning of an action or state. For example (this comes from the video), when you take frozen chicken out of the freezer and put it on the counter, you rightfully say it’s thawing. The thawing doesn’t begin at some later stage. It begins the moment you take it out of the freezer.
Similarly, so it’s argued, a person who hasn’t taken a drink of alcohol hasn’t begun the process of becoming drunk. But when he takes that first sip, and ingests the toxin, the process of drunkenness or intoxication has begun, just like how thawing begins when the chicken is taken out of the freezer. And the more he drinks, the deeper into the state of drunkenness he goes.
The objection states that this is what Paul is getting at with his use of the inceptive verb methuskō. Here’s the relevant quote from the video:
Paul identifies drunkenness as a process. When someone starts drinking, they begin the process of drunkenness. The existence of drunkenness or intoxication is not determined by the amount that someone drinks. . . . So in other words, Paul is saying don’t even begin the process of intoxication. That is the force of the grammar in the original Greek.
So have we been getting Paul wrong all this time? Must we rid our homes (and churches) of wine?
Well, let’s think about it.
First, the inceptive verb is used in a way that doesn’t suggest the end state of an action being identical to the beginning of the action itself. Take, for example, the inceptive verb geraskō, which means “to grow older.” John uses it in John 21:18, where Jesus says to Peter, probably in his upper twenties or early thirties at the time,
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old (Gk., geraseis, a form of geraskō), you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.
Must we conclude that Jesus intends to say Peter is already old when he speaks of Peter being old in the future? Of course not. You don’t have to be already “old” to accurately say you’re “getting” old.
Similarly, Paul doesn’t have to mean that someone is already “drunk” when he warns him not to get drunk from drinking wine.
Secondly, in 1 Timothy 5:23, Paul actually encourages Timothy to drink wine—“use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” The word there is oinos, which normally means fermented wine unless the text says otherwise. But there’s nothing in the text here to suggest it’s not fermented.
And that’s the same word Paul uses in Ephesians 5:18 for “wine” when he warns against drunkenness, which our interlocutor’s argument in the video implies is the intoxicating stuff.
So if our friends’ argument about Ephesians 5:18 is right, Paul is warning about drinking the intoxicating stuff in one verse but approving it in another. That doesn’t make sense.
Thirdly, if Paul wanted to talk about drinking itself, he would’ve used the Greek word pinō—which he actually does use elsewhere when talking about drinking, like with the “cup of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 11:26. But that’s not what he uses. As we said already, he uses methuskō, thereby implying a prohibition of entering into a state of drunkenness after one has already started drinking wine.
Fourthly, look at what Paul says about deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8: “Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine.” Notice, he doesn’t say “don’t drink wine.” He says, “don’t be addicted.” That’s about excess, not total abstinence.
So, putting it all together: when Paul says in Ephesians 5:18, “Do not get drunk with wine,” he simply means, don’t drink in a way that leads you into drunkenness. He’s warning against the state of drunkenness, not the first sip.