Should Christians observe Lent?

The Bible does not require any Christian to observe Lent: it neither commands it nor forbids it. Those who keep it voluntarily, as a discipline for turning the heart toward Christ, act in freedom, and so do those who do not. What Scripture rejects is turning Lent into a requirement for being accepted by God, or into a reason to judge a brother or sister.

Is Lent in the Bible?

No. The word never appears in Scripture, and no text tells the church to set aside forty days of fasting or penitence before Easter. The apostles left no calendar of that kind.

The number forty, however, is biblical, and early Christian writers associated it with the custom. Moses spent forty days on the mountain with the Lord (Exodus 24:18; 34:28), Elijah traveled forty days to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8), and Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness before he was tempted (Matthew 4:1-2). Each of these was lived by one person at a particular point in God’s plan. In none of them does the text say that God’s people are to repeat the period every year.

That separates two things that often travel together. Fasting is a practice the Bible knows and recommends. Lent is a later custom that arranges fasting and penitence into a calendar.

How did Lent develop in church history?

The broad picture is known, but historians debate the exact dates, so caution is wise. Christians were already fasting before Easter in the earliest centuries, though not uniformly. In the late second century, Irenaeus of Lyon reminded the bishop of Rome that churches differed even over the length of that fast: some kept one day, others two or more.

The earliest reference to a period of forty days is usually sought in the fourth century. The Council of Nicaea (325) mentions the τεσσαρακοστή (tessarakostē, “fortieth”) when setting the timing of bishops’ meetings, and scholars debate whether the term already meant the pre-Easter fast as we know it. Over that century, several writers begin to speak of forty days of preparation for Easter, with counts and rules that varied from region to region, including as a season of instruction for candidates for baptism.

The rite of ashes and Ash Wednesday are later still and took shape in the Middle Ages. In the sixteenth-century Reformation, compulsory food rules were challenged: in Zurich in 1522, Zwingli argued that Scripture imposes no such restrictions.

Today the Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist churches, among others, keep Lent on the calendar. In those traditions it is a practice of the church calendar, not a commandment drawn from Scripture, and its strictness varies widely from one tradition to another. In the Baptist tradition, Lent is not imposed, and many Baptist and other evangelical churches traditionally do not observe it, though some now use it as a season of preparation for Easter.

What do Jesus and Paul teach about fasting and special days?

Jesus assumes his disciples will fast: he speaks of when they fast, not if. But he corrects the motive. Fasting is not a showcase for spirituality; it is done before the Father, who sees in secret (Matthew 6:16-18). In Matthew 9:14-15, he says that after the bridegroom is taken away, his disciples will fast. The prophets had already warned that the fast God wants is more than going without food: it involves justice, sharing with the needy, and a broken heart (Isaiah 58:6-7; Joel 2:12-13).

On special days and seasons, Paul does not speak of Lent, which did not yet exist, but the principle he teaches applies. In Romans 14:5-6, he acknowledges that one person considers a day holier than others while another considers all days alike, and he asks each to be fully convinced in his or her own mind and to act for the Lord. In Romans 14:3, he asks the one who abstains not to judge the one who does not, and the one who does not abstain not to despise the one who does. In Colossians 2:16-17, he says no one is to judge believers over food, drink, festivals, or special days, which are a shadow while the reality belongs to Christ. In Colossians 2:20-23, he warns that imposed rules of abstinence have the appearance of wisdom but no value against the desires of the flesh. And in Galatians 4:9-11, in the context of pressure to adopt the law as a condition of acceptance, he fears for believers who were taking up the observance of days, months, seasons, and years as though that would make them acceptable to God.

Is Lent pagan? And does it earn merit?

There are two misunderstandings, one at each extreme. The first says Lent is a pagan invention, tied, for example, to Babylonian worship of Tammuz. The claim circulates in some circles, but the historical sources do not support it: the earliest records show Christians fasting before Easter to remember Christ’s passion. A custom can be optional without being idolatrous, and accusing fellow believers of paganism without historical basis builds no one up.

The second misunderstanding is the opposite: thinking that giving something up for forty days stores up merit or buys forgiveness. Salvation is by grace, through faith, in Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), and his sacrifice was sufficient once for all (Hebrews 10:12-14). Giving up chocolate, meat, or social media does not, by itself, draw anyone nearer to God; what counts is what goes in its place, and why.

There is a third, subtler error: assuming that those who do not keep Lent are less spiritual. Nothing in Scripture supports that. Every day of the Christian life is a day of repentance and resurrection, because the believer lives from the cross and the empty tomb, not from a season of the year.

If I want to keep Lent, how do I avoid legalism?

Anyone who decides to keep Lent can do so as a voluntary and healthy discipline, provided a few things are watched:

• Choose it by conviction, not group pressure (Romans 14:5).
• Put something in place of what you give up: prayer, reading the passion accounts in the Gospels, reconciling with someone, generosity toward the poor (Isaiah 58:6-7).
• Keep it free of display (Matthew 6:16-18). Do not announce the sacrifice or expect the same of others.
• Care for your health. Someone who is ill, pregnant, or has a history of an eating disorder should not fast from food and can choose a different form of abstinence.
• Do not treat fasting as a bargaining chip: it prepares the heart, but it does not oblige God to act.
• End in the joy of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Those who prefer not to keep Lent need feel no guilt. They can cultivate the same focus on Christ throughout the year, through the Lord’s Supper, Sunday worship, fasting when the Spirit leads, and steady reading of Scripture. In local churches where Lent is not the norm, leaders may invite and teach the meaning of the practice, but should avoid imposing it as a requirement of conscience (Romans 14:5), since each believer answers to the Lord according to his or her own conviction.

Kept or not, the center stays the same: Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Lent serves that center when it points to it, and loses its purpose when it takes its place.