By Phil Harris
Prolog
In my morning reading of Scripture I came across this passage where Jesus responds (verses 27-32) to the grumbling of the Pharisees and their scribes where they ask Jesus; “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ’The old is good.’” (Lk. 5:33-39)
Isaiah chapter fifty eight provides us insight as to what is true biblical fasting. While fasting is mentioned in Scripture, including Jesus’ fasting, what I haven’t found is either a command for Christians to fast or directions for fasting when the Holy Spirit leads one do so. To quote just one verse from Isaiah 58:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?… (Isa. 58:6).
In Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and their scribes, Jesus explains why his own disciples are not fasting but would do so “when the bridegroom is taken away from them”. It is challenging to me to associate Jesus’ juxtaposition of the parables of the new garment and the new wine in Luke 5:36–39 to the general topic of fasting. In fact, I have found that other commentators generally avoid using Scripture to support their opinions of this passage or simply pass over these words without comment.
Anyone wishing to comment on this subject is welcome to do so. What I’m asking of those who read this blog is to post their own scripturally supported understanding of fasting, because the idea of fasting is something I’ve never practiced or been led to do.
Preliminary observations
Our theme passage defines the fasting of John the Baptist’s and the Pharisees’ disciples as “eating and drinking coupled with prayer”. Jesus said His disciples did not fast because He, the bridegroom, was with them, but He did say the day would come when the bridegroom would be taken away. His disciples would fast “in those days”.
Now, Jesus is seated at the side of God the Father and has not yet returned as promised to claim the church (the Bride of Christ). He is physically absent, as He said He would be. Can we conclude from this fact that it may be appropriate for Christians to fast as part of our preparation for His soon return?
Using Jesus’ time of fasting as a model along with Isaiah’s definition of right and wrong fasting, I have concluded that proper fasting is unrelated to and has nothing to do with modern-day fasting for spiritual improvement and physical health, such as the popular “Daniel fast”. Such fasting may have physical benefits, but it is not the same as biblical fasting.
Jesus fasted
Matthew 3:13-17 records Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. When Jesus came up from the water, the Father from heaven said; “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The very next passage in Scripture records the only known instance of Jesus fasting:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matt. 4:1-4).
The implication of this passage is that Jesus the man was also Jesus the Son of God. His 40-day fast in the wilderness, a privation which no mere man could withstand, was not about developing spiritual character in Jesus. Rather, it echoes Moses’ words to Israel in Deuteronomy 8:1–5, where he reminded the wilderness generation about God’s leading them in the wilderness for 40 years, testing them “to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”
As the prefect Israelite, Jesus began His ministry with a test (the Greek word underlying “tempted” can also be translated “tested”) that echoed Israel’s test in the wilderness. Jesus demonstrated that He was the perfect Israelite who lived “by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3b), a test that the nation of Israel failed.
Jesus’ fast in the wilderness was for the purpose of revealing His identity as God the Son and the Son of Man who was the perfect Israelite who kept every word of God in the law, the prophets, and the psalms. He alone defeated Satan by obedience to God’s word and will.
Furthermore, it is important to notice that Jesus could fast for such a long period of time, but God has not commanded us to fast as Jesus did.
Jesus’s parables
In our theme passage, Luke 5:33–39, Jesus gave the parables of the new garment and the new wine immediately after his words about fasting only when the bridegroom is taken away. His disciples were not then fasting, He explained, because He was with them, but there would be a coming time for doing so. Following is my understanding of those parables within the context of His words about fasting.
First, Jesus said that “no one would tear out a piece from a new garment and sew it into an old garment”. Jesus was using the metaphor of garments to describe the old and the new covenants in this parable, and He was demonstrating that one could not take pieces from the new covenant and graft them into the old covenant, because the old would not be able to accommodate the new. In other words, Jesus is saying that his followers would fast from within a new covenant paradigm, but their fasting in His physical absence would not be regulated by the laws of the old covenant to which the Pharisees were slaves. The implication is that Christians would fast according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, not according the the parameters of the old covenant fasts and rituals.
