The Spiritual Basis of True Temperance
Why should a church be involved in temperance? What is temperance, anyway?
A new day has come for Seventh-day Adventist temperance principles. Hostile winds outside the church, opposed to its vigorous temperance teachings and programs, are dying away.
Rising in their place is a new, friendly wind. Prominent people and organizations outside the church are now saying things like these:
"The best way to stop drug abuse is to stop drug use." "Say NO to alcohol and other drugs, and YES to life." "It's OK not to drink." "Get smart—don't start." "Health means sobriety." "A new moral consciousness is essential to solve the drug problem."
Tobacco and alcohol producers, seeing the tide beginning to run against their merchandise, are scrambling to diversify. Governments, organizations, and professionals are talking prevention and the need to choose a lifestyle free of alcohol and other drugs. Legal and illegal drugs are being seen as part of one package—a harmful drug package.
"There is no safe cigarette," says C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General. Adds a prominent alcoholism expert: "No safe level of alcohol consumption has been established for operators of motor vehicles and other potentially dangerous equipment."1
More and more leaders are taking a new look at the issue and climbing onto the prevention bandwagon.
Church Inaction
Yet conspicuously absent from the new movement, all too often, are the churches. "We are rediscovered," says the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. "We have order upon order for our materials and film strips. Yet, in some areas, we are regressing. Public schools and clubs call on us to speak now, while it is very hard for us to get into churches."
Says another observer: "We find that governments are warning of the dangers, medical authorities are quoting significant facts, but the churches remain unusually silent on encouraging their members to set the example to the rest of the community by choosing to abstain."2
It is particularly regrettable that many churches are opting out just when the world is looking for help, because the help the world needs can come only from the Lord, whom the churches represent.
Here is a great opportunity for Seventh-day Adventists. "Years ago," wrote Ellen G. White once, "we regarded the spread of temperance principles as one of our most important duties. It should be so today" (Gospel Workers, p. 384, emphasis added).
Irony
Yet the irony and tragedy is that the Adventist church today seems little interested in temperance. Some members even counter our historic position with half-truths, innuendo, and distortion. They say:
"The Bible isn't clear on this subject." "We mustn't go to extremes." "Even Ellen White recommended a little wine." "The health and temperance emphasis is a carryover from legalism." "Evangelism is our prime task" (implying that temperance isn't evangelism).
When many in the world around us are awakening to the blessing of the lifestyle we have advocated historically, is this the time for us to cast our historic lifestyle aside? Isn't this rather the time for Adventists to stand tall with the message God entrusted to us, reestablish our church temperance organization, and "give the trumpet a certain sound"?
But in order to give the trumpet a certain sound, we ourselves need to be certain about our message. Most people are surprised to discover that the word temperance, at its root, has nothing to do with alcohol. So what is "temperance," and why is the Seventh-day Adventist church commissioned to promote and exemplify it? If our reason for teaching temperance is simply to help people live a few extra years, what does this have to do with the coming of Jesus?
Governments may have social and economic reasons for promoting health, but these don't seem adequate for the church. A definition of temperance will help us find the true reason.
What Is Temperance?
Separation
Most people are surprised to discover that the word temperance, at its root, has nothing to do with alcohol, tobacco, or any other drug. Underlying the word "temperance" is the Latin word tempus, which means a section or a separation. Things that last for a short section of time are called "temporary." A building separated off as holy may be known as a "temple." And the ability to separate good things from bad things, known in Roman days as "temperantia," is today known as "temperance."
In Galatians 5:23 and 2 Peter 1:6 KJV, "temperance" translates the Greek word egkrateia, meaning "self-control." Thus a "temperate" person is one who has sufficient self-control to separate good things from bad in his lifestyle. Christian temperance is moderation in good things and total abstinence from bad things.
Perversely, some ancient philosophers used the Latin temperantia (temperance) to translate the Greek word sophrosune, a good word which could easily be misused to mean moderation in all things. Thus the pagan concept of temperance allowed for the moderate use of evil as well as the moderate use of good! This pagan concept is sometimes found in today's "moderation," which allows for a limited use of alcoholic beverages. But such pagan moderation is very different from New Testament egkrateia (self-control), with its implied moderation in good things and complete separation from all that is evil.
Moral Power
Here is where the churches are needed, to teach about the power of God that makes true temperance possible. For true Christian temperance (complete self control with total abstinence from what is evil) can be experienced only through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). Temperance, as made possible by the Holy Spirit, is a restoration of the moral power to resist and overcome cravings that war against the soul and that bring impairment and destruction to our physical, mental, social, and spiritual powers. This return to moral power contrasts with intemperance, the absence of moral control.
Created in the image of God (Gen 1:26), man originally shared in God's quality of self-control. Because of disobedience, mankind lost this control. And the Bible message is clear that this control can be restored only through the life, death, resurrection, and mediation of Jesus Christ, who separates from all evil those who accept total dependence on Him (see Gen 3:15; 1 Cor 15:12-28).
Claims for any other method for restoring true self-control are fraudulent, according to the Bible. Only dependence upon God can bring again that which was lost (see Ex 6:7; 15:26; Deut 4:23-24; 13:1-5).
