1 Timothy 4:1

Chapter IV

Ver. 1. But the Spirit speaks expressly, etc. The description given toward the close of the preceding chapter of the church as the pillar and basement of divine truth, and of the grand mystery which finds its evolution in connection with the interests and hopes of the church, might well have seemed to bespeak for her future condition a secure and continuous prosperity. There was, however, a shady side to the picture; and it was right that Timothy, and those who might follow after in the ministry of the word, should have timely warning of it. Here, therefore, the apostle proceeds to give some leading characteristics of this darker future, indicating by the connecting particle (the adversative δὲ) that the things he was going to utter should form an unhappy contrast to what had been already said: Τὸ δὲ Πνεῦμα ῥητῶς λέγει. By the Spirit is undoubtedly to be understood the Holy Spirit, the immediate source of all prophetic insight into the coming dispensations of Providence, and the history of the church. And when this Spirit is affirmed to have spoken expressly (ῥητῶς used in this sense by Polybius, iii. 23. 5, and some later Greek writers; see in Wetstein) as to the sad declensions that were in prospect, respect is obviously had to the explicit, unambiguous character of the announcements. If it is asked, however, when or by whom the announcements were made, no very definite reply can be given. There may have been, and very probably were, intimations of the coming evil given to the apostle himself, of which no record exists beyond the brief outline contained in the passage before us. But if there were such, we may naturally suppose they would be in the same line with those which have been recorded further, and probably more specific, developments of the features indicated in them. Even in Old Testament Scripture there are not wanting prophetic glimpses which seem to point in this direction; in particular what is said in Daniel, Daniel 7:25; Daniel 8:23-25, of a dark, subtle, and corrupt power which was destined apparently to arise and work with disastrous energy in Messiah's kingdom, after this kingdom should have been formally set up. More certainly, however, may be taken into account some of our Lord's announcements respecting the future of His church, such as the parable of the tares and the wheat, and the mention of false Christs and false prophets, who should deceive many, in His discourse of the last days (Matthew 24:11 ss.). More especially still may be included Paul's own statements in one of his earliest epistles concerning a great apostasy which was to take place in the Christian church (2 Thessalonians 2); also what he said in his address to the elders of Ephesus about persons going to arise within the church who should do the part of wolves to the flock, teaching perverse things (Acts 20:29-30); and still again, the pointed reference he made in his Epistle to the Colossians to the depravations of Christian doctrine and worship, which he descried as already beginning to take shape, through the combined influence of ascetic and ritualistic tendencies (Colossians 2). These were all prior in point of time to the passage now under consideration, and were of a kindred nature to it, though none of them speak so expressly of the corruptions now more particularly in the eye of the apostle as he does in this warning to Timothy. We may therefore justly infer, that the explicitness of the Spirit's utterances here given through the apostle really form an advance on the revelations hitherto communicated to the church in this particular line, one required by the circumstances of the time.

The express utterances of the Spirit were to the effect that in after times some shall depart from the faith. As to the period indicated, the expression of the apostle is somewhat indefinite; for the ἐν ὑστέροις καιροῖς may be understood of any age or time subsequent to the apostle's own: it was merely the times which, in respect to the persons who then lived, lay somewhere in the future. The expression in 2 Timothy 3:1, the last days, and St. John's, the last hour, or season (ἐσχάτη ὥρα, 1 John 2:18), appear of themselves to point to a yet more remote future to what was contemplated as a closing period. But, from the habit of Jewish writers to view Messiah's times generally as the later times of the world's history, we cannot, perhaps, draw very sharply the distinction between these forms of expression and the one used in the passage before us. By this the apostle plainly means to denote, in a somewhat general way, the later age of the world; not absolutely its very last or closing period, but stretching, perhaps, over extensive tracks of time. The evil, indeed, was already germinating; and it was to grow into what the apostle calls a departure or apostasy from the faith faith taken objectively, as often elsewhere (Acts 6:7; Jude 1:3, etc.), for the truths or doctrines embraced by faith. Men were going to corrupt the simplicity of these by mixing with them errors and traditions of their own. Then follow indications of the erring course.

Giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons. The seducing spirits here referred to evidently stand in contrast to the Spirit mentioned immediately before that Spirit who is to the church of Christ the source of all truth and holiness. Instead of following His guidance, the parties in question were to give way to spirits of error, seducing spirits (πνεύμασιν πλάνοις), and teachings of demons that is, teachings which drew their inspiration from demoniacal agencies. For there can be no doubt that the genitive here (δαιμονίων) is the genitive of the subject (Winer, § 30), and not, as Mede laboured with great earnestness and industry to show, that of the object teachings or doctrines concerning demons demonolatry. Ample proof, indeed, exists, and was produced by Mede ( Works, p. 623), of the extensive prevalence of demonolatry in apostolic times outside the Christian church, and of the footing it ere long got within the church, under the forms of saint and martyr worship, exorcisms, incantations, and superstitious wrestlings with particular representatives of the demon world. But there is no evidence of that specific form of corruption being here in the eye of the apostle. The particular kinds of evil mentioned by him have no proper affinity with it; they belong to the sphere of ordinary life, and were such as spring from a false but aspiring asceticism, aiming at higher degrees of mortification and self-denial than consisted with the principles of the gospel. To represent teaching of this sort as the offspring of corrupt and misleading spirits the spirits that rule in the darkness of this world, and strive to keep it in alienation from the life of God was not to dissociate it from the efforts of a human instrumentality (it is presently, indeed, connected therewith), but to stamp the instrumentality as essentially evil, working under the influence, and for the interest, of the adversary of souls. Some have supposed the instrumental agents themselves to be designated seductive spirits and demoniacal teachers; but this is contrary to the usage of Scripture, and also to the connection here. It is the unseen prime movers of the mischief in the spirit-world, not the instruments employed by them, that are so characterized by the apostle.