Theopedia

Fasting

— The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Matt. 9:15

Fasting is the believer’s voluntary abstinence from food, for a limited time, for the sake of prayer, repentance, or humbling oneself before God.1 Reformed confessions treat it not as a meritorious work but as an aid to prayer and to every other grace, undertaken as occasion arises rather than at a fixed, church-appointed season.2 Jesus assumed his disciples would fast, instructing them how rather than whether to do it (Matt. 6:16-18), and told John’s disciples that fasting belonged to the time after his departure rather than to his own earthly presence among them (Matt. 9:14-15).

Confessional Witness

The Second London Baptist Confession states, in language shared with the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, that “solemn humiliation, with fastings, and thanksgivings, upon special occasions, ought to be used in an holy and religious manner,” alongside prayer, the reading and preaching of the Word, and the sacraments, as parts of religious worship.3 The Westminster Confession commends the same “solemn fastings, and thanksgivings upon several occasions,”4 and the Savoy Declaration likewise calls for “solemn humiliations, with fastings and thanksgivings upon special occasions.”5 None of the three assigns fasting a fixed date on the church calendar; each ties it instead to “special occasions” calling for humiliation or thanksgiving, leaving the timing to the church’s own judgment rather than prescribing it in advance.

The earlier Second Helvetic Confession (1566) treats the subject at greater length. It defines fasting as “the abstinence and moderation of the godly, and a discipline, care and chastisement of our flesh…whereby we are humbled before God,” distinguishes public fasts (kept “in calamitous times and in the affliction of the Church”) from private ones (undertaken by each believer “as he feels himself withdrawn from the Spirit”), and insists that “all fasts ought to proceed from a free and willing spirit…and not feigned to gain the applause or favor of men, much less that a man should wish to merit righteousness by them.”2 The same chapter rejects the fixed Lenten fast outright: “The fast of Lent is attested by antiquity but not at all in the writings of the apostles. Therefore it ought not, and cannot, be imposed on the faithful.”2

Biblical Basis

Jesus assumes fasting will continue among his followers: he instructs “when you fast,” not “if you fast,” and warns only against fasting to be seen by others, not against fasting itself (Matt. 6:16-18). When John’s disciples asked why his own followers did not fast, Jesus answered that fasting fit the coming absence of “the bridegroom,” not his presence among them (Matt. 9:14-15). Acts records that same expectation being fulfilled, as the church at Antioch fasted and prayed before commissioning Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:2-3), and the two apostles later appointed elders “with prayer and fasting” in the churches they planted (Acts 14:23).1

Fasting accompanies prayer at moments of urgency throughout Scripture: Moses fasted forty days on the mountain while receiving the law (Exod. 34:28), Ezra proclaimed a fast to seek God’s protection for the returning exiles (Ezra 8:21-23), Esther called the Jews of Susa to fast before she approached the king (Esther 4:16), Daniel fasted while confessing Israel’s sin and later while seeking understanding of a vision (Dan. 9:3; 10:2-3), and Nehemiah fasted on hearing of Jerusalem’s ruined walls (Neh. 1:4). God appointed one fixed fast under the Mosaic covenant, on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29-31), though the Pharisee of Luke 18:12 had gone well beyond that requirement by fasting twice a week.1

Isaiah and Joel both warn that the outward act carries no weight without the repentance it is meant to express. Isaiah condemns a fast that combines self-affliction with oppressing “all your workers” and answers with the fast God actually chooses: “to loose the bonds of wickedness…to let the oppressed go free…to share your bread with the hungry” (Isa. 58:3-7). Joel likewise calls Israel to “rend your hearts and not your garments” in returning to the Lord “with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12-13).

