What is gluttony? The word has its roots in the Latin word gluttire, which means to gulp or swallow. A simple of definition of gluttony is that it is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or intoxicants. But I think a better definition also includes the phrase “over-attention to” these things.
In contrast, I love this short passage from I Timothy:
But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. – I Tim. 6:8
As we look to what the Bible has to say about these kinds of behaviors, I think it is helpful to look at Roman culture. The higher-class Romans, the wealthier citizens, would have a normal breakfast and then try to take care of all their daily business in the morning before a small lunch at noon. Then they would spend their afternoon at the public baths, lazing around, talking with friends, and generally enjoying life, and beginning around 4 pm they would congregate at someone’s home and would begin their main meal, the cena. This meal could last late into the night, especially if there were guests, and it would include and be followed by heavy drinking. The meals were elaborate and included multiple courses and the finest delicacies, as well as live entertainment if there were guests. Throughout the evening everyone would be waited on hand and foot by slaves. The guests wouldn’t even wait for the slaves to clean the tables after each course; they would simply throw the inedible parts of the meal – the bones and shells, primarily – onto the ground so the servants could sweep them up. We could get into details getting grossed out by the various things they ate – and trust me, some of it is pretty gross – but what I want to focus is on how the cena parties for many citizens were the main priority of life, over work, over family, over everything.
This tendency to turn meals into such events was not unique to Rome; various versions of this happened to most ancient cultures, and even to most not-so-ancient. Of course only the upper class could afford to indulge in such ways. The misplaced priorities at the heart of such feasts is a large part of what I believe the Bible talks about when it speaks of gluttony.
I believe this is what Paul was thinking about when, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he quoted what was probably a common saying at that time and made a short but powerful comment on such thinking:
"Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"—but God will destroy them both. – I Cor. 6:13a
In addition to the frequent cena parties, there were also the gladiator Games. Some people were not into the Games, and some saw them as vulgar and beneath them, but many were very much into them, and the exploits of individual gladiators were followed much like we today follow our favorite sports teams. And yes, I do realize that today is the Superbowl, and no, I did not realize that back in December when I planned to discuss gluttony. Now being overly consumed by the Games is not technically gluttony, but it revealed the same set of misplaced priorities, the same kind of taking something to excess that true gluttony showed.
What about our culture? We don’t do meals like the Romans, do we? Maybe not exactly like this, but I do think that when a bunch of college students get together and drink to excess through all hours of the night that the result, and certainly the mindset, is not much different. In fact, you could argue that college students whose parents pay their way are a lot like the ancient Roman upper class. Take care of that pesky school stuff during the daylight hours but then real life begins in the evening with the parties.
Now, if you don’t party like a stereotypical college student, does this mean you don’t have a problem with gluttony? Well, as I have alluded to with the Games, I think gluttony goes beyond just meals; it deals with having a heart, a mindset that is devoted to self-gratification, to one’s own pleasure, instead of to God and to other people. And in this, I believe we as a culture are absolutely guilty as charged. The issues here are more subtle and I believe more serious, because our culture doesn’t seem to notice that anything is even wrong. The makers of the movie Wall-E have made a haunting vision of the future if our culture’s trends toward self-gratification continue.
[A clip was shown in which we see hideously overweight people of the future whizzing around on lounge chairs, seeing holographic computer screens, drinking their food from cups, talking constantly to friends on built-in cell phones, totally self-absorbed, and having all of their needs and whims immediately satisfied by machines.]
I saw this movie first in a theater, and as I looked around during this part of the movie, I noticed that nobody seemed to be drinking their super-mega-giant cokes are eating from their super-mega-giant tubs of popcorn. If you haven’t seen the movie before, it is a shocking picture, isn’t it?
Now as Fred talked about the effects of lust two weeks ago, I want to briefly give some data about the effects of gluttony on our society in America.
One of the effects of gluttony is eating disorders. The following are some data on eating disorders in the United States. 1 in 200 women suffer from anorexia (compulsively starving yourself), and at least 1 in 50 women suffer from bulimia (compulsively overeating and purging). Nearly half of all people personally know someone with an eating disorder. For people suffering with an eating disorder, the chances of dying from it within 20 years is an astonishing 20%. The most common causes of death from eating disorders are heart problems and suicide. Eating disorders fall into the “overattention to” category. It is disturbing that today, 50% of girls between the ages of 11 and 13 see themselves as overweight, and 80% of 13-year old girls have attempted to lose weight. Now some of these people were truly overweight, but many aren’t.
