A popular idea concerning fasting is that one should do it because it gets one’s mind off of the things of this world and helps one to concentrate only on God. While this may be true, this does not seem to be the primary purpose of fasting in scripture.

In the Old Testament true fasting is always done when catastrophe is either imminent or just befallen God’s people. In this passage God reprimands his people for a ‘false fasting’, a fasting that is purely a false piety; going through the motions of self-deprivation in order to somehow make one more spiritually acceptable to God. This, I fear, is a very popular understanding of fasting in Christian circles. It is a protestant vestige of the worst sides of medieval monasticism–the life of self-inflicted physical torment in an attempt to purge sin and gain God’s favor.

First, what is the purpose of true fasting? When the people of Israel fasted it was always an act of repentance. It was a turning from sin and all that is worldly, confessing absolute helplessness before God and beseeching his mercy. Examples of this are the fast of David when his first son to Bathsheba was dying, and Mordekai’s fast when he heard of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews.

In the Old Testament eating was a joyful communion. To describe the land which God had promised his people, the land where they would be his people and he would be their God, where they would be free from slavery, food was used; it was the land “flowing with milk and honey.” The Passover meal is also an example of food used as a means to be unified with God’s salvation. Notice that in both of these cases the food and the communion it denotes are gifts from God used to establish and sustain his relationship with his people as it was intended to be. So when a Hebrew abstained from food it was an admission that all between him and God was not as it should be, that they were not in communion with God as he desired, that it was their fault, and that they were suffering the consequences. To be truly contrite one must set aside all pretenses and be honest. The problem is that humans have a really hard time doing this, and nothing gets their attention like a growling stomach. It’s hard to be arrogant and nonchalant before God when on hasn’t had food all day. In other words, fasting was not the people’s tool of getting God’s attention and showing him how penitent they were; it was God’s tool of helping people experience their own worthlessness and helplessness before him in sin. Just as prayer is God’s means of conforming our will to his, so fasting is God’s means of bringing us into a more genuinely humble and Christ-like relationship with him.

But it doesn’t stop there; In repentance we are not just turning away from sin, but we are also turning to the joyous communion of his love. Otherwise it’s not repentance, it’s just asceticism.

Isaiah 58:6-7 says: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

This is indicative of the purpose of fasting from God’s perspective. Repentance is meant to be a turning from sin to a life of love by the power of God’s spirit. There is nothing that Satan would like more than for us to get so caught up in berating our own sinfulness that we lose sight of Christ and become consumed in the arrogance that is the display of penitence. This was the problem that the Israelites had. They were doing the show of penitence without the turning of repentance. Though they claimed to be sorry for their sin by scorning their bodies and abstaining from food, they showed that at heart they remained only interested in themselves, not caring for the poor; not living the sacrificial life in communion with the loving life of God. True fasting only began in the abstention from food. The deprivation caused one to humble himself before God in recognition of his nothingness, seeking to be filled with all that God is: the joyful pouring out of his life for the good of others.

Still, with this understanding it is easy for us to make a sort of obligation or law out of fasting, seeing it as a useful addition to our spiritual lives that may improve our concentration in prayer and sharpen our focus on God. While this may be true it is most crucial that we understand the gift that is to be found in fasting for those who are in Christ.

The apostle Paul speaks of filling up in his body through his suffering what was lacking in Christ (Colossians 1:24). “What could possibly be lacking in Christ?” you might ask. What we recieve in Christ is new life which gives the power to live lives of sacrificial love. This is his freedom. However, coming to faith or growing up in the faith of Christ does not guarantee that you will be filled with perfect love. Rather it is a sanctifying process where Christ conforms our wills to his as we grow in maturity. This is a painful process because the sinful nature is kicking and screaming the whole time. This pain is not only akin to the pain that Christ suffered on the cross for our sins, but for those who are in Christ and who are striving for a communion with him, that pain and suffering is a participation with Christ’s suffering. Just as unification with Christ’s death through baptism allows us to partake in the power of his resurrection, so the suffering that we face when living in Christ is a continual baptism into his suffering which gives us his humility to live lives full of sacrificial love.

Christ is our penitant. He repented not of his own sins, but of ours, living a life of self-denial so that God’s gift of his eternal life might be given to man. This is a true fast. It is therefore appropriate that he fast for forty days, the said maximum amount of time that a human can fast before he begins to die, right after he was baptized into his ministry. In other words, as the second Adam, in order for him to live a life of service culminating in the sacrifice of his life as the sacrifice for all people, he must repent of the sin of the Adam, confessing that humanity was not in joyous communion with God as he had desired and originally created it to be. He then pours himself out to the last drop of divine life, showing in one and the same act the nature of mans sin, i.e. death, and the nature of true communion with God, i.e. sacrificial love. And uniting us with the death of death and therefore the life of God, he brings us into communion with his life; his rest of loving sacrifice as it is given in the Last Supper.

So when we approach fasting it should not be with gloom and sadness, nor should it end with our pious prayers for spirituality. Rather we should put oil on our heads and wash our faces, as Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, and then reach out to our neighbor in love, for we are just preparing for the feast of what God will give in his life!