Wine in the Bible: What Does Wine Represent? Joy, Christ’s Blood and Judgment

In the Bible wine means joy and blessing above all, and it also stands for the covenant sealed in Christ’s blood and for judgment, which the prophets picture as a cup of wine the wicked must drink. The same Scriptures that praise “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15) also warn that “wine is a mocker” (Proverbs 20:1).

Most of those meanings come together around a table. Wine filled the waterpots at a wedding in Cana, Jesus lifted the cup at the Last Supper, and there he promised to drink it again “new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Whenever we take the cup, we are looking toward that meal.

What wine stands for	Key passage	In the King James Version
Joy and God’s blessing	Psalm 104:15	“wine that maketh glad the heart of man”
The covenant and Christ’s blood	Matthew 26:28	“this is my blood of the new testament”
God’s judgment	Jeremiah 25:15	“the wine cup of this fury”
The feast to come	Isaiah 25:6	“a feast of wines on the lees”
A warning	Proverbs 20:1	“Wine is a mocker”

Psalm 104 praises God for the grass he grows for cattle and the food he brings out of the earth, and it names wine among those gifts, beside oil and bread: “wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart” (Psalm 104:15). So the psalm says wine is given for gladness, and Ecclesiastes says the same: “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works” (Ecclesiastes 9:7).

When God’s favour rested on someone, it showed in plenty of wine. When Isaac blessed Jacob, he asked God to give him “the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine” (Genesis 27:28); corn, in the King James English, means grain. Moses promised that God would bless “thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil” in the land he had promised their fathers (Deuteronomy 7:13), and there grain, wine and oil stand together as the harvest of a land God has blessed. Oil and wine were medicine too: the Good Samaritan bound up the wounded man’s wounds, “pouring in oil and wine” (Luke 10:34).

Some of that wine was given back to God. With the lamb offered every morning went “the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering”, and the evening lamb had the same (Exodus 29:39–41).

The prophets used the same picture for the day God restores his people. Amos foresaw a harvest so heavy that “the mountains shall drop sweet wine”, when the exiles “shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof” (Amos 9:13–14). Isaiah promised a banquet for every nation: “in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees” (Isaiah 25:6).

Wine stands for his blood because Jesus said so over the cup at the Last Supper: “And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:27–28). Mark and Luke record the same words in their own form, and Paul passes them on to the church at Corinth: “this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:25).

The word testament here means covenant. When God made his covenant with Israel, Moses took the blood of the sacrifice, “sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you” (Exodus 24:8). The Letter to the Hebrews quotes him as saying “This is the blood of the testament” (Hebrews 9:20), calls Jesus “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebrews 9:15), and quotes Jeremiah’s promise of “a new covenant with the house of Israel” (Jeremiah 31:31; Hebrews 8:8). The cup links Jesus’ death to that covenant: the first was sealed with the blood of sacrifices, the new one with his own.

Long before the Last Supper, Scripture spoke of wine as blood. Jacob’s blessing on Judah pictures a man who “washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes” (Genesis 49:11), and the Song of Moses reminds Israel, “thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape” (Deuteronomy 32:14).

Jesus also turned the cup toward the future: “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). So the cup looks back to his death and forward to a meal in the kingdom. Paul holds both in one sentence: “as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

The cup of God’s wrath is the prophets’ picture of judgment, in which God hands the guilty a cup of wine and they drink until they reel. God told Jeremiah, “Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them” (Jeremiah 25:15–16). A psalm puts the cup in God’s own hand: “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture… but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them” (Psalm 75:8).

Jerusalem drank from that cup too, and yet God could take the cup away. Isaiah calls to Jerusalem, “which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury”, and then gives God’s promise: “Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling… thou shalt no more drink it again” (Isaiah 51:17, 22).

In the last book of the Bible these images come together. Whoever worships the beast “shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation” (Revelation 14:10), and an angel casts “the vine of the earth” into “the great winepress of the wrath of God” (Revelation 14:19).

In Gethsemane Jesus spoke of his own suffering as a cup: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). When Peter drew a sword at his arrest, Jesus told him, “the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). The Gospels do not call it the cup of wrath; in their telling it is the suffering and death that lay ahead of him.

The Bible does not use wine as the name of a colour, so it gives no meaning to wine-red or burgundy as a shade. Where it mentions the colour of wine itself, the wine is red, and the passage gives the red its meaning. In the psalm of judgment “the wine is red” in the Lord’s cup (Psalm 75:8). In Proverbs it is a danger: “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup” (Proverbs 23:31). In Isaiah, the one who says “I have trodden the winepress alone” comes from Edom “red in thine apparel”, his garments “like him that treadeth in the winefat” (Isaiah 63:1–3).

