Fasting
What is Fasting?
FAST, FASTING. Fasting is the deliberate, temporary abstention from food for religious reasons. In the biblical material, fasting is total abstention, and is thus to be distinguished both from permanent food restrictions, like those against unclean animals, and also from occasional abstention from certain foods, like meat on Fridays, a practice adopted by the later Christian Church.
Thus, in the background to the NT one finds widespread approval of voluntary fasting as a mark of religious devotion, as well as the almost spontaneous rise of individual and communal asceticism. “Fasting like a Jew” had become proverbial in the Roman world of the first century (Suet. Aug. 76).
28 So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,
“ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and
“ ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”
7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
“ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God
and him only shall you serve.’ ”
11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
