As we come to I Tim. 4 Paul segues from talking about the glorious Church and its message at the tail end of Chapter 3 to writing about the fact that this glorious church of the living God which is the pillar and ground of truth is still beset with problems in its midst. This reminds us that while the Church is magnificent there remain in even the very best of church tares among the wheat. Here in I Tim. 4 St. Paul moves to some of those tare problems that Timothy is going to have to deal with.
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, 3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is [l]sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Here we find a compact unit and as a brief overview we note that we see an indication that apostasy is coming — an apostasy driven by deceiving spirits spreading the doctrine of demons. These deceiving spirits use hypocritical lying false teachers whose consciences have been seared to mediate the doctrine of demons. These doctrine of demons are what will come to be known as Gnosticism which in the 1st century required abstention from marriage and certain foods. All of this is in contradiction to the fact that God created everything to be received with thanksgiving. St. Paul under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration teaches the truth of God’s good creation — the purpose which is to provide for people’s needs.
In this passage the Holy Spirit reminds us that not all who belong to the Church outwardly belong to the church inwardly. Not all that glitters is gold. There are those who will apostatize. Of these types the Holy Spirit teaches in I John
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
The fact that some depart from the faith does not mean that some were once in Christ and then decided to no longer be in Christ. It means that some covenantally identified with the Church — God’s people — and now because they never were in Christ have ceased being covenantally identified with God’s people. They have apostatized.
Now, St. Paul knew that this was coming because the Spirit had explicitly stated it. A mere 1/2 dozen years ago this same Paul addressing the Elders of the Church in Ephesus were Timothy is Pastoring said,
“I know that after my departure ravenous wolves will enter among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”
A few years after that warning Paul can write in Col. 2 as from a Roman prison warning the congregations who were to receive that circular letter against the error that faith in Christ’s atoning work had to be supplemented by the same type of ascetic beliefs and practices that he will speak of as going on here in Ephesus.
Now these were problems that existed in the latter times they were living in but they are not problems that are necessarily unique to those specific latter times. We deal with these same types of things today as we will see in a few minutes.
From writing to them of what the Spirit has explicitly said about apostasy the Apostle turns to the cause of this coming Apostasy.
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons… I Tim. 4:1
The Scripture hear reminds us how important it is for each of us to pray earnestly that we would given discernment in who and what we listen to. It is altogether too easy to give heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons as mediated to us by hypocritical liars.
Today we hear frequently about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation and that often from people who would have us believe their own misinformation. The Scripture here underscores the reality that in our information age we live in times festooned with hypocritical liars who are conveying the information of deceiving spirits resulting in a church that is often properly characterized as embracing doctrines of demons.
More often than not these hypocritical liars that Paul speaks of here today are the clergy. In his own time the hypocritical liars were likewise men who thought of themselves as clergy types. These are men who are supposed to be feeding and leading the flock but instead they come in and do great damage. Our churches today are populated by these men today in legions. And so we must have our radar up for them.
However, here St. Paul reminds us that error ultimately stems from deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons. There is something simple here that we can not miss. Ultimately error is put into the life blood of a person and/or people not by bad ideology or by being infected by bad ideas by themselves.
Ultimately, we are taught here, error arises from spiritual realities. Here we are told that it is deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons that accounts for some departing from the faith.
Now I pause to point this out because the Reformed movement especially tends to see apostatizing and departure through the grid of theological and ideological errors. We tend to be very rational about it all dismissing the reality of the supernatural as existing behind the errors of theology and ideology.
We can fail to understand that while certainly theology and ideology are in play, that ultimately error arises from an active spiritual world that has an interest in stealing our faith. Satan does prowl around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
We see here that deceiving spirits exist and are the ultimate explanation why people embrace loopy and stupid ideology and theology. Dealing with people that are in error is not ultimately about getting them to change their theology and ideology. There has to be a understanding that it is not merely bad thinking that is going on but ultimately people’s bad thinking is accounted for because of the very active work of deceiving spirits communicating the doctrines of demons.
