09 Does Being Stricter Make You More Spiritual? (1 Timothy 3:14-4:6)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Suppose someone tells you that serious Christians give up certain pleasures, because denying yourself makes you more spiritual. It sounds disciplined and maybe devoted, but what if it actually denies the goodness of what God created? In this episode, we'll see how Paul exposes convincing lies and gives us a better measure of godliness. This is the ninth talk in my series on the book of 1 Timothy. Today we are going to study 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 14 through chapter 4, verse 6. Thanks so much for listening. Well, we're finishing chapter 3 today and starting chapter 4. And before we dive in, let's remember where we left off. Paul left Timothy in Ephesus to deal with false teachers and help guide the community of believers there. And in this letter, Paul has been concerned with two very closely related themes. The first theme is that sound teaching produces godliness, and we saw that mostly in chapter one. And the second theme is how believers should conduct themselves as members of the household of God or the church. And he began talking about that theme in chapter two. In chapter two, he looked at what godliness looks like when we're dealing with people who have authority over us. And now in chapter three, he's flipping it and he looked at how people who have authority ought to behave and what to look for in a person before you give them authority. And as we saw last week, Paul's focus was not on titles or prestige or filling offices, but on recognizing mature believers whose character has already proved trustworthy. And we saw that those entrusted with authority should understand the gospel well, live consistently with it, and be respected both inside and outside the church. Now in this little section we're looking at today, Paul steps back from these qualifications and reminds Timothy why he's writing all this and what's at stake when church leaders fail to distinguish truth from error. Let's begin with three, fourteen through sixteen. I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Okay, so Paul has left Timothy in Ephesus while he has traveled on to Macedonia, and he's writing here, he says, I don't expect to be gone too long, but if I am delayed, I'm writing this so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God. Well, that raises the interesting question is why is it so urgent that Paul write this letter instead of just waiting for his return? As we saw, Timothy had traveled with Paul for a number of years and learned from him for many years at this point. Timothy would know how to behave as a believer because he's had all this time with the Apostle Paul, so why write this letter? I think Paul isn't primarily concerned with how Timothy himself behaves as a believer, but he's writing to what's new and different in Timothy's life, and that is Timothy's been placed in charge of a large community of believers. And I think Paul is giving Timothy advice on how to lead the church and how the church should conduct itself, and he wants to urgently give him this advice on leading. I see this charge in 315 as wrapping up the section we've just covered. By household of God, Paul simply means the church, this particular community of believers in Ephesus, and he's writing so that you know how to behave as members of that church. Notice he says the church of the living God. I think that's living God in distinction to all those idols who have no life at all. Sometimes when Paul talks about the living God, he's talking about God as the source of life. But here in this context, I think he's talking about the God who is real. The idols are worthless. This is the only living God, the only one who is truly alive and active. He describes the church here as the pillar and support of truth. The people of God are the church, which is the pillar and support of truth. That is, they advance the truth in the world. And that is very apropos to the theme he's been talking about, about sound teaching leading to godliness and how believers conduct themselves both inside and outside the church so that the gospel is not rejected. The truth is not a tightly held secret known only to a small band of a few people who knew Jesus. The disciples of Jesus spread that truth throughout the world, and as the people of God proclaim it, more people believe it. And Paul sees the church, the people of God, as the vehicle by which truth advances. But I really like this metaphor, the pillar of truth, because pillars support a bridge. They keep it from falling down. Load-bearing walls hold up a house. A building would collapse into rubble if it didn't have pillars and supports underneath it. And likewise the people of God hold up the truth the same way a pillar holds up a bridge. As they live and proclaim the truth, more people embrace it and the church grows and survives. Another apt metaphor would be to think of the church as a lighthouse. The lighthouse does not create the light, it doesn't move the rocks away. Its job is to hold the light high and keep the lens clear so that sailors see the dangers in their path. In the same way, the church doesn't invent or revise the truth. We receive it, we guard it, and we proclaim it so that others see and believe. And then what is that truth? Well, he summarizes that truth in 316. It's the truth about Jesus. And essentially, he outlines the gospel in brief. