📖 Biblical Definition
Gluttony is the habitual excess in eating or drinking that reveals a heart enslaved to bodily appetite rather than surrendered to God. Scripture treats gluttony not merely as overeating but as a spiritual disorder — the worship of the belly. The Hebrew zolel (Deuteronomy 21:20, Proverbs 23:21) links the glutton with the drunkard and the wasteful son, marking this sin as one of rebellion against parental and divine authority.
In the New Testament, Paul identifies those whose "god is their belly" (Philippians 3:19) — using the Greek koilia (κοιλία) to describe people who have made physical appetite their supreme authority. Gluttony is one expression of the flesh warring against the spirit (Galatians 5:16-17), and it stands in direct opposition to the fruit of the Spirit called enkrateia (εγκράτεια) — self-control.
The early church fathers consistently listed gluttony among the chief sins because it is the gateway appetite: if a man cannot govern his stomach, he will govern nothing else. Fasting exists in Scripture precisely as the antidote — the voluntary subjection of the body to the lordship of Christ.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Webster defines gluttony as excess in eating, treating it as a moral failure of self-governance.
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GLUT'TONY, n. Excess in eating; extravagant indulgence of the appetite for food. It is a vice that leads to many other vices.
Noah Webster understood what modernity has forgotten: gluttony is not a medical condition to be managed but a vice that opens the door to further moral degradation. When you cannot say "no" to your stomach, you will not say "no" to anything.
📖 Key Scripture
• Proverbs 23:20-21 — "Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty."
• Philippians 3:19 — "Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."
• Deuteronomy 21:20 — "This our son is stubborn and rebellious... he is a glutton, and a drunkard."
• 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost... ye are not your own."
• 1 Corinthians 9:27 — "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Gluttony has been removed from the moral vocabulary and replaced with clinical euphemisms that absolve the will.
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The modern world has performed a remarkable disappearing act: it has erased gluttony from the list of sins entirely. What the Bible calls a vice, the culture calls a "food relationship." What Scripture calls bondage, the self-help industry calls "emotional eating." What Paul called minding earthly things, Instagram calls "foodie culture."
The "body positivity" movement, while rightly opposing cruelty, has been co-opted to make any discussion of self-control over appetite into a form of bigotry. To suggest that a person should govern their consumption is labeled "fatphobic" — a word engineered to shut down the very concept of bodily stewardship that Scripture commands.
Meanwhile, the food industry spends billions engineering products specifically designed to override your self-control mechanisms — and then the medical industry sells you the pharmaceutical fix. Neither industry has any interest in the biblical answer: fasting, self-denial, and the recognition that your body belongs to God, not to your appetites.
The church itself has largely surrendered this ground. Gluttony is the one "deadly sin" that no pastor will preach against, because the pews (and sometimes the pulpit) are full of it. But Scripture makes no such exception. If your belly is your god, it does not matter how orthodox your theology is — you are an idolater.
Usage
• "The church will preach against every sin except gluttony, because gluttony showed up to the potluck."
• "A man who cannot push back from the table will not push back against temptation in any other area of his life."
• "Fasting is not a spiritual diet plan — it is the declaration that Christ, not your appetite, sits on the throne."