1 Timothy 4:3

Ver. 3. Here the apostle descends to particulars, indicating in one or two leading points the directions this false pietism was going to assume: forbidding to marry, [bidding (Construction by zeugma, requiring κελευο ́ ντων to be supplied to make out the sense (Winer, § 66, 1, e).)] to abstain from meats (or kinds of food) which God made for being received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and those who have the full knowledge of the truth. The prohibition of marriage, and of the use of certain kinds of food, by which more especially animal food must be understood, was among the commoner forms of that ascetic tendency which had already taken root in the East, and, the apostle foresaw, was presently going to win for itself a place within the pale of the Christian church. The Therapeutae of Egypt, and the Essenes in the south of Palestine, were examples of the tendency in question; since not only at the gospel era, but for generations before it, they had in considerable numbers been systematically carrying out their ascetic principles in the manner indicated by the apostle. They confined themselves to the simplest diet, altogether abstaining from flesh and wine; and, without absolutely forbidding marriage, they still practically condemned and eschewed it, as inconsistent with the higher degrees of excellence in the spiritual life. If the prevalence of the Gnostic spirit had led to such ascetic developments even under Judaism (for that the parties in question were mainly, if not quite exclusively Jews, admits of no doubt), it was to be expected that the immense impulse given to spiritual thought and contemplation by the great facts of Christianity, would yet more become to many the occasion of aspiring after perfection by the same mistaken course. How far this tendency made way in the church before the rise of the more formally developed Gnostic systems, we have not the means of definitely ascertaining; but shortly after the commencement of the second century, and as the result of Gnostic teaching (more especially under Saturninus, Marcion, Tatian), parties assuming the Christian name, but known by the distinctive appellation of Encratites or Purists, openly preached against marriage, and insisted on abstinence from animal food; thereby (as Irenaeus says, i. 28) “indirectly accusing God, who made male and female for the propagation of mankind, and proving themselves ungrateful to Him who made all things.” (See Dissertation on chap. iii. 2, App. B.) It is plain, therefore, that these early heresiarchs erred on the very points specified by the apostle; and as some of them in particular, Marcion and Tatian had been reared in the bosom of the church, and afterwards separated themselves from it by thus departing from the faith, it was a perfectly legitimate application of the passage to turn it, as many of the Fathers did, against their extreme positions. Yet not a few of those Fathers themselves fell in a measure under the same misguiding influence. For they so extolled virginity, as virtually to disparage the married state: the one was with them the ideally perfect, the other the relatively defective and impure form of the Christian life; and it was only by abstinence from marriage, and by frequent fastings, always attended by the disuse of animal food, and by other ascetic exercises, that it was thought possible to become pattern saints, or to be religious in the stricter sense. But if it be wrong to forbid marriage as unholy, and proscribe the use of food which God has ordained for man's use; if this be virtually to impeach the wisdom of the Creator, and to impute a character of evil to the bounties of His providence, then assuredly to turn those kinds of abstinence into a ground of pre-eminent virtue, and assign to the persons who practised them a place of surpassing honour, was in a most real sense to depart from the faith of the gospel, since it assumed another rule and standard of worth than what is propounded there. It had, as the apostle elsewhere said, “a show of humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Colossians 2:23); but was not the less calculated to feed the pride and self-sufficiency of nature, and mar the healthfulness and simplicity of a genuine faith.

Scripture, indeed, does not deny that a person may occasionally abstain from certain meats or from marriage, with advantage to his own spiritual life or the good of the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:16-17; Matthew 17:21; Matthew 19:12; 1 Corinthians 7:32-37). But in such cases the alternative is not put as between a relatively pure and perfect state by the one course, and an impure or defective one by the other; but the one is presented merely as affording opportunities or helps for prosecuting more freely and unreservedly the work of faith than can well be done in the other. If temporary fasting should dispose and enable one to fight more successfully against the lusts of the flesh, or if by abstaining from marriage one could, in particular spheres of labour, or in certain conjunctures of the church's history, more effectually serve the interests of the gospel than otherwise, then the higher principles of that gospel, the nobler ends of a Christian calling, will undoubtedly justify the restraint or the sacrifice. But to do this is only to subordinate a less to a greater good: it creates no factitious distinctions in respect to the allowable or forbidden, holy or unholy, in the ordinary relationships and circumstances of life; and calls for a rejection of the natural good in these only when it may be conducive as means to a definite spiritual end. This is an entirely different thing from that morbid and mawkish asceticism, which, in attempting to soar above the divinely appointed order and constitution of things, imputes a character of evil to what is in itself good, and hence withdraws men from those social environments which, as a rule, are necessary to the well-being of society, and to the full-orbed completeness of the Christian character.

When the apostle speaks, in the latter part of this verse, of the common articles of food as having been made by God, for being received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and those who have the full knowledge of the truth (τοῖς πιστοῖς καὶ ἐπεγνωκόσι τὴν ἀλήθειαν), the most natural meaning seems to be: received thus by such persons as well as others: their faith and knowledge in the things of God had no way interfered with their relation to the common bounties of God's providence, and ought to be coupled with a thankful, not with a fearful or doubting, spirit. The expressions might, with Ellicott and others, be taken in the sense of the dative of interest “for the faithful,” etc.; but it is more fitting to regard them as ablatives (the ablative of the agent, considered as the instrument whereby anything is done; Jelf, § 611). For it could not but appear somewhat strange, to say that God made the several kinds of food specifically for the possessors of true knowledge and faith in Christ. The teaching of Scripture on the subject rather is, that being natural gifts, they are made for the use of men simply as possessing the properties of human nature; and all that needs to be said of those who rise to a higher position in the divine kingdom is, that, as recipients of God's grace, and heirs of His eternal glory, nothing is withdrawn from them as to the original appointments of God in things pertaining to men's physical and social well-being. On the contrary, these now also rise into the religious sphere; they become associated with the work of grace in the experience of believers, and have a place though only an inferior place among the things which may be called theirs (1 Corinthians 3:21). This, indeed, is distinctly indicated in what follows.