Should Christians Celebrate Lent What is Lent? Is Lent Biblical?

Today's episode covers the history of Lent and explores whether Christians should celebrate it. John Piper, Charles Spurgeon, Tim Challies and others weigh in (via quotes)

This will be more of a pop-history overview, and not a deep dive, but that should be sufficient for most who are curious about the origins of Lent, or are unfamiliar with its practice.

First, and this is pretty important, Lent is NOT a mandated biblical practice, BUT in many ways it has roots in biblical practices, and many wings of the Christian church have been practicing Lent, or Lent-like observances since at least the second or third century, possibly earlier, but the word Lent itself is first mentioned by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, though the way they mention it, it is clear that this is an accepted practice of the church at the time. In other words, the first extant mention of Lent is 325 AD, but the church had been observing Lent for quite some time before that.

Second, what does the word even mean? Has somebody borrowed something? Not at all. Lent comes from an old English word, lencten, which stood for the spring season…that word seems to come from a word that could potentially mean long, as in longer days, which begins to happen in the Spring season. In other languages, like Greek and Latin, the word for Lent Tessarakostí and quadragesima, indicates 40 - as in the 40 days before Easter.

Also, why does Lent start today when today, Ash Wednesday is not 40 days before Easter, but FORTY-SIX? Well the answer lies in church history, and the practice of the early church to FEAST on Sundays. In 601, Pope Gregory I moved the beginning of Lent to 46 days before Easter, allowing for the usual 40 days of fasting plus six Sundays of feasting when the rules of fasting did not apply. Into modernity, the Lenten season is 46, rather than 40 days, and most suspend fasting on Sundays. Further, most Christians who observe Lent do not do a complete fast. In the early church, Christians might have fasted from meat, or rich foods, or richly seasoned foods. Many today fast until sundown. Almost nobody does a complete food fast, as the one that Jesus did in the wilderness.