Theopedia

Gambling

Gambling is the attempt to acquire money by appealing to an artificially created chance, where the winners gain at the losers’ expense without rendering any equivalent good or service in return.1 Common forms include casinos, private card games, state-run lotteries, and sports betting. Scripture never addresses gambling by name, and Christians have historically divided between a moderation position (small, occasional gambling as harmless entertainment) and an abstinence position (gambling as inherently unwise or sinful). Reformed writers have generally argued for abstinence.

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession has no chapter addressing gambling, and, unlike the Westminster Standards, it includes no commandment-by- commandment exposition of the moral law at all; Particular Baptist catechisms of the period, such as Benjamin Keach’s, followed the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s own structure rather than replacing it.2 The fullest confessional statement on the practice comes from the Westminster Larger Catechism, which Keach himself treated as carrying real authority alongside the Confession.2 Its exposition of the eighth commandment (“Thou shalt not steal”) lists what it forbids, closing with a cluster of sins against one’s own household: “idleness, prodigality, wasteful gaming; and all other ways whereby we do unduly prejudice our own outward estate, and defrauding ourselves of the due use and comfort of that estate which God hath given us.”3 Gambling, on this reading, is not chiefly theft from another but a wasting of what God has entrusted to the gambler himself.

Biblical Basis

Scripture mentions an act resembling gambling only once, when the soldiers at the cross “cast lots” for Jesus’s garments (Matt. 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:24), and even this is not gambling in the modern sense: no money changed hands on the strength of the outcome. Casting lots elsewhere in Scripture functioned as a method of seeking God’s own decision, not a means of acquiring money. Proverbs 16:33 states the principle: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” John Gill draws out the implication from the lot cast to expose Achan’s theft (Josh. 7:16-20): “what can be thought more a chance matter than the casting of a lot, how it will issue? and yet the issue, which is of God, is certain.”4 A practice aimed at discerning God’s will is a different thing from a practice aimed at winning money through chance.

Beyond that one narrow parallel, Scripture’s case against gambling is built from broader principles rather than a direct command. Proverbs 10:2 warns that “treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,” and gambling’s own inner logic runs against the biblical work ethic (Exod. 20:9; Prov. 12:11), seeking payment without rendering service. It also runs against the call to steward one’s resources carefully (Prov. 27:23; Luke 16:10-12), since gambling stakes what has been entrusted rather than tending it. Isaiah 65:11-12 condemns those who “prepare a table for Fortune,” reserving worship for a force believed to govern chance, the same instinct at work whenever a gambler looks to luck rather than to God for provision.

Objections and Responses

Isn’t recreational gambling just another form of entertainment, no different from a movie ticket or a theme-park ride? Branch argues the comparison fails because the risk is not comparable: “no one has started an accountability group for people whose lives are ruined by wholesome movies or roller coasters,” while gambling carries a real and recurring danger of addiction and financial ruin.1 The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates around two million American adults are gambling addicts, with another four to six million experiencing significant gambling-related problems, and poorer households consistently gamble a larger share of their income than wealthier ones.1

Doesn’t Scripture itself sanction chance-based decisions through casting lots, so gambling should likewise be permitted? The Bible’s own lots were never wagered for money; they were a recognized way of seeking God’s decision in a specific matter, as with Achan’s exposure or the assignment of priestly duties, not a method of personal enrichment.4 Modern gambling reverses the aim: instead of submitting a decision to God, it attempts to extract money from an artificially manufactured chance.

The Roman Catholic Catechism permits gambling in moderation. Isn’t that sufficient warrant? Rome’s position allows gambling so long as it does not deprive anyone of what they need, while still warning that “the passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement.”1 Reformed writers have generally treated that warning as reason enough to counsel against gambling altogether rather than merely against its excess, since the practice trades on covetousness by design. Thomas Watson makes the same connection to Achan: “Covetousness is the Root of Theft. Covetous Achan stole the Wedge of Gold.”5 Gambling stakes money in the hope of winning more without earning it, the very appetite Watson identifies as the root of theft, which is why the Westminster Larger Catechism places “wasteful gaming” under the eighth commandment rather than treating it as morally neutral recreation.3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. J. Alan Branch, 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), chap. 49, “Is It Ever Okay to Gamble?,” 212-215. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Alex Charles Scheiderer, “An Eternal Covenant” (PhD diss., 2022), chap. 3, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” discussing Keach’s reliance on the Westminster Confession and Larger Catechism as sources of some authority for Particular Baptists. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Larger Catechism (London, 1648), Q. 142. ↩ ↩2

  4. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book III, chap. 4, “Of the Providence of God.” ↩ ↩2

  5. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 384. ↩