NO Spiritual Reward for Depriving the Physical Body

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There is NO Spiritual Reward for Depriving the Physical Body of Comfort or Pleasure

I. Doctrine

There is a great falsehood that is perpetuated by the modern church, and it is one that threatens the very mission assigned to every believer in Matthew 28:18-20. Before one can address this falsehood, one must understand the duty of God's people in this life. It is the believer's task to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them as God ordained, and teaching them how to obey the teachings of Jesus. What then are the teachings of Jesus? As believers, we hold as doctrine that God the Father, along with the Holy Spirit and the Son created all that is. He gave Man, God's special creation made in His own image, dominion over the…show more content…
This heresy is the idea that there is a spiritual reward for depriving the physical body of comfort or pleasure. The Catholics who endured the outbreaks of bubonic plague in the Middle Ages sometimes resorted to self-flagellation, a practice of whipping or beating one's self in order to gain favor with God (and presumably avoid plague). Catholics have long practiced similar traditions, with some devout Catholics praying on particularly uncomfortable prayer mats or refusing red meat on certain days. Some Catholic clergy go so far as to wear burlap undergarments, so as to "suffer with Christ" and perhaps gain favor with God. This heretical doctrine declares the atonement by Christ to be an incomplete one, and contradicts His final words, the confirmation that "It is finished" (John 19:30b).

The particular incarnation of this heresy that pervades even the "evangelical" churches of today comes to light in those churches' condemnation of various things, including drugs and alcohol. Now, as described above, all things created by God in the beginning were good. The use of the earth's resources was given to Man, and with it responsibility. The scriptures indicate that alcohol can be a deceiver. Immoderate use of alcohol leads to drunkenness, which the scriptures indeed condemn (Galatians 5:19-21). However, alcohol was never forbidden to the Hebrews, and Jesus himself made it at the wedding in Cana (John 2). It seems clear that the alcohol itself is not what the scriptures
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