The idea that the word wine in the Bible sometimes means an unintoxicating beverage is without any sufficient foundation. Some men have written to that effect, but no man who is a thorough Hebrew or Greek scholar, as far as I know, at all takes any such position. It seems to me a great pity that advocates of the great cause of total abstinence should take up so utterly untenable a position. The pure wine of Palestine, in our Lord’s time, taken as was the custom with a double quantity of water (a man who ‘drinks unmixed,’ among the Greeks, meant a hard drinker), and used in moderation, was about as stimulating as our tea and coffee, and was used by the Saviour and by others just as we use them. The case is altered now, for such pure and mild wines would be very hard to get, and they are not needed because we have tea and coffee, and their use would tend to encourage the use of distilled liquors, which are so much more powerful and dangerous. Therefore it is better to abstain from the use of wine for our own sake and as an example to to others.

J. A. B. to B. W. N. Simms on Nov. 28, 1894 cited in A. T. Robertson, Life and Letters of John A. Broadus (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1910), 426-427.

Ebenezer Erskine once said, “The ministers of the gospel, when dispensing the truths of God, must preach home to their own souls as well as to others; and truly it can never be expected that we should apply the truth with any warmth or liveliness to others unless we make a warm application thereof to our own souls. And if we do not feed upon these doctrines, and practices the duties which we deliver to you, though we preach to others, we ourselves are but castaways.”

Our sermons will not be dry or insipid if they are infused with the freshness of our own growing relationship with God. Let us never forget that we preach most when we live best. “Our ministry is as our heart is,” wrote Thomas Wilson. “No man rises much above the level of his own habitual godliness.” John Owen put it negatively: “If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than be built in the day of his doctrine.”

Perhaps Robert Murray M’Cheyne said it best: “A minister’s life is the life of his ministry . . . . . In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument will be the success. It is not great talents that God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.

Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2004), 254f.

Lev. 19:15 “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

1. True sanctification then does not consist in talk about religion.
2. True sanctification does not consist in temporary religious feelings.
3. True sanctification does not consist in outward formalism.
4. Sanctification does not consist in retirement from our place in life, and the renunciation of our social duties.
5. Sanctification does not consist in the occasional performance of right actions.
6. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual respect to God’s law, and habitual effort to live in obedience to it as the rule of life.
7. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual endeavour to do Christ’s will, and to live by His practical precepts.
8. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual desire to live up to the standard which St. Paul sets before the Churches in his writings.
9. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual attention to the active graces which our Lord so beautifully exemplified, and especially to the grace of charity.
10. Genuine sanctification, in the last place, will show itself in habitual attention to the passive graces of Christianity. When I speak of passive graces, I mean those graces which are especially shown in submission to the will of God, and in bearing and forbearing towards one another.

. . . . . . . . . .

Such are the visible marks of a sanctified man. I do not say that they are all to be seen equally in all God’s people. I freely admit that in the best they are not fully and perfectly exhibited. But I do say confidently, that the things of which I have been speaking are the Scriptural marks of sanctification, and that they who know nothing of them may well doubt whether they have any grace at all.

Extracts from Ryle, Holiness, 24-29.

You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.

I recently read Exodus 21-23. The emphasis on loving your neighbor is very clear. That statement really does aptly summarize most of the laws in these chapters. Further, the capsule form of “love your neighbor as yourself” is memorable and thus can be recalled throughout the day as a guide.

But the specificity of the laws in these chapters reminds us that loving our neighbor needs to be worked out in specific ways. A person can’t say he loves his neighbor and then refuse to make restitution when the animal he borrowed from his neighbor dies while in his care.