Another obvious effect of gluttony is alcohol abuse. 18 million Americans (nearly 1 in 10 adults) regularly abuse alcohol or are alcoholic. Four-fifths of these are males. Several million more engage in drinking behavior that is likely to lead to alcoholism. In a recent survey asking children if they had had 5 or more drinks in a row at some time within the last two weeks, 11% of 8th graders, 22% of 10th graders, and 27% of 12th graders said “yes.” Nearly 70% of people who come to a medical trauma center have an alcohol or drug problem. 40% of all assaults and an incredible 50% of all homicides are alcohol related. The estimated cost to our country due to alcohol abuse and addiction is $220 billion per year. This is more than that due to cancer. And 53% of adults report that one or more of their close relatives has a drinking problem.
Drug abuse also falls within the definition of gluttony. I had more difficulty isolating data on illegal drug use from that on alcohol use and smoking. But here are some combined statistics, again focusing solely on the United States. 1 in 4 deaths can be attributed to alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drug use. Tobacco use causes the greatest portion of this total. The combined economic consequence is $420 billion per year. Illegal drug use accounts for more than half a million emergency room visits per year. Drug offenders account for 80% of the growth of the federal prison population since 1985. Again, I am most shocked by data about children. By 8th grade, 52% of children have consumed alcohol, 41% have smoked cigarettes, and 20% have used marijuana.
Now I have not yet talked about obesity. Obesity certainly can be a consequence of gluttony, but it is also a much more complicated issue, genetics, metabolism, other health problems, and other issues relating to what we eat can also be major contributing factors. I saw an article last week that even suggested the possibility of a virus that, after suffering from it, leads to a higher incidence of obesity.
But there is no question that obesity in America gets worse and worse every year. Here are a few statistics on this. 8 out of 10 Americans over the age of 25 are classed as overweight. 25% are completely sedentary. Obesity is considered the primary cause of 80% of Type II diabetes and 70% of all cardiovascular disease. Just from 1982 to 1994, the percentage of overweight children quadrupled, from 4% to 16%. Now the overall change in obesity for us as a country is absolutely shocking, as the following sequence of slides from 1985 to 2007 shows. You can see that the change is so sudden and dramatic that nobody really knows what the long term health consequences or economic consequences will be.
Beyond the strict definitions of gluttony I believe we can talk about a gluttonous mindset. What is this? I like the following quote by Susannah Wesley:
“Whatever weakens your reason, whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience, whatever obscures your sense of God, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, whatever takes away your relish for spiritual things… that to you is sin, no matter how innocent it is in itself.” – Susannah Wesley
And this leads into a discussion of what the most debilitating effect of a gluttonous mindset is – whether we are talking strictly about gluttony or not – it is that our life in Christ is short-circuited. We lose our first love. We become worldly. We become like salt that has lost its saltiness. We hide our light under a bushel.
Why is this? It is because we simply cannot love the world at the same time we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Neither can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we love the world. And this is the real tragedy of our so-called Christian culture and heritage, of our nation. We have become shallow, mere shadows of people, just like in Wall-E, living for the immediate and the trivial. We live to satisfy the immediate desires of our senses and we respond only to the immediate and urgent questions of daily life.
I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis
Our series is entitled “Knowing and Overcoming Sin,” so I want to spend the rest of my time today focusing on overcoming sin. If we know that we don’t love God the way that we should, if our week is mostly lived apart from God, if we have a sense that sin is overtaking us, defeating us in many areas, or if we are simply numb to spiritual things, what do we do?
Do you believe the Apostle Paul faced the same problem? We tend to forget this, when we read all that he did in Acts. But the same Paul wrote these words:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. – Romans 7:15-20
As a young Christian I read this and thought that Paul was trying some crazy kind of defense that you might see in a courtroom. “You see judge, there’s this guy, call him “Sin,” who makes me do all this bad stuff and keeps me from doing all this good stuff. And when I, oops – I mean Sin, does this stuff, I hate it, because I don’t want to do it. I mean, oops, Sin, no, I mean me. Sin does it, but I don’t want Sin to do it.
What in the world does Paul mean by this? He is saying that there is a new me and an old me. The old me was just plain sinful. There was nothing good in it. It was opposed to everything about God. But the new me is different. It truly desires to please God; it wants to serve and obey Him. But the problem is that the old me keeps on doing bad stuff and skipping the good stuff.
Here is what I think is a powerful question. When you battle your flesh, are you really trying to fix the old you? This is a serious error. The old you, as it says, has nothing good in it. We often don’t believe this. The old you cannot be reformed. It is unfixable. When we try to “do better” we are usually trying to reform our old self. This isn’t going to work!
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. – Romans 7:21-25
One of our problems, I think, is that we think we ask the same question, but we ask a slightly different one. After we fail in our struggles against temptation and sin, we cry out, “What a wretched man I am! How can I fix my miserable state?” Note that this is not the same question, not at all! Paul isn’t looking to himself. If you ask my modified question, you are still looking to yourself. Paul doesn’t ask, “What can I do,” but “Who will rescue me?” Very different!