At a wedding in Cana of Galilee, Jesus turned water into wine, and it was his first miracle. The wine had run out, and his mother told him, “They have no wine” (John 2:3). He had the servants fill “six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews” with water, and what they drew out and carried to the ruler of the feast was wine (John 2:6–9). Not knowing where it came from, the ruler told the bridegroom, “Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now” (John 2:10).

John does not explain the miracle, but he tells us what it did: “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him” (John 2:11). The Catholic Church reads it alongside the Eucharist. Its Catechism says, “The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus’ glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father’s kingdom, where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ.” There is more on why Jesus chose this miracle in water into wine.

The Last Supper was a Passover meal: the disciples asked Jesus where he wanted “to eat the passover”, and “they made ready the passover” (Matthew 26:17–19). Luke mentions two cups at the Last Supper, one before the bread and “the cup after supper” (Luke 22:17–20). Jewish law also gives wine its place at Passover: the Mishnah, compiled about AD 200, tells those who hand out charity not to give even the poorest person fewer than “four cups of wine for the Festival meal of Passover night” (Pesachim 10:1).

Paul calls the Christian cup “the cup of blessing which we bless” and asks, “is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). In the third century Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, wrote against those who offered water alone in the cup, and explained why wine and water belong together in it: “in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ.”

Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican and Baptist Christians all take the cup from Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, “this is my blood”, but they differ on what the cup becomes, and each says so in its own words.

Church	What the cup is	Where it says so
Catholic	The wine becomes Christ’s blood (transubstantiation)	Catechism 1376
Orthodox	Christ’s true blood, mystically present	Orthodox Church in America
Lutheran	Christ’s true blood “under the bread and wine”	Small Catechism
Presbyterian	Christ’s blood present to faith “spiritually”	Westminster Confession 29
Anglican	“a partaking of the Blood of Christ”	Article 28
Baptist	A “symbolic act” remembering his death	Baptist Faith and Message

The Catholic Church teaches that “at the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ’s Body and Blood.” Its Catechism quotes the Council of Trent: “by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change… of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”

The Orthodox Church gives Communion “in both forms—bread and wine”. The Orthodox Church in America describes it as “the real presence of Christ, His true Body and Blood mystically present in the bread and wine which are offered to the Father in his name and consecrated by the divine Spirit of God.” It denies that the gifts are “merely intellectual or psychological symbols”, yet still calls them mysteries and symbols, because in Orthodox teaching the real and the symbolic are not opposed.

Luther’s Small Catechism, in the Lutheran Book of Concord, says the sacrament “is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.”

The Westminster Confession, the standard of Presbyterian churches, teaches that worthy receivers “spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified”, the body and blood of Christ “being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers”.

The Church of England’s Articles of Religion teach that to those who “rightly, worthily, and with faith” receive the Supper, “the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”

The Baptist Faith and Message, the Southern Baptist Convention’s confession of 2000, calls the Lord’s Supper “a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.” Its “fruit of the vine” is Jesus’ own phrase at the Last Supper.

The Bible condemns drunkenness plainly and more than once: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). Proverbs asks: “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions?… who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine… At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Proverbs 23:29–32). Isaiah pronounces woe on those who “rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them” (Isaiah 5:11). After the flood Noah planted a vineyard, “And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent” (Genesis 9:20–21). Paul names “drunkenness, revellings” among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19–21) and tells the Ephesians, “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess” (Ephesians 5:18).

So Scripture praises wine and condemns drunkenness. Whether a Christian may drink at all is another question, and it is answered in is drinking alcohol a sin.

Scripture does not call wine a sign of the Holy Spirit directly, though two passages set wine and the Spirit side by side, and in both they stand in contrast. Paul’s warning to the Ephesians ends with the Spirit: “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

The second passage is Pentecost. The apostles “were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues” (Acts 2:4), and some in the crowd mocked, “These men are full of new wine”. Peter answered, “these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel… I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:13–17).

At Cana the ruler of the feast told the bridegroom he had kept the good wine “until now” (John 2:10), and the greatest feast is still ahead of us. Isaiah promised it on God’s mountain, where “the Lord of hosts” will “make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees” (Isaiah 25:6), and Jesus told his disciples he would drink the cup new with them “in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29).

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• Is drinking alcohol a sin? What the Bible says about drinking
• Water into wine: why Jesus chose this miracle
• Did Jesus drink wine?
• Vineyards in the Bible
• Calvinism vs Lutheranism: the Lord’s Supper and other differences
• 22 Bible verses about alcohol and drunkenness