“They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that God created to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, since it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer.”
In my last post, I took a slight detour to write about the connections between Gnosticism and postmodernism and how they both deny objective truth. Today we are going to put verse three back into the context of the whole passage.
As a reminder, Paul is warning Timothy that there will be false teachers. He has already written about false teachers earlier in the letter. At the very beginning, he reminds Timothy that one of the reasons that he wanted him to remain in Ephesus was “So that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine…” (1:3). Paul had warned the elders when he left Ephesus to be on guard for both them and for the flock. “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will rise up even from your own number and distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for three years I never stopped warning each one of you with tears” (Acts 20:29-31).
Here’s the thing. Many of these false teachers came from within the church. They used teachings that were familiar to the church. The false teachers were trying to make it look like they were holier than everyone else by abstaining from things that God clearly has declared good.
First, they forbid marriage. There wasn’t very much commentary I could find on why they would forbid marriage. John Barry writes in The Faithlife Study Bible, “Those who forbade marriage promoted a type of asceticism that seems to have promoted celibacy for anyone seeking a holy life.” Remember what I wrote about the Gnostics in my last post. They believe the spirit is good and matter is evil. Therefore, marriage must be abstained from. But what does the Bible teach? Genesis 2:24 says, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” Jesus quotes this passage in Matthew 19 when discussing marriage and divorce with the Pharisees. Marriage is God’s beautiful design.
What about food? These teachers demand abstinence from food. There were many dietary laws in the Old Testament. Some of these laws for the Jews included not eating unclean animals such as pigs and rabbits. They were not allowed to eat shellfish. These laws were to set Israel apart from surrounding nations. We do not know if these teachers were trying to reestablish these laws or to enforce a more gnostic asceticism. Either way, Paul clearly states that the teaching is false. Paul writes to Timothy that these things were created by God and are to be received with gratitude. He goes on to say, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, since it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer.”
This isn’t the first place that Paul has encountered a heresy involving food. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul warns them, “Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ” (2:8). He goes on to tell them, “Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ” (2:16-17). Then he gets to the crux of the matter. “If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines. Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence” (2:20-23). These rules, and the rules of any false teacher, appear to be wise, but they are self-made religion, promote false humility, and are not of any value.
Paul was a Pharisee before his conversion and would have been well versed in Old Testament scripture. When he writes, “For everything created by God is good”, he is certainly referring to the Genesis account where God created plants and animals for us. “God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day” (Genesis 1:29-31). And after the Flood: “Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything” (Genesis 9:3).
Let’s briefly look at how all food was declared clean and why these false teachers are imposing something that God does not require. First, Jesus told His disciples, “Are you also as lacking in understanding? Don’t you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into the stomach and is eliminated” (thus he declared all foods clean)” (Mark 7:18-19). Later in Acts, after Jesus’ resurrection and as the Church was forming, Peter has a vision of a sheet with all the four-footed animals, reptiles, and birds on it. “A voice said to him, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ’No, Lord!’ Peter said. ‘For I have never eaten anything impure and ritually unclean.’ Again, a second time, the voice said to him, ‘What God has made clean, do not call impure.’” (Acts 10:13-15).
There are sects today within Christianity which demand their adherents follow dietary guidelines. A well-known one is Seventh Day Adventism, which is vegetarian based. While they claim that this is biblical, the main reason is because of their founder Ellen White and a vision that she had. Ellen White has several other controversial teachings such as her teaching that Sunday Sabbath observance is linked with the mark of the beast in the end times, her strong emphasis on law keeping (which undermines justification by faith alone), and something called the Investigative Judgment, which is the ongoing heavenly review of believers. None of these are biblical and mark her as a false teacher.
Another sect is the Hebrew Roots movement. This is a movement that gained popularity in the late 1990s. They believe that the moral, ceremonial, and dietary laws of the Old Testament were not abolished for believers in Jesus. We had a couple at our church before we moved who got caught up in this. They celebrated all the Jewish festivals and tried to follow the dietary laws. It is exhausting (not to mention impossible) to keep the law perfectly. Paul’s letter to the Galatians makes this clear. Our salvation is in Christ alone, not by the law.
We must remember that there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation. “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). We also do not want to make the mistake of thinking that if we give something up for God, He will do something for us. David Guzik writes this in his Enduring Word Commentary. “We often think that if we sacrifice something for God (such as the right to marry or eat certain foods), then He owes us something. This is legalism at its worst; trying to manipulate God into giving us something. The idea is that we can make God indebted to us, make Him our servant and make ourselves His master. In this we fulfill the original doctrine of demons- that we should be gods.”
There are so many false teachings today, just as there always have been. While there have always been false teachings, today, they seem to spread so much quicker. According to the International Telecommunication Union, about 74% of the global population has internet access. That is crazy to me! But it is true, and it allows false teaching to spread faster than ever before. And while I can’t cover every false teaching, I can cover the basic teachings of Christianity. My next post will be on the essential teachings of our faith.
Grace be with you!
Abundant Joy 