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up to glory. So the truth that we proclaim is the truth that we learned from and about Jesus. Jesus is the one who was revealed among human beings. He was declared and vindicated to be the Messiah by the Spirit. He was seen by the messengers, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world, and taken up to glory. This phrase, the mystery of godliness in this context, I think he just means the gospel. In past generations, God did not reveal how the cross of Christ would be necessary. That part of the plan was a mystery. It was hidden from them because God had not yet revealed it, but the mystery has now been revealed. Jesus came, he explained that part of the story of redemption, which was formerly hidden, which was that the Messiah was going to have to suffer and die. The idea here is suppose someone hands you a sealed envelope and tells you it contains the next stage of the plan. Well, no one knows what's inside until the envelope is opened, but once it's opened, the message is perfectly clear. That's the idea of a mystery. It's not secret information, it's not special knowledge that only a chosen few are allowed to know. It's something that didn't used to be known, but now has been made known. So to continue my metaphor, Jesus came, he opened the envelope, it's now been made known. I think the word that's translated to angels here simply means messengers. The Greek word can refer to either human messengers or divine messengers, depending on the context. And in this case, I think he just means the human messengers, primarily the apostles. Jesus came, the Spirit proclaimed he was the Messiah, he taught the apostles, they were the messengers who represent him and proclaim him among the nations. Many believed, and he was taken up, as evidenced by this translation of angels. Some people understand this to be a reference to divine messengers, and I believe most people take it who understand it as divine, understand it to refer to the angels at the empty tomb. And that's possible, but I'm inclined to think it's just the more mundane reference and simply refers to the human eyewitnesses. I don't think it matters much either way, how you understand it. Both are true, and I don't think it changes Paul's point. So as Paul concludes this section, he emphasizes that the role of the church is to protect, proclaim, and guard the truth. What is that truth? It's the story of what Jesus did for us. And why does he emphasize that? Because some people are gonna fall away, and that's where he goes next. The story of the spreading church is not a story of complete and uninterrupted victory. Let's bring in chapter four, verses one through six. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving 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. For it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. It's interesting to me that Paul begins this section. Now the Spirit expressly states, why say it that way? The point Paul's going to go on to make is that some people are going to fall away from the Lord and they're going to teach false doctrine. Well, Paul could have extrapolated that from the teaching of Jesus. Jesus tells us that not everybody who hears is going to believe. All you have to do is look at the parable of the sower and the seed. Not everyone who believes initially stays the course. And Paul could have said, now the Lord taught, but instead he says, the Spirit expressly states. And then he goes on to be very specific about what it is that the Spirit stated. There will be people who turn away from their beliefs. They're going to heed deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. And those teachings will specifically discourage marriage and encourage abstinence from certain foods. Well, that's very specific teaching. That's very specific information. So I'm inclined to put those two things together and think that Paul is referring to some prophetic word that God gave him. If you read through Acts, you'll see that Paul sometimes will say, the Spirit told me to stay here, or the Spirit told me it was safe to go on. And he refers to these specific instructions that God revealed to him through the Spirit. I suspect he's referring to one of those instructions here. And that's why he uses this language, the Spirit expressly states, and is very specific about the kind of information that the Spirit told him. So 4-1 again. So the first question we want to ask is when does this take place? Paul says, in later times, that literally means in times afterwards. So what is he talking about? Well, he's just described how Jesus was proclaimed and taken up to glory. So the most logical reading, I think, is he's referring to what comes next. What comes after Jesus is taken up to glory and the gospel starts to advance. And I think he just means right now as he's writing this. I don't think he means in the very last few days before Christ returns, but he's speaking more generally of what we would think of as church history. And if he is referring to some kind of specific revelation, I suspect what he's referring to happened during the ministry of Timothy himself. And that's why Paul found it urgent to write to Timothy about it. He's saying, Timothy, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that there are these people in your midst who are turning away from the faith and giving heed to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Remember, the Spirit of God expressly said that was going to happen. Now the word translated insincerity is in verse 2 is the word for hypocrisy. He says these men are hypocrites. They talk like they believe in Jesus, they act like they believe in Jesus, they try to blend in in the church, but when it comes right down to it, they're not believers, they're hypocrites, they're acting the part of a believer without really being one. And Paul knows they're hypocrites because of the strange doctrines they teach. They're listening to false teachers, and he goes right to the ultimate source of lies and deceptions. He says, giving heed to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons. So ordinary human beings are being attracted to these wrong doctrines, these false perspectives, and the ultimate source of those lies and deceptions is in the spiritual realm. They're listening to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. The really interesting phrase to me in this section is he talks about these men whose consciences are seared. Now we've run into that word for conscience several times in Timothy. We've talked about what it means. We've seen how it's your worldview, the set of beliefs and moral values that you follow that you use to make moral judgments. So the rational process, the tool you use to decide what to do. I think that's what he's referring to here. And what he's saying is theirs has been seared. It has been burned or damaged. And so their ability to make moral judgments has been damaged. You can think of it like a compass that's been affected by a magnet. The needle's still moving, it still looks like it's working, but it's not on true north anymore because it's been pulled off center. And the person holding it may sincerely believe he's traveling