I would summarize Dr. Mohler’s position, without giving reasons, as follows: A case for total abstinence cannot be made from the Bible as God’s standard, but it is still better for a person to totally abstain.

I don’t know anyone who argues that lost souls are not a higher priority than anything including drinking alcohol. Do you have an example to the contrary?

It is interesting for you to comment here about hindering the gospel and then proceeding to impugn others priorities by assertion as well as referring to them as “little boys”. I would say that your comment is more in line with how little boys would respond and is more of a hindrance to the gospel than drinking a beer.

Personally, I consider lost souls a higher priority than any activity, and could never condone the public ‘celebrating’ beer by little boys pretending to be real men, and Reformed at that..

Certainly. I’m quite proud that my Savior has freed me from the laws of false piety created by men to enslave other men and I will most certainly try and make sure that others hear that they too can be freed from their enslavement to legalism… be it through sharing a drink, a pipe or a Pepsi.

As to Rom 14, some use this passage as if Paul was placing imbibing believers under a no-drink policy. Thus the tryanny of the weak becomes becomes the defacto law of the church. Suddenly it is wrong for the pastor or elders or even lay persons to drink alcohol, watch movies or enjoy a cigar because “someone might see them and stumble!”

Paul is specifically talking about eating meat, and elsewhere mentions meat sacrificed to idols. Now surely this principle can carry over to other liberties, but Paul was quite careful to apply the same standard in the opposite direction. Those who didn’t eat were not to judge those who did.

Rarely does the Christian person who feels at liberty to drink alcohol try to force or persuade others to do likewise, in fact it is almost always the one who abstains who seeks to enforce his or her will upon the others.

In the end, Luther’s little book on Christian liberty nails it:

“Or else we may meet with simple-minded and ignorant persons, weak in the faith, as the Apostle calls them, who are as yet unable to apprehend that liberty of faith, even if willing to do so. These we must spare, lest they should be offended. We must bear with their infirmity, till they shall be more fully instructed.… Thus, though we ought boldly to resist those teachers of tradition, and though the laws of the pontiffs, by which they make aggressions on the people of God, deserve sharp reproof, yet we must spare the timid crowd, who are held captive by the laws of those impious tyrants, till they are set free. Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they shall themselves recognize the tyranny, and understand their own liberty”

Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. Therefore do no let your good be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:15-17

It would be instructive for all to read Romans 14 again because it also points out that we are not to judge our brothers if they decide to decline our freedoms.

DeoVolente places a lock on his humidor