Temperance

Scripture's word for temperance is self-government, and it is governed mainly at the table — over food, over wine, over the appetites of the body — and from there reaches into anger, speech, and the discipline of the whole self. The duty is bodily before it is anything else: "Don't let sin therefore reign in your⁺ mortal body, that you⁺ should obey its desires" (Ro 6:12). Paul names the same fruit by its inner name in Galatians — "meekness, self-control; against such there is no law" (Ga 5:23) — and Peter places it on the ladder of Christian virtue between knowledge and patience: "in [your⁺] knowledge self-control; and in [your⁺] self-control patience" (2Pe 1:6). The umbrella covers a range of practices that share this one logic: the appetite is real, the body is the field, and the man who keeps the rule of his own spirit is the strong man (Pr 16:32; Pr 25:28).

The Duty of Self-Government

The temperance command is laid on the body itself. Romans presses it as a refusal of sin's reign in "your⁺ mortal body" (Ro 6:12); 1 Corinthians extends it to the boundary between liberty and bondage — "All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of any" (1Co 6:12). The same logic stands behind James: the man who can govern his tongue can govern the rest. "If any doesn't stumble in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also" (Jas 3:2). Proverbs draws the figure plainly: a man without self-control is a city undefended. "He whose spirit is without restraint Is [like] a city that is broken down and without walls" (Pr 25:28). Anger falls under the same rule. "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; And he who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city" (Pr 16:32).

Peter's chain locates the virtue inside the believer's growth: "for this very cause adding on your⁺ part all diligence, in your⁺ faith supply virtue; and in [your⁺] virtue knowledge; and in [your⁺] knowledge self-control; and in [your⁺] self-control patience; and in [your⁺] patience godliness" (2Pe 1:5-7). Titus makes it a qualification of office — "the overseer must be blameless, as God's steward; not self-willed, not soon angry, no brawler, no striker, not greedy of monetary gain; but given to hospitality, a lover of good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled" (Tit 1:7-8) — and the same list appears for Timothy: "The overseer therefore must be without reproach ... temperate, sober-minded, orderly, given to hospitality, apt to teach; no brawler, no striker; but gentle, not contentious" (1Ti 3:2-3). The grace of God itself is said to be the school of temperance: "instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present age" (Tit 2:11-12). Forbearance, the public face of the same virtue, is to be visible to all men because "The Lord is at hand" (Php 4:5).

The Athlete's Discipline

Paul's most concentrated figure for temperance is the games. Athletes who run for a corruptible crown already submit to a regimen that touches everything; the believer runs for an incorruptible one and so does the same, only more.

"And every man who strives in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they [do it] to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so I fight, not as beating the air: but I buffet my body, and bring it into slavery: lest by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disapproved" (1Co 9:25-27).

The body is the runner's body, and it is brought "into slavery" deliberately. The temperance is not negative scrupulosity but the athlete's training of the same instrument that would otherwise master him.

Daniel's Diet and the Diet of Kings

The model case in narrative is Daniel. Set among the youths fed at the Babylonian table, Daniel "purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's dainties, nor with the wine which he drank" (Da 1:8). The test he proposes is bodily and measurable: ten days on pulse and water against the king's diet. "Prove your slaves, I urge you, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink. ... And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer, and they were fatter in flesh, than all the youths who ate of the king's dainties. So the steward took away their dainties, and the wine that they should drink, and gave them pulse" (Da 1:12-16). The standing of the body and the standing of the conscience move together.

Proverbs gives the matching wisdom for behaviour at a great man's table — a place where appetite is the more dangerous because indulgence is invited.

"When you sit to eat with a ruler, Consider diligently him who is before you; And put a knife to your throat, If you are a man who is given to soul. Don't be desirous of his dainties; Seeing they are deceitful food" (Pr 23:1-3).

The same chapter ranges across the field of food, drink, money, sexual fidelity, and the heart's settled fear of Yahweh, and ends with the closing wine-warning that recurs across the umbrella: "Don't look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly: At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder" (Pr 23:31-32). Excess at the table is not framed as fastidiousness but as ruin: "For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty; And drowsiness will clothe [a man] with rags" (Pr 23:21). The simple rule of measured eating runs alongside: "Have you found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for you, Or else you will be filled with it, and vomit it" (Pr 25:16).

Wine: Gladness and Snare

Wine in Scripture is double. It is a gift that "makes glad the heart of common man" (Ps 104:15), the staple of the offered drink-offering (Ex 29:40; Nu 28:7), the proper provision for festal joy (De 14:26), the table-gift Melchizedek brings out (Ge 14:18), the lacking element noticed at the wedding at Cana (Jn 2:3). At the same moment it is the standing trap of the umbrella, named in Proverbs as a mocker — "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; And whoever errs by it is not wise" (Pr 20:1) — and warned against from kings down: "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes to desire strong drink. Or else they will drink, and forget the law, And pervert the justice [due] to any who is afflicted" (Pr 31:4-5). Ecclesiastes preserves the same balance for rulers: "your princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness" (Ec 10:17).

