What does the Bible say about fasting?
Fasting in Scripture is far more than going without food. It runs from the earliest days of Israel right through the apostolic church, and the writers draw out its spiritual meaning with remarkable consistency: fasting is the soul setting aside what is lawful in order to be more wholly for God.
The Old Testament Pattern
Morrish's Bible Dictionary traces the thread from its first appearances:
Morrish's Bible DictionaryThe first fasting we read of is when Moses went up into the mount to receive the tables of the covenant, and was there apart from nature with the Lord for forty days and nights. Deut. 10:10. The first national fasting was when Israel was smitten before Benjamin: they "came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord." Judges 20:26. Here, as in other places, it is connected with humbling; but in the case of Elijah, as with Moses, it signifies being apart from the ordinary life of flesh, to be with the Lord. 1 Kings 19:8.
The dictionary notes that the only fast commanded by the Law was on the Day of Atonement — the word "fasting" does not occur there, but it is understood to be included in the injunction to "afflict your souls" (Lev. 16:29). Four further fasts arose later in Israel's history (Zech. 7:5; 8:19), though they were not instituted by God — in the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months, marking the siege, fall, and aftermath of Jerusalem. The prophet could say these fasts "should be turned into joy and gladness."
The Lord's Teaching: Fasting Done in Secret (Matthew 6:16–18)
William Kelly treats Matthew 6:16–18 as the third pillar of the Lord's teaching on practical righteousness — alongside alms-giving and prayer:
William KellyThe Lord does not so much enjoin fasting as bring it like prayer under the Christian principle of having to do with our Father in secret. It falls under the individual life of faith. Yet He undoubtedly sanctions and approves of it when so practised.
Prayer holds the intermediate place between alms and fasting, the pious and holy basis to guard the other two, binding them up with faith against formality.
George McBroom draws the same three-fold structure:
George McBroomAlmsgiving (verses 1-4) relates to our fellow-creatures, prayer (verses 5-15) to God, and fasting (verses 16-18) to ourselves. ... There is, however, a deep moral connection between true prayer and fasting, as all spiritual minds have felt, and its blessedness lies in the fact that a Christian may be so engaged with God and His things as to forget for the time the needs of the body, and even when these make their appeal he may be so filled with God as to be able to deny the natural in the power of that which is spiritual. Such a state, it is needless to say, is far removed from the eye of one's fellow-men.
The Bridegroom's Absence: When Fasting Becomes Fitting (Mark 2:18–22)
When the Pharisees asked why His disciples did not fast, the Lord's answer turned on His own presence. Hamilton Smith writes:
Would it be seemly to fast in the presence of the Bridegroom? In like manner would it be appropriate to fast in the presence of the One Who was dispensing blessing on every hand? The days were coming when Christ would be no longer present. ... then, indeed, fasting would be appropriate; not simply fasting from food, but from the pleasures of a world that has rejected Christ.
F.B. Hole applies this directly to the present day:
F.B. HoleLet us take note of this, for we live in the day when fasting is a fitting thing. The Bridegroom has long been absent, and we are waiting for Him. ... Fasting is abstaining from lawful things in order to be more wholly for God, and not merely abstinence from food for a certain time.
Fasting and Spiritual Power (Mark 9:29)
When the disciples failed to cast out a demon, the Lord told them, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." F.B. Hole unpacks what each element means:
F.B. HoleFaith indicates a spirit of confidence in God: prayer — dependence on God: fasting — separation to God, in the form of abstinence from lawful things. These are the things which lead to power in the service of God. Their opposites — unbelief, self-confidence, self-indulgence, are the things that lead to weakness and failure. These words of our Lord play like a searchlight upon our many failures in serving Him.
Fasting in the Early Church (Acts 13–14)
When the church at Antioch sent out Barnabas and Saul, it was in the context of fasting. F.B. Hole observes:
These men not only ministered to the saints for their instruction, but also to the Lord in thanksgiving, intercession and fasting; and it was in one of these private seasons that the Holy Ghost gave definite instructions that Barnabas and Saul should be set apart specially to go forth with the Gospel into the Gentile world.
On the return journey, when elders were appointed in the new churches, the same pattern held:
Apostolic discernment was needed in making the choice, and also a real spirit of dependence on God — hence, prayer — and a refusal of the desires of the flesh — hence, fasting.
Morrish draws the practical conclusion:
It is to be feared that because many have made fasting compulsory, and attached a superstitious merit to it, other Christians have altogether neglected the uniting of fasting with prayer. An habitual self-denial is doubtless the spirit of fasting rather than mere occasional abstinence from food.
The Danger of Perversion
William Kelly warns that Christendom turned fasting into something never intended:
William KellyChristendom perverted fasting, through vain philosophy, into a reflection on the creative glory of God. And abstinence from meats, which He created for thanksgiving, was early turned into human merit, and the lie of inherent evil in matter. Grace and truth through Jesus Christ were thus denied; and days of fasting were imposed, as ecclesiastical history records, first by custom, and afterward by legal sanction.
He traces how this led to a two-tier Christianity — "Precepts" for ordinary believers and "Counsels of Perfection" for ascetics — issuing in monasticism and all its attendant corruption.
Synthesis
The Bible presents fasting not as a ritual obligation but as a voluntary expression of the soul's dependence on God. In the Old Testament it accompanied humiliation and crisis; in the Lord's teaching it belongs to the hidden life of faith before the Father; in the early church it marked the great turning-points of missionary service and spiritual leadership.
Three principles emerge across these writers:
1. Fasting is about separation to God, not mere deprivation — setting aside even lawful things to be more wholly occupied with Him.
2. It belongs to the present age because the Bridegroom is absent. The joy of His presence made fasting inappropriate for the disciples while He was with them; His absence makes it fitting now.
3. Its value is destroyed by display or compulsion. The moment fasting becomes a performance for men, or a legal requirement imposed by human authority, it ceases to be the spiritual exercise Scripture describes.
As Morrish aptly summarizes: "An habitual self-denial is doubtless the spirit of fasting rather than mere occasional abstinence from food."