Historical Development

Patristic and medieval practice

Writers close to the apostolic age testify that the early church kept no fixed law of fasting. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, observed that “some think that a fast should be observed one day only, others two days, but others more, and some forty days,” tracing the difference to custom rather than to any command “delivered…from the beginning.”2 Tertullian likewise reported that Christians of his own time “fasted of their own accords freely, without law or commandment, as occasions and times served,” and Eusebius credited the second-century Montanist movement, not the apostles, with first “mak[ing] laws of fasting.”6

That freedom narrowed over the following centuries. Citing the church historian Socrates by way of Cassiodorus, Calvin noted how much regional practice still varied even after fasting had hardened into custom: “The Romans…had only three weeks, but their fast was continuous, except on the Lord’s day and the Sabbath. The Greeks and Illyrians had, some six, others seven, but the fast was at intervals,” and accounts of permitted food varied just as widely.7 Calvin traced the eventual fixed season of Lent to “an excess” of extolling fasting “as one of the cardinal virtues,” commended by medieval pastors as “a holy imitation of Christ” even though, in his reading, Christ’s own forty-day fast was never offered as an annual pattern for others to repeat.7

The Reformed confessions

The Reformation-era confessions returned fasting to the footing of liberty rather than law. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566) rejected Lent as unattested in apostolic writing and therefore not to be imposed on believers.2 Calvin’s Institutes (1559) set out fasting’s three proper ends: to mortify the flesh, to prepare for prayer, and to testify humiliation and confession of guilt before God.8 William Perkins’s A Reformed Catholike (1598) then organized the Reformed position into a systematic dissent from Rome covering the timing, manner, and purpose of a fast.6 Within a century, the Westminster Confession (1646), the Savoy Declaration (1658), and the Second London Baptist Confession (1677, republished 1689) all folded fasting into their chapters on worship in nearly identical terms.4

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic teaching, as Reformed theologians of the sixteenth century described it, held that the church could bind believers to fast at specific, prescribed times, chiefly the season of Lent and other appointed fast days, treating neglect of a fast within its set time as sin.6 The prescribed manner allowed particular exceptions rather than complete abstinence, permitting wine and other drinks during the fast, one full meal at midday, and a distinction of foods (fish and vegetables allowed, meat forbidden).6 Some Roman theologians held that a fast kept “with devotion” functioned as a work of satisfaction, easing the temporal punishment still owed for sin.6

Perkins answered each point from within the Reformed confession’s own terms. Christ’s own words to John’s disciples, that “the days will come…and then they will fast” (Matt. 9:15), placed the timing of a fast in the same liberty as the timing of mourning, not under a law the church could impose;6 a fast permitting wine, a midday meal, and a menu of allowed foods “doth frustrate the end of fasting,” which is bodily abstinence itself standing as a sign of unworthiness before God;6 and treating fasting as satisfaction for sin’s temporal punishment, he wrote, would “blasphemously derogate from Christ our Savior, who is the whole and perfect satisfaction for sin.”6

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Jesus’ statement that the bridegroom’s guests cannot fast while he is present mean fasting had no place after his resurrection? Jesus’s point was that mourning-shaped fasting was out of place only while the bridegroom remained with his disciples; he immediately added, “the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matt. 9:15). Acts records that expectation being fulfilled after the ascension, both in commissioning missionaries (Acts 13:2-3) and in appointing elders (Acts 14:23).1

If fasting must be done in secret (Matt. 6:16-18), how can Scripture also record public, corporate fasts? Jesus’s instruction targets fasting performed “to be seen by others,” not fasting undertaken together with others. The same Scripture that condemns hypocritical display also records corporate fasts called by Ezra, Esther, and the church at Antioch, and Joel’s call to “sanctify a fast” and gather the assembly fits the same pattern of shared humiliation before God rather than ruling out anything but solitary discipline (Joel 2:15-16).

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Donald S. Whitney, “Chapter 9: Fasting … for the Purpose of Godliness,” in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, anniversary ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2024): “Christian fasting is a believer’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chap. 24, “Of Holy Days, Fasts and the Choice of Foods.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (London, 1677; republished 1689), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” par. 5. ↩

  4. Westminster Confession of Faith (London, 1646), chap. 21, “Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day,” par. 5. ↩ ↩2

  5. Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (London, 1658), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” par. 5. ↩

  6. William Perkins, A Reformed Catholike (Cambridge: John Legat, 1598), “The Twelfth Point: Of Fasting,” 221-232. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  7. Calvin, Institutes, 4.12.20. ↩ ↩2

  8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 12, sec. 15: “A holy and lawful fast has three ends in view. We use it either to mortify and subdue the flesh, that it may not wanton, or to prepare the better for prayer and holy meditation; or to give evidence of humbling ourselves before God, when we would confess our guilt before him.” ↩