To abstain, in Scripture, is to deliberately hold oneself back from something by an act of the will aligned with holy purpose. It is not passive avoidance but active, Spirit-empowered restraint. The Apostles' decree at Jerusalem commanded Gentile believers to "abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood" (Acts 15:20). Paul commands abstinence from every form of evil (1 Thess 5:22). Peter urges believers, as sojourners, to abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against the soul (1 Pet 2:11). Biblical abstinence is not asceticism for its own sake but the fruit of a mind set on things above — a deliberate no to lesser things in service of a greater yes to God.
ABSTAIN, v.i. [L. abstineo; abs and teneo, to hold.] To forbear, or refrain from, voluntarily; to forbear from indulgence of appetite; as, to abstain from fleshly lusts; to abstain from the use of ardent spirits. It implies a desire to indulge, but a voluntary restraint. Distinguished from abstinence which denotes the practice, and from continence which denotes the habit.
The modern age has reframed abstinence as deprivation, repression, or pharisaical legalism. Sexual abstinence before marriage is mocked as naïve. Fasting is replaced by "clean eating aesthetics." The culture insists that any restraint of appetite is psychologically harmful — that self-denial equals self-destruction. But Scripture reverses this: it is indulgence that destroys the soul. "Fleshly lusts war against the soul" (1 Pet 2:11). To abstain is not weakness but strength — the mastery of self under God's authority. The man who cannot say no to his appetites is not free; he is enslaved.
PIE *ten- ("to stretch, extend, hold")
→ Latin tenēre ("to hold, keep")
→ abstinēre ("to hold away from")
→ Old French abstenir → English "abstain"
Greek:
ἀπέχεσθαι (apechesthai, from apechō)
→ ἀπό (apo, "away from") + ἔχω (echō, "to have, hold")
→ "to hold oneself away from, keep at a distance"
→ Used in Acts 15:20, 1 Thess 5:22, 1 Pet 2:11
Hebrew:
חָשַׁךְ (ḥāśaḵ) — to withhold, hold back, restrain (Gen 22:16, Job 7:11)
נָזַר (nāzar) — to separate oneself, consecrate (root of Nazirite vow, Num 6)
• 1 Peter 2:11 — "Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul."
• 1 Thessalonians 5:22 — "Abstain from every form of evil."
• Acts 15:20 — "Abstain from things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality…"
• Romans 14:21 — "It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble."
• 1 Corinthians 9:25 — "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things."
G0567 — apechomai (ἀπέχεσθαι): to hold oneself away from, abstain; used in Acts 15:20, 1 Thess 5:22, 1 Pet 2:11.
H5144 — nāzar (נָזַר): to separate, consecrate, abstain; root of the Nazirite vow.
H2820 — ḥāśaḵ (חָשַׁךְ): to hold back, withhold, restrain; used of God withholding Abraham's hand (Gen 22:12).
• "Fasting is not God asking us to go hungry — it is God asking us to prove that we can rule our appetites."
• "To abstain from sexual immorality is not to deny the goodness of sexuality but to honor the covenant in which it belongs."
• "The Nazirite vow illustrates that voluntary abstinence, when consecrated to God, becomes a powerful act of worship."