Sirach holds both sides in one chapter. Wine is "Like living water ... If he drinks it in moderation. What life has a man who lacks new wine? It was created from the beginning for gladness. Joy of heart, gladness and delight, Is wine drunk at the [right] time and in sufficiency" (Sir 31:27-28). And in the next breath: "Headache, derision, and shame, Is wine drunk in strife and anger. Much wine is a snare to the fool, It diminishes strength and increases wounds" (Sir 31:29-30). The same writer's command — "Moreover, when at wine, exercise restraint, For wine has destroyed many" (Sir 31:25) — folds the warning into the command.

Drunkenness as Ruin

The Old Testament gallery is unambiguous about what unrestrained wine produces. Noah, the first man after the flood, "drank of the wine, and was drunk. And he was uncovered inside his tent" (Ge 9:21). Nabal "held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king ... and Nabal's heart was merry inside him, for he was very drunk" (1Sa 25:36). Belshazzar drinks wine before a thousand of his lords and brings out the temple vessels in the midst of it (Da 5:1-4). The prophets fix the verdict: "Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; who tarry late into the night, until wine inflames them!" (Is 5:11); "Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink" (Is 5:22); "Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim ... the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" (Is 28:1, 7); "Whoring and wine and new wine take away the understanding" (Ho 4:11); "Awake, you⁺ drunkards, and weep" (Joe 1:5); "Woe to him who gives his fellow man drink, mixing your strong wine, and make him drunk also, that you may look at their nakedness!" (Hab 2:15).

The New Testament keeps the same line and sharpens it eschatologically. The unfaithful slave begins "to eat and drink, and to be drunk" precisely when he says in his heart, "My lord delays his coming" (Lu 12:45). The lost son "wasted his substance with riotous living" (Lu 15:13). Jesus warns his hearers: "take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your⁺ hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come upon you⁺ suddenly as a snare" (Lu 21:34). Paul places drunkenness inside the works of the flesh — "envyings, drunkenness, revelings, and things similar to these; of which I forewarn you⁺, even as I did forewarn you⁺, that those who participate in such things will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Ga 5:21) — and lists drunkards alongside thieves and the greedy in 1 Corinthians: "nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, will inherit the kingdom of God" (1Co 6:10). The Ephesian command is positive in its replacement: "And don't be drunk with wine, in which is riot, but be filled with the Spirit" (Ep 5:18). Peter looks back on the pre-conversion life as time enough already spent in "winebibbings, revelings, carousings, and horrible idolatries" (1Pe 4:3), and Romans 13 sets the contrast in daylight terms: "Let us walk becomingly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness ... But put⁺ on the Lord Jesus Christ, and don't make provision for the flesh, to [fulfill] the desires [of it]" (Ro 13:13-14). The Thessalonian image puts night and day in the same opposition: "those who are drunk, are drunk in the night. But let us, since we are of the day, be sober" (1Th 5:7-8).

Even the Lord's Supper is not exempt. The Corinthian fault was not the cup but the fact that "in your⁺ eating each takes before [another] his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunk" (1Co 11:21).

Total Abstinence: Priests, Nazirites, Rechabites

Across the canon, certain persons and times are placed under categorical abstinence — the strong form of the temperance umbrella.

The priests are forbidden wine in the moment of their service: "Drink no wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you⁺ go into the tent of meeting, that you⁺ will not die: it will be a statute forever throughout your⁺ generations: and that you⁺ may make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean" (Le 10:9-10).

The Nazirite vow is the lay equivalent: "When either man or woman will make a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to Yahweh, he will separate himself from wine and strong drink; he will drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither will he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or dried. All the days of his separation he will eat nothing that is made of the grapevine, from the kernels even to the husk" (Nu 6:2-4). The vow becomes a lifetime covenant in Samson's case: the angel says of his mother that she should "drink no wine nor strong drink, and don't eat any unclean thing: for, look, you will become pregnant, and give birth to a son; and no razor will come upon his head; for the lad will be a Nazirite to God from the womb" (Jdg 13:4-5), and the charge is repeated: "She may not eat of anything that comes of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing" (Jdg 13:14).