We see something of this in II Cor. 4:4 where we read;
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Reformed folk don’t tend to be especially good at making this connection. We tend to want to make everything about presuppositions, ideas, and worldviews forgetting that we wrestle against spiritualites and powers. It is true that we are in Worldview warfare but behind that Worldview warfare is a very real spiritual world that we are idiots if we don’t take into account.
Another thing we should note here though is that the deceiving spirits are conveying “doctrines of demons.” This brings us back to recognizing how important doctrine is to the Christian faith. Deceiving Spirits work to the end that we would own doctrines of demons. This reminds us how important it is to embrace sound doctrine. There is no Christianity where there is a distaste for sound doctrine because where sound doctrine is despised what will arise is the doctrine of demons. It is only the work of deceiving spirits that find Christians poo pooing the magnificent importance of the doctrines of the Bible and the Christian faith.
What we are suggesting here is that those who denigrate sound doctrine are themselves under the sway of deceiving spirits and have by their denigration of sound doctrine already embraced the doctrine of demons. Doctrines of demons specialize in convincing Christians that sound doctrine is unimportant.
This was clearly seen in something that Rev. Tim Keller said a few years ago. Keller, a huge influence in the Reformed world during his life, said;
“The Gospel of Christianity which is that you are not saved by good doctrine, not by your good works but by sheer unmerited grace. It pulls out the self righteousness and superiority that tends to go along with religious belief. “
Tim Keller
Let us briefly examine this doctrine of demons.
1.) I’m so confused. Isn’t this a doctrine that Tim is giving me … a doctrine that apparently I must be conversant with in order to be saved. Presumably it is even a good doctrine
If I’m not saved via good doctrine must I be saved via bad doctrine or am I saved with no doctrine? (which of course the advocacy of which would be a doctrine).
This diminishing of doctrine is NOT Christianity but is born of deceiving spirits resulting in Tim Keller owning the doctrine of Demons and Tim’s owning the doctrine of demons was seen in many of the doctrines the man held.
2.) Tim’s doctrine in the first sentence is obviously driving his self-righteousness as seen in his second sentence. Tim obviously views himself, because of his superior doctrine, as superior over those poor benighted Christians who believe that good doctrine is related to salvation.
Little flock … take heed to your doctrine. Be in much prayer that the Lord Christ would make you grow in His doctrine. Do not be fooled by deceiving spirits parlaying doctrines of demons through hypocritical liars.
In I Timothy 4 St. Paul is making war specifically on Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the doctrine that suggests that the more one withdraws from the creational world (or ironically the more one excesses in the creational world) the more Holy one is. In this text Paul specifically mentions hypocritical liars who are deceiving people about the goodness of food and marriage. Food and marriage touch two of the most basic human instincts (life and sex). In the 1st century latter times Gnostic teachers were convincing people that the less connected people were with the physical corporeal world the more exemplary and holy they were. St. Paul slices and dices the godless apostates by reminding Timothy that “everything that God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”
Now today we still have the Gnostics among us. We still have those who want to suggest that the created world is somehow not to be recognized and/or enjoyed by God’s people. There are those who have imported Gnosticism into the Reformed church by suggesting that some significant creational categories disappear upon redemption. It is nothing but the gasses of Gnosticism that suggest that ethnicity and race are not important for Christians. It is Gnosticism that finds clergy saying things like “race is a social construct” or that “race doesn’t really exist.” We are living with the same Gnostic impulse that Paul viciously rips apart in I Timothy 4. The only difference is that while the 1st century Gnostics were making their appeal in their prohibition of food and marriage our current Gnostics make their appeal to the prohibition of affirming genuine differences between peoples as well as the modern Gnostic prohibition of recognizing the creational distinctions between male and female as seen in their welcoming women to serve as Deacons, Elders, and Pastors in God’s Church. The embrace of New Age fantasies, the embrace of Alienism, the embrace of the barrenness of atheistic philosophies are all the consequence of the fact that the devil and His troops are liars with the devil being the Father of lies.