Experience bears out what the Bible says. By far the most widely successful approach toward overcoming alcoholism is Alcoholics Anonymous, which teaches persons who have lost self-control that they must rely on a power higher than themselves. Though AA theology is so rudimentary as to be generic, yet its moral, rather than merely medical, approach speaks to the heart of the matter of restoring dignity, sobriety, and self-control. Ellen White and the other Seventh-day Adventist pioneers offered a similar temperance message, but one made the more effective by its explicit presentation of Jesus and His power. To restore and preserve in man the image of his Maker through the power that his Maker provides—this is the core of the Adventist doctrine of temperance.
The Appeal of Scripture
Note the appeal of Scripture for man's cooperation in his return to dominion. Man has been counseled as to the decision he must make in order to cooperate with God. "Do not, then, allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to its lusts." "For the new spiritual principle of life 'in' Christ Jesus lifts me out of the old vicious circle of sin and death" (Rom 6:12, 8:2 Phillips). The Bible pictures Christ as Conqueror on our behalf. In the wilderness, Christ gained the victory over appetite where Adam and Eve failed (Gen 3:6; Mt 4:4).
Sanctification—being separated off and set apart for a holy use—is vitally associated with temperance or self-control. When we are entirely dependent on God, He can work in and through us to do His will and bring glory to His creation.
Jesus says, "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" (Jn 17:17). When tempted to intemperance in the wilderness, Jesus conquered through the words "It is written" (see Mt 4:4). John 16:13 says of the Spirit of Truth, "He will guide you into all truth." Anyone who seeks sanctification and temperance through Jesus must seek His truth in His Word. Adventists have always stressed the importance of truth. The same Holy Spirit who guides us into truth purifies us and helps us develop our characters.
Romans 6:11, 12 says no one can live in harmony with the laws of life without the power of Christ for victory: "Do not, then, allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to your lusts. Nor hand over your organs to be, as it were, weapons of evil for the devil's purposes. But, like men rescued from certain death, put yourselves in God's hands as weapons of good for his own purposes. For sin is not meant to be your master—you are no longer living under the Law, but under grace" (Phillips, emphasis added).
A similar truth had been emphasized centuries before in Deuteronomy 23:14: "The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee... therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee."
For forty years the Lord endeavored to teach the children of Israel temperance—self-control through dependence on God. "Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the Lord your God" (Deut 29:6). Moses summarized it for them: "He is thy life, and the length of thy days" (Deut 30:20). Only as God's people drank of the spiritual Rock could they live victoriously. Paul refers to their failures as a warning "not to crave after evil things as they did. Nor are you to worship false gods as they did" (1 Cor 10:6-7 Phillips).
The Goal of Temperance
It should be clear that the goal of temperance is not only health but primarily holiness. Temperance is an ordering of the life toward God, that we may be all of what God intended us to be: people of high purpose, of moral integrity, of mental acuity, and of spiritual stability, as well as of physical health. People with these attributes can bring glory to God in this world.
Daniel was such a person. At the risk of his life, he refused the king's rich food and drink, not only because it was not healthful but also because of the moral consequences of departing from God's expressed instruction. "Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank" (Dan 1:8). Daniel's decision to honor God in every facet of his life, even in what he ate and drank, was the foundation of his remarkable accomplishments and of his faithful ministry to the government of his captors.
A life like Daniel's is not lived in one's own strength. Our own power is inadequate to subdue our cravings, natural desires, and lusts. We can master them only through a union of the human with the divine.
Peter discovered this secret of victory: "He has by His own action given us everything that is necessary for living the truly good life, in allowing us to know the one who has called us to Him, through His own glorious goodness. It is through this generosity that God's greatest and most precious promises have become available to us men, making it possible for you to escape the inevitable disintegration that lust produces in the world and to share in God's essential nature. For this very reason you must do your utmost from your side, and see that your faith carries with it real goodness of life. Your goodness must be accompanied by knowledge, your knowledge by self-control, your self-control by the ability to endure" (2 Pet 1:3-6 Phillips).
Broadly speaking, then, the purpose of temperance is to sanctify people and separate them from sin (see Eph 5:26); to help people experience the power of Christ and be clothed in the whole armor of God (see Eph 6:10-11); to magnify Christ in the body (see Phil 1:20); to set people free (see 2 Pet 2:19); to provide vessels "unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work" (2 Tim 2:21).
"Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor 7:1).
People are changed through the Spirit of God, the One who brings self-control back into our lives. "The calling of God is not to impurity but to the most thorough purity, and anyone who makes light of the matter is not making light of a man's ruling but of God's command. It is not for nothing that the Spirit God gives us is called the Holy Spirit" (1 Thess 4:7-8 Phillips).
It is impossible to isolate the doctrine of Christ our righteousness from the doctrine of temperance. Paul coupled temperance with righteousness and judgment (Acts 24:25). Salvation and the restoration of self-control are synonymous. Each factor is entirely dependent upon Christ through justification and sanctification. Christ's victorious conquest of evil demonstrated self-control on our behalf. His conquering moral power is now available to you and me: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27). The choice is ours, but the power is of God. To know that we can "find grace to help in time of need" (Heb 4:16) gives us great confidence to choose the way of purity and holiness.