The Rechabites embody the same pattern as a family discipline. "And the families of scribes who dwelt at Jabez: the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, the Sucathites. These are the Kenites who came of Hammath, the father of the house of Rechab" (1Ch 2:55). Jeremiah brings them into the temple, sets wine before them, and reports their answer: "We will drink no wine; for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, You⁺ will drink no wine, neither you⁺, nor your⁺ sons, forever: neither will you⁺ build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any; but all your⁺ days you⁺ will dwell in tents ... And we have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he charged us" (Je 35:6-8). The wilderness generation is named, in retrospect, in the same kind of language: "You⁺ have not eaten bread, neither have you⁺ drank wine or strong drink; that you⁺ may know that I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (De 29:6).

Abstinence for the Brother's Sake

Pauline temperance has a second form, distinct from the categorical vow. It is the voluntary refusal of an otherwise-lawful thing for the sake of a weaker brother. "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor [to do anything] by which your brother stumbles" (Ro 14:21). The same logic in Corinthians: "Therefore, if meat causes my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh forevermore, that I do not cause my brother to stumble" (1Co 8:13). The principle is laid on top of the liberty already conceded: "All things are lawful for me; but not all things are expedient" (1Co 6:12). Temperance here is not the avoidance of what is forbidden but the limiting of what is permitted.

Paul's pastoral counsel to Timothy holds the same balance from the other side: "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your often infirmities" (1Ti 5:23). Temperance is neither indulgence nor scrupulous abstention; it is the right use of the body's medicines as well as the right refusal of its snares.

Fasting and Bodily Discipline

The fast is the deliberate suspension of the lawful for prayer and consecration, and it falls within the temperance umbrella as one of its strongest forms. Daniel's three-week prayer-fast is the model: "I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine into my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, until three whole weeks were fulfilled" (Da 10:3). Paul lists his apostolic life in the same register: "[in] labor and travail, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fasts often, in cold and nakedness" (2Co 11:27). The same Pauline figure of buffeting the body (1Co 9:27) holds the broader sense of what fasting means within the umbrella — it is the athlete's training of the body, not an end in itself.

Moderation

Sirach's chapter on the table gathers what Proverbs scatters into a single sustained instruction in moderate eating and drinking.

"Eat like a man what is set before you, And do not eat greedily lest you be despised. Cease first for the sake of manners, And do not gobble lest you cause disgust" (Sir 31:16-17).

The wisdom is bodily: "Of a truth, a little suffices for a sensible man, Then on his bed he does not groan. Pain and sleeplessness, distress and want of breath, And griping, are the lot of a foolish man; There is healthy sleep for moderate eating; He rises in the morning and his soul is with him" (Sir 31:19-20). The summary is given as a parental command: "Hearken, my son, and do not despise me, And in the end you will understand my words, In all your acts be moderate, And then no harm will touch you" (Sir 31:22). The same writer warns again at chapter 37: "Do not be insatiable in every luxury, And give not yourself wholly to every dainty. For in much eating lurks sickness, And he who consumes too much draws near to loathing. Through lack of self-control many have perished, But he who controls himself prolongs his life" (Sir 37:29-31). Ecclesiastes joins from the same wisdom-tradition, urging restraint even in the supposedly safe directions: "Don't be overly righteous; neither make yourself overly wise: why should you destroy yourself?" (Ec 7:16). Paul gives a Christian-eschatological formulation of the same counsel: "those who use the world, [should be] as not using it to the full: for the fashion of this world passes away" (1Co 7:31).

The Anger Variant

Temperance as government of the body is bound to temperance as government of the spirit. Proverbs treats the two as one: "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; And he who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city" (Pr 16:32); "He whose spirit is without restraint Is [like] a city that is broken down and without walls" (Pr 25:28). The conqueror of self-anger is rated above the conqueror of cities. The same temperance Paul lists in the fruit of the Spirit — "meekness, self-control" (Ga 5:23) — and Peter inserts between knowledge and patience (2Pe 1:6) is the same temperance which Titus names alongside "not soon angry, no brawler, no striker" (Tit 1:7) and which 1 Timothy calls "temperate, sober-minded, orderly ... not contentious" (1Ti 3:2-3). Anger and appetite share an organ, and they share a discipline.

The Day and the Sober Watch

The temperance command in the New Testament is not finally about food, drink, or anger in the abstract; it is about being awake at the right hour. Paul ties sobriety to the day: "those who are drunk, are drunk in the night. But let us, since we are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation" (1Th 5:7-8). Jesus' warning at Luke 21 lays the same connection bluntly — surfeiting and drunkenness will leave the heart "overcharged" and unready when "that day" comes "as a snare" (Lu 21:34). Peter draws the chain together: "in [your⁺] knowledge self-control; and in [your⁺] self-control patience; and in [your⁺] patience godliness" (2Pe 1:6). Temperance keeps the lamp trimmed; the man who governs the body is the man who is awake.