This might remind us of C. S. Lewis’ excellent work “The Screwtape Letters” where a experienced Demon is giving advice to a Junior demon on how to best deceive humans.
“Like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,
Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape”
If you haven’t read the Screwtape Letters I would encourage you to do so.
Well, in the 1st century church the Gnostics were insisting upon “no marriage, no meat.” In the 21st century Church the Gnostics are screaming, “no race, no gender.” The particulars which the Gnostics are attacking in the Church changes but the Gnosticism remains the same. For St. Paul it was “marriage is not necessary,” and “abstaining from certain foods is required.” For us today it is “race is not real,” and “gender is insignificant.” Then and now I would argue all is born of this continuing Gnosticism which is a doctrine of Demons.
Before pushing on we should note again that in I Timothy 4 St. Paul clearly communicates that twisted understanding of theology as applied to creational categories (as opposed to redemptive categories) are a matter of serious rebuke and warning. One can abandon the faith not only by thinking wrongly about salvific (redemptive) categories. One can abandon the faith by thinking wrongly about creational categories. Gnostics who deny the goodness of the created world can in no wise be saved.
I note this because in the recent past I was told that I should not camp on what we have noted are Gnostic errors. I was told “you should not spend so much time on these issues because they are not salvific.” I trust you see that the Holy Spirit did not reason that way so that we can say that where the spectre of Gnosticism arises in any area stiff warnings concerning it should be raised.
The Holy Spirit’s counsel here on these matters is straight forward. What God has made and given us , we are to received and render up thanksgiving. There is an objective and subjective movement here. Objectively we are to receive all things created by God because God has made them. Subjectively we are to receive all things created by God in prayers, thus what we are thankful for in prayer is set apart both objectively by God’s Word and subjectively by our prayer.
Now we must throw in a caveat here. We must be precise because there are those who would make this passage walk on all fours and suggest that there is nothing that is restricted to them because God created everything. And so some might say that illicit drugs or excessive alcohol may be taken because they have been created by God. Or you will find that even Christians will say that I am a sodomite or I am a tranny and this is good because God has created me this way. This is a gross misuse of what is being taught here and fails to recognize the distinction between the good that has been created by God to be received in thanksgiving and the evil that is the result not of creation but of the fall.
What God created was male and female and the female as a compliment to the male which would result in heterosexual marriage. Heterosexual marriage as lived in the parameters of Scripture should be received as from God w/ thanksgiving but homosexual marriage, which can’t really exist is an abomination because it is a result of creation marred and fallen. The same is true with excessive alcohol intake or the intake of illicit drugs. These are part of creation and can be received with prayer and thanksgiving but they are can also be easily and are often abused revealing the fallenness of the person abusing.
I only note this because we still live in a Church environment that in many quarters seeks to normalize these things. For example, somewhere around 1/3 of the delegates to the last CRC synod voted in favor of having sodomites and lesbians be members of Christ’s church. Outside the Church we know of the attempt of the broader culture to normalize these things as seen in the fact that our new Sec’y of the Treasury is a sodomite who is allegedly married to another man and has a son. When St. Paul writes
nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is [l]sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
He is decidedly not talking about these kinds of abominations.
So we see here from this passage that when we are saved by Christ it is the whole man that is saved by Christ and the consequence of being saved by Christ is that we receive the good of creation as good from God. Our being owned by Christ makes us say, as G. K. Chesterton wrote,
“You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
This opens up before us the truth that all of life should be lived to the glory of God with thanksgiving unto God. It opens us to the fact that all of creation is God’s theater of glory that is to be received with prayer and thanksgiving. Not only are we to keep the Gnostics at bay in their 1st century incarnation of prohibiting food and marriage but we are to keep them at bay in their 21st century incarnation of prohibiting the embrace of gender, ethnicity/race.
God loves us in Christ and gave us all of life to enjoy. Let us enjoy it to His glory until we are brought up to enjoy eternal life.
