Is gluttony a sin? What does the Bible say about overeating?

So far as partaking of food is concerned the Christian is enjoined to discharge this as well as every other physical function in a manner becoming to one whose body is a possession of the Lord, a member of Christ, and a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:13, 15, 19). The glory of God should be our ultimate object in the maintenance of physical vitality; "whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). On the other hand, the absence of self-control and the abuses of the appetites are positive sins, and the glutton and the drunkard alike are the subjects of the stern reprobation of God (Deut. 21:20; Prov. 23:21; Phil. 3:16). W.J.H.

"Thou, my son, hear and be wise, and direct thy heart in the way." Not talking but hearing is the path to wisdom, and the heart is as much concerned at least as the ears.

Love of company outside, and free from home proprieties, is no little snare. Hence it is said, "Be not among wine-bibbers, among gluttonous eaters of flesh" — a temptation to the fast growth of youth, apt to be impatient of restraint, and full of impetuous energy.

Both eating and drinking expose to lack of moderation, especially if either become a habit. "For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe with rags." Shame and suffering must be the end of so unworthy a way; and where is the fear of Jehovah in it?

"Hear, my son, and be wise; and guide your heart in the way" (v. 19). Do we need to be told this often? Yes, for we forget too easily. Social drinking may have its attraction, but this is not for the believer (v. 20). It is necessary to eat and drink in order to live, but to live to eat and drink is folly, such as is seen in the rich man of Luke 12:16-21, who confidently said, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry." That very night God told him, "Fool, this night your soul will be required of your." Verse 21 says that the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty; though it may not be in this life, but how much worse is eternal poverty!

This is a rare and admirable grace, diffusing its hallowed influence over one's entire course, character and conduct. It not only bears directly upon one or two or twenty selfish habits, but upon self in all the length and breadth of that comprehensive and most odious term. Many a one who would look with proud disdain upon a glutton or a drunkard, may himself fail every hour in exhibiting the grace of self-control. True it is that gluttony and drunkenness should be ranked with the very vilest and most demoralizing forms of selfishness. They must be regarded as among the most bitter clusters that grow on that widespread tree. But self is a tree and not a mere branch of a tree or a cluster on a branch, and we should not only judge self when it works, but control it that it may not work.

Christian reader, let as ponder this. What a cure for restless ambition is here! What an antidote against covetousness! What a blessed deliverance from the feverish excitement of commercial life, the grasping spirit of the age in which our lot is cast! If we were only content with the divinely appointed provision for the stranger, what a different tale we should have to tell! How calm and even would be the current of our daily life! How simple our habits and tastes! How unworldly our spirit and style! What moral elevation above the self-indulgence and luxury so prevalent amongst professing Christians! We should simply eat and drink to the glory of God, and to keep the body in proper working order. To go beyond this, either in eating or drinking, is to indulge in "fleshly lusts which war against the soul."

Their characteristic is that they are enemies, not of Christ personally, but of the cross — that cross by which we are crucified to the world and the world to us. Their hearts were on earthly things, which, not satisfying them, as earthly things cannot, made their god to be their belly; their inward craving became their master, and made them drudge in its service.

His exposure falls under five heads. They are enemies of the cross of Christ. Not perhaps of His death, but of His cross — of that cross which has before God put the sentence of death on man, his wisdom and his glory. Their end is destruction. This alone would make Paul weep as he thought of them. Their god is their belly; that is, their own lusts and desires governed them: desires often of a gross nature, though, we suppose, not always such. Always however, in some shape or form, self was their god. They gloried in that which was their shame. They had no spiritual sensibilities at all. Everything in their minds was inverted. To them light was darkness and darkness light: glory was shame and shame was glory. Their minds were set on earthly things. Earth was the sphere of their thoughts and their religion. They carried on the tradition of those of whom the Psalmist spoke, saying, "They have set their eyes bowing down to the earth" (Ps. 17:11).

As to the first of these, the Apostle's words are a brief description of the unchanged natural habit of self-seeking, which marks those who, while professing the faith of Abel, are 'gone in the way of Cain.' The 'belly-service' here mentioned represents other things besides the literal gratification of appetite, though surfeiting and drunkenness are among the evil things against which the Lord has warned all His disciples. It expresses self-pleasing under all its forms, both carnal and spiritual; being placed, both here and elsewhere, in contrast to the service of God and of Christ.5 Instead of working out their own salvation with fear and trembling, these enemies of the cross are reposing in a false and fatal security. Mistaking names for things, and forms for realities, they assume boldly for themselves a personal interest in God's great salvation, while their hearts are altogether strangers to His love. Professing to know Him, in their works they deny Him, and are found as to every good work reprobate.6 For no work is good in His sight which is not wrought by faith in love. Their wisdom is not the wisdom of the just, and which comes from above, but that which is from beneath. They are carnal, and mind the things of the flesh. Loving themselves, loving money, and loving pleasures more than God, their life-study is to practise lawlessness in an outwardly religious way. While Christ's true redeemed are zealous of good works, these practical deniers of the Lord that bought them are only 'studying comfort.' With no eye for the poverty of Jesus for their sakes, they are, in the last days of Divine long-suffering, intent only upon worldly gains. And, thus occupied with heart and hand,

Cooking and dietetics have been elevated to the dignity of a science; and we may be sure that some provision will be found in the word of God to guide the Christian housekeeper. "Take no thought what ye shall eat or drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed," guards on the one side from that selfish absorption in material things which makes them the summum bonum of human life. "Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God" will check both an intemperate indulgence in luxuries and a monkish abstemiousness "from meats which God hath created to be received with thankfulness of them which believe and know the truth."

Under the comprehensive phrase, "and such like," with which the apostle closes his recital of things "manifest," there lies an undetected ambush of other of those innumerable "fleshly lusts which war against the soul," from which God's children are besought by the Spirit of grace, as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain (1 Peter 2:11). These all have a common character, inasmuch as they all contradict the will of God, and are against the leading of the Spirit. The varieties of self-pleasing are as endless as the diversities of natural form and feature in mankind Self-judgment is its counterpoise in the Father's husbandry of Christ. All things are lawful for them that are the heirs of all, but our anxious care should be to rule, and not obey, our natural inclinations. Else we cease to be freemen, and are slaves again. The apostle is our pattern in these things (1 Cor. 6:12); asserting emphatically his personal liberty, he preferred his bonds as the purchased possession of his Lord. All things were lawful, but right was not his measure. His faith wrought by love; and love considers not its rights, but rather its opportunities. What edified and was expedient, with reference to others not less than himself, and what became him as the bearer and witness of his Master's name, were the constant occupation of his thoughts. The incompatibility of a habit of carnal wilfulness and self-indulgence with a genuine faith in Christ, is everywhere insisted on by this fervent and unwearied preacher of the gospel of the grace of God. And we shall do wisely to remember, in these times of fast-increasing license, that grace systematically abused becomes a limited "long-suffering;" and that godless profession does but prepare more rapidly for "ever., lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord" those "vessels of wrath," which now are standing on the false basis of a carnal security, and, like the Scribes and Pharisees of old, are rejecting the counsel of God against themselves (Luke 7:30; Acts 20:27; 1 John 3:10). The kingdom of God can be inherited by those only who are born of God, and who, therefore, not only rejoice in His goodness, but, spite of their natural selves, observe also and imitate His ways.