Jesus took wine and told all of His disciples to drink it. He told them the wine is His blood of the New Covenant which is poured out for their sins. God made wine to make people glad (Psalm 104:15). But Jesus also used wine as a symbol for His presence.
The wine of the New Covenant between God and man is the greatest drink in the universe. It is spiritual wine. It is the good news that God has poured out His Son on the cross in order to save us. This gospel message is meant to be drank by His people.
Just like regular wine takes away people’s worries and helps them to loosen up, the wine of Jesus does it all the more. The good news that Jesus has taken away all of our sins, anxieties, and worries is wine to our hearts. We are called to continually drink in the New Covenant wine, which is actually drinking in God Himself. This is what makes us happy and whole.
Drinking in the Spirit of the Trinity is the solution to alcoholism and every kind of addiction. People get addicted to alcohol, drugs, pornography and sex because of the pleasure of it. The hearts of men and women were created by God to experience pleasure. We will not settle for a life of no pleasure.
People settle for pleasures of alcohol, drugs, and sex. But they do not fill the void and do not satisfy the cravings we have. Our hearts long for something more. Our hearts become completely satisfied when we drink in the Spirit. We discover the best intoxication in the world when we drink in God’s love.
Our minds finally come to rest when we get high on the Most High. God heightens our spiritual senses and gives us more peace than a gram of heroin ever can. God’s Spirit gets us higher than any hit of Crystal Meth. We exist to get high, just on God and not drugs.
Isaiah prophesied that there is Spiritual wine and water that is freely given to us by God. “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55). All around the world people are spending billions of dollars on drugs, alcohol, and sex and still they aren’t satisfied. Meanwhile, God is saying, “Come to Me and you can have My wine for free.”
In The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, one character asks the Spirit, “Why do I exist?” And the Spirit responds, “For infinite happiness, you can step out into it at any moment.” The Infinite Happiness is God Himself and He offers Himself freely to all people at all times. Those who seek, find.
Jesus repeated Isaiah’s prophecy and pointed to Himself as the ultimate thirst-quencher. He stood up and said, “If anyone thirsts, let Him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38). There is a living drink that Jesus offers to us daily. It quenches the deepest thirsts of our beings. When we learn to drink from it we are freed from addictions. Our addictions turned out to be “lesser pleasures,” “softer drinks,” and “inadequate highs.”
Paul made the same connection when he told the church in Ephesus to not get drunk with wine but instead be filled with the Spirit. He was saying that the Spirit is the true wine and true drink that satisfies deeper than earthly wine. The Psalmist said that we are to “drink from the river of God’s pleasures” (Psalm 36:8).
As we continue to discover that God is a Happy Trinity we drink Him in more and more. We receive His Spirit and allow His love to fill our hearts (Romans 5). This spiritual drink fills our lives with more and more love, joy, and peace. And ultimately we believe that through Christ’s death and resurrection we’ve already been filled with the fullness of all the spiritual wine of God (Colossians 2:9-10).