Ephesians 5:18

18. And Not (as Eadie and others) marking “transition from general to particular,” but from one form of fleshly sin, sensuality, to another, inebriety, with its consequent riot.

Be not drunk Drunkened, or made drunk with or by wine, the particular drink for the genial.

Wherein In which. Our translation, referring the wherein to wine, and adding wherein is excess, conveys a true and striking meaning. In wine is the power to create and intensify the appetite for itself, and the consequent excess. But critics are agreed that the wherein refers not to wine, but to the being made drunk by it. Alford avails himself of this to add, “The crime is not in God’s gift, but in the abuse of it; and the very arrangement of the sentence, besides the spirit of it, implies the lawful use of it. See 1 Timothy 5:23.” The advice to Timothy indicates that “God’s gift” is bestowed as a medicine; its “abuse” is as a beverage. No one who habitually uses wine as a beverage has any assurance that he will never be drunk with it. At any rate it is no sin, in view of such danger, for any man to abstain entirely from it, and it may be a part of prudential morality earnestly to urge others to so abstain. Nor does it seem to be a very necessary duty for commentator or preacher very carefully to maintain the right to use it as a gratification of appetite. Let those who desire to indulge at the risk of downfall perform that work.

Excess The exact parallel of the Greek word would be unsavedness, or unsavingness; and Theophylact well defines its victim as “one who does not save, but destroys both soul and body.”

Hence profligacy, self-abandonment to ruin.

Filled with the Spirit A most striking antithesis! While Gentilism is drunk with wine let the holy Church be filled with the Spirit.

“There’s a spirit above, and a spirit below;

A spirit of joy, and a spirit of woe:

The spirit above is a Spirit Divine;

The spirit below is the spirit of wine.”