north, but because he's following a damaged compass, he's going the wrong way. Every decision takes him farther in the wrong direction. In the same way, a seared conscience will continue making judgments while its underlying beliefs have been distorted by these deceptions and lies and false teaching. Why is their conscience damaged? Well, because like all of us, they're sinners and they persist in believing and pursuing the lies and false doctrines. So Paul can tell the Holy Spirit is not working in them because if the Holy Spirit was working in them, he would see things like repentance, he would see openness to God, he would see a willingness to be taught the truth, and he sees no evidence of that. So he knows they're hypocrites and not believers. And notice in this section, we have two groups of people here. We have the false teachers and we have the people listening to the false teachers. And most of these phrases describe the false teachers who are teaching the false doctrine. And then he tells us what that false doctrine is. They discourage marriage and they abstain from foods that God would allow you to freely enjoy. Those are the two specific moral judgments they're getting wrong. Now it's interesting to me that those are the problem areas, forbidding marriage and abstaining from certain foods. Because if I was going to think about what would demons teach, that's not what I'd pick. Discouraging marriage and promoting a restricted diet just doesn't strike me right offhand as things that would rise to the level of lies that a demon would spread. But if you look at our culture today, that's exactly what's going on today. Marriage is generally discouraged while food has become a kind of new religion, and what you eat and how you eat is a reflection of you how morally good you are as a person. Today, people are told to postpone marriage as long as possible into their late 30s, 40s, while at the same time there's all this moral signaling about food. There are forbidden foods, and people confess after lapsing and eating the wrong food, and the food community is often defined by what they abstain from, and they earn this moral status through restraint. So what you eat for lunch can be a public statement about the kind of person you are. Well, as Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun. But why would marriage and food have been an issue in Paul's day? Well, at the time of Paul, there was this widespread belief that everything physical was evil and everything spiritual was good. People sometimes call this Platonic dualism, but I don't think it was invented by Plato, and I don't think it's unique to Plato. The dualism was this idea that the physical material world is evil and it's the source of all evil, while the intellectual, spiritual world was good and beautiful and the source of all things good and beautiful. And that dichotomy, that dualism between the physical and the spiritual was very, very popular and it was very widely held. So you have these two issues, human sexuality and food, and those are intimately tied to the physical world. So they must be evil, and we should abstain. If we want to pursue that which is good, we have to abstain from such mundane physical activities like sexual intimacy or rich food. And we see this same problem comes up in 1 Corinthians 7. There, Paul responds to various questions they've asked him, and one of the questions they asked was, is it better to abstain from sex when you're married? Is that more spiritual? And Paul says, no, get married and have fun. Well, he doesn't say it like that. But that's the basic idea. And you can see that that same doctrine of dualism was affecting the Corinthian church. Prior to coming to Christianity, many people probably held this dualistic belief and then they brought it with them when they converted and they needed to unlearn it. Now we don't know exactly what the false teachers were teaching about food and marriage. Maybe they were saying in order to be saved, you have to forsake marriage or you have to refrain from eating certain foods. But I suspect that's way too obvious. I suspect they were probably more deceitful, more subtle, and it was something along the lines of, well, sure, you can be married and follow Jesus, but you know, the really excellent followers of Jesus, they abstain from marriage and all those rich foods. The spiritual elites, the superior class of disciples, they avoid all that physical touching stuff in marriage, and they they don't indulge in rich banquets. And that's how you show that you're really serious about Jesus. It's like someone taking a doctor's prescription and adding all these other ingredients to it and then advertising it as, oh, this is the extra strength version. It sounds as if you're receiving something better, but once you change the prescription, you don't have the medicine that the doctor prescribed. It's something else entirely. And in the same way, adding these man-made requirements to the gospel does not produce a better or higher or more enlightened form of Christianity. It changes the message. It's a false message. And you see, in 4 and 5, Paul counters this idea of dualism directly. He says, for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. I think that is a direct comment on this worldview that the physical is bad and the spiritual is good. Which I think was the outlook of these false teachers. He's saying everything created by God is good, and nothing is excluded if it's received with gratitude. So food doesn't need to be excluded from your diet for spiritual reasons or religious reasons. Now you may exclude it for allergy reasons, but you don't need to exclude it to be spiritual or morally superior. We are free to enjoy every good gift that God gave to mankind within his plans and purposes for the gift, and that includes both food and marriage. And notice Paul says everything created by God is good and nothing is excluded if it is received with gratitude. Why does he add that? Because receiving with gratitude carries the idea that I listen to God, I value what he says, and I don't abuse his gifts. I enjoy them within the boundaries that he has set. If I'm grateful, I keep his rules. Now we know from scripture that God intended sexuality to be enjoyed within marriage, and by marriage I mean a permanent monogamous commitment between one man and one