And as the passage says, understand that the battle is at and in our minds. In the area of controlling our eating, for example, it is too late when the food is in our hand. And I would argue that the battle was over 5 minutes before the food was in our hand, and it was over 15 minutes before, and it was over an hour before. The battle is really all day long, from when we first get up until we go to bed, every day, in our minds. So how do we win this battle? Wrong question! Who will rescue us? Jesus! How?
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. – Romans 8:1-4
Maybe there is an area of your life where you have prayed again and again, God, I will try harder. Help me to do this. And then you fail, again. There is no condemnation! Do you feel guilty for the long chain of your failure? There is no condemnation! There is no condemnation! There is no condemnation! God accepts you! God loves you! Really! Confess your sin. Turn again to God in faith. God forgives you totally! There is no condemnation. The only thing He has condemned is your sin! Your sin is condemned. Your old man is condemned. But not your new man!
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. – Romans 8:5-8
There is a powerful contrast made here between those who live according to the sinful nature and those who live according to the Spirit. But if you keep the context of Romans 7 before you, I don’t believe this passage is talking about two different people. It is talking about the old man verses the new man. Both are in us.
Again, this passage makes clear that it is useless to try to reform the old man. The mind of sinful man (old man) is set on what that nature desires, it is death, and it is hostile to God. It refuses to submit to God, and not only this, but it is incapable of doing so. It can’t do it!
But in contrast, the new man desires what the Spirit desires. It is controlled by the Spirit. It is filled with life and peace.
One more time, I want to make it clear that the point is not to try to get the old man to have life and to have peace. It can’t. It just cannot do it. It can’t please God at all. And the goal isn’t even to somehow get the old man to be more controlled by the Spirit. They are like water and oil; they don’t mix. And notice I said “more controlled”? This is how we tend to think, but notice that there is no “more” in the passage.
You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. – Romans 8:9-11
Do you understand this? We don’t strive to have the Spirit live in us. It’s there! And your new man is already controlled by it! So you may ask, “Then why am I struggling and losing in my struggle with sin?” Because you are looking to the old man, not the new man! The next verse makes this clear.
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, "Abba, Father." – Romans 8:12-15
Finally we come to the thing we do! We are to – by our own strength? No! – by the Spirit, to put to death, or mortify, the misdeeds of the body. Understand that the “by the Spirit” is how we do it, and “putting to death the misdeeds of the body” is what will happen.
What does victory look like? It looks like a life controlled by the Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, the old man is hacked to pieces. It is being killed, mortified. When it rises up to do another sin, it is killed again. Its works keep on being smashed.
What do we do? We seek to let our lives be led by the Spirit. Our minds, where the battle takes place, need to be controlled by the Spirit.
What practical steps do we take? How do we break habits of sin, or of going it alone, apart from God?
We build new habits. Note how different this is from simply battling against old habits! These new habits should be ones that seek to help us live by the Spirit. That is the goal. You have heard over and over what these things are. Prayer. Bible study. Worship. Fellowship with other believers. Evangelism and care for unbelievers. Fasting. And so on. But don’t do these legalistically – because you are supposed to do them. And don’t do them hyper-spiritually – that they will somehow magically make you better. Do them because you want to love God more. Because you want to live by the Spirit. That you want to experience the Spirit’s power in your life – not only to overcome sin, but to live for Christ and do great things for Him.
Empowered and controlled by the Spirit, specific new habits can be made in the areas of sin in your life. Even in the area of gluttony – your unhealthy desires or obsession over whatever it is that grabs you will be replaced by healthy obsession over knowing and loving and serving Christ. The world will lose its hold on you, and at the same time, the things of God, love for Him, a desire to do anything you can for Him, will powerfully take hold of you.
I want to make sure I am being understood perfectly clearly here. I am not saying that we do not have a role in holiness. We do! But our role is not to lead. It is to follow, being obedient to the things the Spirit directs us to do. As we spend time in the Word and in prayer, the Spirit will show us areas we need to change and will guide us and empower us to make those changes, one step at a time. Our focus should be on staying close to God, in doing the things that make Him as real in our lives as our spouses or our parents. We should seek to know Him, to love Him, to please Him. This is putting on the new man.
One last thought… The new man is attuned to the things of God. One of these things is an outward focus, a focus on giving our lives to others, to sharing the gospel, to doing things that take us out of our comfort zone. We tend to think that these things have nothing to do with our inward battle against sin, but that is false. Doing these things is a sure way of putting on the new man. Never feel like you aren’t “good enough” or “have your life together enough” to reach out to others. That’s your old man you are talking about, not the new man!
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. – Eph. 4:22-24
Just like “red was out and blue was the new you” in the movie clip, your old self is out, and the new you, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness, is in. This is not some hologram; it is real! Try it on, and never take it off!
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