What Is Intemperance?
Mingling Good with Evil
We have seen that Christian temperance involves the God-empowered ability to separate good from evil and to choose only the good. This is egkrateia, true self-control. By contrast, we noted that ancient philosophers sometimes used "temperance" in the bad sense of "moderation," blending a moderate amount of evil with a moderate amount of good.
Mixing good with evil rather than separating good from evil is what the serpent offered Eve in the garden. Appealing to her appetites, the serpent argued that insight, harmony, peace, and control could be secured only with a knowledge of both good and evil (see Gen 3:4-5). Our first parents' decision to choose Satan's blend of right and wrong resulted in our natural inclination toward sin. Accepting Satan's "moderation" resulted in the absence of self-control, which is the definition of intemperance.
As a result of intemperance (lack of self-control), very soon "every imagination of the thoughts of his [humanity's] heart was only evil continually" (Gen 6:5). "People imagine vain things" (Acts 4:25). The Bible record is filled with examples of mankind out of control physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually, existing in a state of intemperance.
Loss of Control
Antediluvian intemperance (absence of self-control) had its natural consequence in the Flood. And after the Flood, when men planned big things for themselves and again moved away from God, God observed that "now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (Gen 11:6). In mercy He turned their plans into "Babel" (confusion). Next came their founding of cities, their worship of the heavenly bodies, and their abominable rituals.
In both symbol and reality, Egypt revealed the depravity of man's way of doing things. In mercy God delivered His people from Egypt and declared anew His plan for salvation and restoration. Yet no sooner were the Israelites in the wilderness than the lusts of appetite overcame them. First they grumbled, "What shall we drink?" (Ex 15:24); then they demanded the flesh pots of Egypt and fullness of bread (see Ex 16:2-3). God provided them with quail, far more even than they'd hoped for. All too soon they were steeped in greed, and nature was taking its course. Numbers 11:33 says, "While the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague."
Later Moses surveyed their attitude: "Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you" (Deut 9:24). Repeatedly they had demonstrated their intemperance, their lack of self-control.
Warning
Idolatrous systems throughout the world have in common a blending of good and evil. People claim to be righteous but combine with every good they do some evil thought, imagination, or act. Moses, in Deuteronomy 29:18-19, warned against the future experience that could come to Israel. He depicted the time when the apostate would declare, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst." Moses meant that a counterfeit would again claim to provide peace, harmony, and control through a mingling of good and evil. But God would hate this: "The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man" (vv 20-21).
Clearly, the Lord wants a distinction between His way and the counterfeits developed by Satan. His divine conflict against evil was predicted in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman."
Examples of Mingling
Chinese divination, later known as Taoism, one of the most ancient religious philosophies of the East, is established on the concept of Yin and Yang, symbolizing evil and good and all opposites as unified through "the way." To bring a return to moral power and self-control, Taoism taught that all forces must be balanced if one would have peace and harmony and know the secret of control over one's life and environment. Similar concepts are found in pantheism, acupuncture, the Book of Mormon, ancient alchemy, astrology, sorcery, New Age philosophy, and modern spiritualism.
Thus, the enemy not only initiates intemperance but also propounds a counterfeit temperance or control to deceive mankind. These counterfeits are based on the mingling of truth with error rather than on the God-empowered self-control (temperance) that clearly separates truth from all error.
The prophet Isaiah pronounced woes against Israel for following counterfeit concepts. Clearly the people were intemperate and had lost control, as the following points from Isaiah 5 show:
God did all He could to make Israel solely His (vv 3-7).
But they became intemperate, with drunkenness early and late (vv 11-15).
They called evil good and good evil, making no difference between them (vv 19-20).
They became intelligent and prudent in their own eyes (v 21).
They mingled good with evil—and claimed marvelous experiences. But all this took away real righteousness (vv 22-23).
Mankind's Only Hope
Jesus came to break the bondage of Satan's counterfeits. He came "to preach deliverance to the captives, and... to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18).
Jesus warned against pseudo religion that doesn't change the life. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Mt 7:20). Temperance or self-control through Christ is at the foundation of all spiritual virtues (Gal 5:22-23). Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Mt 5:8). He alone can change the heart which naturally tends toward evil.
"To the thirsty," says Jesus, "I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment. He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son" (Rev 21:6-7 RSV).
It is not only for our blessing to choose new life and a return through the Holy Spirit to control over every wrong craving and desire. Our choice is also a witness to others. God is glorified as we, through Christ, win sinners to Him. "So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:7).
This is why the Seventh-day Adventist Church is involved in temperance. As we work with people in both prevention and rehabilitation programs, we can point them to their high calling as beings made in God's very image, for whom Jesus died to provide forgiveness and for whom He ever lives to give them self-control.
What a message! What a challenge to tell people of the power and grace of the One who is able to keep them from falling! Here is the purpose of temperance. Our world has never needed it more, nor been more ready to hear about it. Let the Seventh-day Adventist church arise and shine, for our light is come!