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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - 1 Timothy 4:3 - 4:3
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Sensuality leads to false spiritualism. Their own inward impurity is reflected in their eyes in the world without them, and hence their asceticism (Tit 1:14, Tit 1:15) [Wiesinger]. By a spurious spiritualism (2Ti 2:18), which made moral perfection consist in abstinence from outward things, they pretended to attain to a higher perfection. Mat 19:10-12 (compare 1Co 7:8, 1Co 7:26, 1Co 7:38) gave a seeming handle to their “forbidding marriage” (contrast 1Ti 5:14); and the Old Testament distinction as to clean and unclean, gave a pretext for teaching to “abstain from meats” (compare Col 2:16, Col 2:17, Col 2:20-23). As these Judaizing Gnostics combined the harlot or apostate Old Testament Church with the beast (Rev 17:3), or Gnostic spiritualizing anti-Christianity, so Rome’s Judaizing elements (1Ti 4:3) shall ultimately be combined with the open worldly-wise anti-Christianity of the false prophet or beast (1Ti 6:20, 1Ti 6:21; Col 2:8; 1Jo 4:1-3; Rev 13:12-15). Austerity gained for them a show of sanctity while preaching false doctrine (Col 2:23). Eusebius [Ecclesiastical History, 4.29] quotes from Irenaeus [1.28] a statement that Saturninus, Marcion, and the Encratites preached abstinence from marriage and animal meats. Paul prophetically warns against such notions, the seeds of which already were being sown (1Ti 6:20; 2Ti 2:17, 2Ti 2:18).
to be received - Greek, “to be partaken of.”
of them - literally, (created and designed) “for them,” Though all (even the unbelieving, Psa 104:14; Mat 5:45) are partakers in these foods created by God, “they which believe” alone fulfil God’s design in creation by partaking of them with thanksgiving; as opposed to those who abstain from them, or in partaking of them, do not do so with thanksgiving. The unbelieving have not the designed use of such foods by reason of their “conscience being defiled” (Tit 1:15). The children of God alone “inherit the earth”; for obedience is the necessary qualification (as it was in the original grant of the earth to Adam), which they alone possess.
and know the truth - explanatory and defining who are “they which believe.” Translate as Greek, “and have full knowledge of the truth” (see on Phi 1:9). Thus he contradicts the assumption of superior knowledge and higher moral perfection, put forward by the heretics, on the ground of their abstinence from marriage and meats. “The truth” stands in opposition to their “lies” (1Ti 4:2).