woman. And outside that context, it's wrong. I can't be grateful to God and use God's gifts in a way that He never intended them to be used. Because if I'm grateful, I humbly submit to His plans and His purposes, and I trust that whatever rules and boundaries He set are right. Ultimately, all sin results from rebelling against God. We can do something that looks right on the outside, but if we're acting from a proud, defiant position of rejecting God, then we're sinning. And one of the ways we can rebel against God is by lacking gratitude and thinking, I'm entitled to enjoy all these good gifts whenever I want to enjoy them in whatever I want to enjoy them instead of following God's rules. That's coming from a heart of rebellion against God. So enjoying the physical pleasures of life in the context God gave them to be enjoyed is part of knowing God and following God, the physical world, and that all the things in it does not disconnect me from God or make me any less spiritual. What would disconnect me from God, what would separate me, is a sinful, rebellious attitude. This sense of entitlement or pride that God owes me good gifts and I'm going to take them with or without his approval. That would be wrong. He adds in 4-5, for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. I think all he's saying there is our actions are good and part of serving God when we're acting within the boundaries of God's word and praying about it. Prayer is an expression of our gratitude. When we're thankful, we pray. And I think he's just using prayer as a synonym for that gratitude. And by the word of God, I think he means when we understand any boundaries or rules or restrictions or the way God has intended the gift to be used. So God's revealed the purpose of sexuality to us through his word, and we seek to follow him. God has revealed the purpose of food and other things like money and wealth and how we're to love our neighbors, and we seek to follow what he says is right. We can enjoy all the gifts God has given in the context he's given them. There's no dualistic physical is bad and spiritual is good. The idea here is a fire in the fireplace can warm the entire house, but the same fire that's burning in the middle of the living room will destroy the house. Fire itself is not evil, it is a good gift, but it must be enjoyed within the setting for which it was intended. And God's gifts are like that. We don't honor him by rejecting what he says is right, we honor him by receiving his gifts thankfully and enjoying them within the purposes he's given them. And then we have 4-6. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of faith and of a good doctrine that you have followed. Now many translations see 4-6 as the start of a new thought. That that's okay, but I think it fits better as the conclusion to what he's just said. In pointing these things out to the brethren, you'll be a good servant of Jesus Christ. What are these things? To me, it makes more sense that these things refers backward to the previous paragraph about the false teachers and the not abstaining from food and marriage rather than referring forward to the thought that comes next. Paul has been talking about the ways in which some will depart from their faith, being seduced away from it by deceptions and lies. They're going to encounter these false teachers who are going to make convincing sounding arguments about different ways of living, and that could lead them astray. So, Timothy, if you're warning them, if you tell them what's been predicted and what's going to happen, and you therefore prevent some of these people from going astray, you'll be a good servant of Jesus Christ. Your role as leader is to point people to the truth, to keep them in the truth, remind them of the truth, encourage them to continue in the truth, and you'll be doing that if you warn them about this possibility of falling prey to the deceitful lies of the false teachers. All right, to wrap this up, I think Paul has given us an important lesson here about discernment. False teaching does not always look obviously wicked. Sometimes it looks like a stricter, more disciplined, or maybe even a more spiritual version of the truth. The false teachers in Ephesus discouraged marriage and rejected certain foods, and their rules may have sounded like a higher form of devotion. But Paul says, look, you're denying the goodness of what God created. I think all of us fall prey to that temptation to do better, to be better. We want rules, we want steps to follow, we want to know how to be a better Christian. So we all are tempted by anything that says, oh, do these five things and you'll be a really spiritual Christian, or just follow me in living this way, and you'll be right with God? That is a very tempting offer. So how do we evaluate those offers? Well, we don't evaluate them by how religious they sound or how spiritual they make us feel. We evaluate them by the truth that God has revealed. Does this teaching, does this idea agree with what God has said in Scripture? Does it teach us to receive His gifts with gratitude and use them according to His purpose? Or does it create some new standard by which some Christians can consider themselves spiritually superior to others? Godliness is not found in rejecting God's good gifts, nor is it found in using those gifts however we please. Godliness means receiving his gifts thankfully, understanding their purpose from his word, and enjoying them within the boundaries that he has given us. That's why the church has to know and live and guard and proclaim the truth. Convincing lies are going to come in every generation. A good servant of Jesus prepares him or herself and others to recognize those lies by continually pointing them back to the truth of the gospel. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this episode is at wednesdayintheword.com slash 1Timothy 9. You can find all the episodes in this series on wednesdayintheword.com as well as many other Bible study podcasts. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider following it so you never miss an episode. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and my favorite musician, and he has a new album out, Reggie Coates. You can hear all of Reggie's music, including his new album of worship music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.