The second parable is about why a person would never put new wine in an old wine sack. New wine is grape juice that is freshly squeezed and has just begun the process of fermentation. Keep in mind that a new wine sack is the cleaned-out stomach of a freshly butchered animal. As the new wine ferments, it can and does expand within an elastic, fresh sack. However, an old wine sack has lost its elasticity and would simply burst if new wine were to be put into it.
The fulfillment of the old covenant in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus inaugurated a new covenant of the Spirit instead of an old covenant of law (see 2 Cor. 3). The reality of the new covenant is greater and more powerful than the shadows of the old covenant. One cannot put the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who trust in Jesus and His shed blood into the confinement of the old covenant.
The old covenant law physically foreshadowed the spiritual reality of the new covenant. Christians living in the new covenant will not be regulated by the law but by the Holy Spirit administering God’s word and will to them. Thus, the fasting of Christians would not be accordance with the regulations of the old covenant because the old covenant wine sack would burst and “spill” a Christian’s fasting—or any other act of worship—onto the ground where it would be of no value.
In other words, one cannot combine the observance of the old covenant law with the new covenant of the Spirit without being unfaithful to both. Paul explains this fact even more clearly in Romans 7:1–4.
Sent out by the Holy Spirit
Paul’s preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles began with worshiping, fasting, and prayer under the leadership of the Holy Spirit:
Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13:1-3)
In this passage we see an example of new covenant fasting in the physical absence of Jesus. The Holy Spirit led the prophets and teachers in Antioch to “set apart” Barnabas and Saul for their work to which God had called them. God the Holy Spirit directed these men in their worship, fasting, prayer, and in their commissioning of Paul to his work of planting the church in gentile territories.
Summary
- I find it curious that from a legalistic point of view, Jesus, by being baptized by John the Baptist, was technically his disciple. Of course, John was humble; he recognized his own Savior, and he did not claim superiority or authority over Jesus but said, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Mt. 3:14).
- To paraphrase Jesus’ words in his confrontation with the tempter, we learn that living by every word of God is far more necessary than is merely eating bread. In fact, this obedience is what Jesus as the perfect Israelite accomplished, revealing Himself to be the One who alone could fulfill God’s demands for His people Israel.
- Scriptural voluntary fasting is to be motivated by the leading of the Holy Spirit and would be a time of prayer and feeding on spiritual food, the word of God, for spiritual growth or preparation for ministry. (See 1 Corinthians 7:4,5; Ephesians 6:10–20.)
- The gospel to the Gentiles led by Paul begins with much fasting and prayer of the whole “church at Antioch” through the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Paul was chosen by the Savior Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit. We as Christians can follow no better example than this.
- When Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” He compares physical food with true spiritual food. Physical bread feeds the body, but God’s word feeds the spirit. A natural man who has not been born again will survive on bread, but a person’s dead-in-sin spirit cannot be brought to life and thrive without the word of God.
- Since the official doctrine of Adventism does not recognize or understand the fact that Adam was created with a human spirit that literally died on the day he sinned, there is little or no understanding that our legacy from Adam is literal spiritual death. This death is the reason our human spirit must be born again before we can join the kingdom of God. The Adventist understanding of fasting, therefore, reflects a physical nature of man and the Adventist “health message”. This “health message” claims to enhance spiritual perception by improving physical health and is often promoted as being the “right hand of the gospel”—making the Adventist gospel no gospel at all (Gal.1:6-10).
- For an Adventist whose understanding of the nature of man does not include the need for a sinner’s dead spirit to be reborn, and for one who falsely attaches the “health message” to the gospel, fasting becomes little more than an extension of improving the physical mind. In reality, one cannot know or understand true fasting if one has not known, understood, and accepted the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, this need for a person to be born again through belief in the pure gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is the reason the Apostle Paul places a curse upon anyone who teaches a false gospel:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:8-9).
The subject of fasting is one of ongoing learning on my part. I look forward to replies with scriptural support from readers for the benefit of each of us who simply wish to learn and apply the wisdom of God to our lives. †
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