57. Eph_5:18
Ephesians 5:18, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” In this place, oinosmost probably designates an intoxicating liquor. The word translated excess is asōtia, literally unsavableness. It is a word compounded of a, privative or negative, and sōzo, to save, and thus defined by the lexicon, “The disposition and the life of one who is asōtos, abandoned, recklessly debauched, profligacy, dissoluteness, debauchery.” Ephesians 5:18; Titus 1:6; 1 Peter 4:4. The apostle here contrasts inebriating wine and the Holy Spirit. He warns men against the wine, and exhorts them to be filled with the Spirit. “He presents a practical antithesis between fullness of wine and fullness of the Divine Spirit; not an antithesis between one state of fullness and another—mere effects—but an antithesis pointing to an intrinsic contrariety of nature and operation, between the sources of such fullness, viz., inebriating wine and the Holy Spirit”—Bib. Com. p. 353. The excess does not, then, so much apply to the quantity of wine used as to the mental and moral condition of the person; since the word asōtia denotes such entire dissoluteness of mind and heart as to forbid the hope of salvation. The apostle properly warns the Ephesian converts against the feasts of Bacchus, where the votaries were made mad by wine and debauching songs; but, in contrast, exhorts them to be filled with the Spirit; and, instead of the noisy, silly talk and songs of the bacchanalians, to manifest their joy and happiness in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, thus making melody in their hearts unto the Lord.
Olshausen, referring to Luke 1:15, thus comments: “Man feels the want of a strengthening through spiritual influences from without; instead of seeking for these in the Holy Spirit, he, in his blindness, has recourse to the natural spirit, that is, to wine and strong drinks. Therefore, according to the point of view of the Law, the Old Testament recommends abstinence from wine and strong drinks, in order to preserve the soul free from all merely natural influences, and by that means to make it more susceptible of the operations of the Holy Spirit.” The soul filled with the Holy Spirit will not crave an intoxicating beverage to cheer and enliven.