1 Timothy 4:1–3

When the Apostle wrote, the Holy Spirit was still giving inspired messages through prophets, as we see in Acts 13:2. The apostles and prophets who carried that inspiration belonged to the foundation of the church (see Ephesians 2:20). Inspiration has now ceased, though we have the Holy Scriptures as its result. He no longer speaks in that authoritative way. Still, He remains with us for ever, and those who have eyes to see can often perceive His direction.

The apostle has mentioned the mystery of godliness. Now he speaks of Satan's power against the faith and truth of God... The faith is the foundation on which everything rests, so Satan aims to destroy it first. He knows that once people give up faith and deny the truth of God, he, the master-mind, can easily bring in his seducing spirits and put demon doctrines in place of the faith.

The earlier letter (1 Timothy 4:1-3) gave a prophetic warning. But that evil is quite different in time, character, and extent from what we have here. The Spirit did not say "last days." He spoke expressly of later, or after, times — the times that follow the apostle's writing. Instead of a widespread condition of "men" in Christendom, he there spoke of "some" only. The language suits and supposes comparatively few.

A verb form of this word occurs in 1 Timothy 4:1. Translators should have kept "apostatise" there, both for consistency and to keep the definite sense of religious defection. The word does not mean corruption. It means abandonment — in politics it means revolt against authority.

The apostate is not simply one who neglects the truth, nor rejects the truth. He once professed the faith. He then gives up the truth on purpose and takes up some other religious creed as better than Christianity... So apostasy is not only giving up the truth. It also means taking up error — the doctrine of demons.

"Some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of men who spread false stories." So three parties were involved in the abandonment of the faith. First, the victims of the errors. Second, the unseen power of evil — the spirits or demons that misled them. Third, the men who spread false stories, who were the channel... A man may tell lies in hypocrisy. We can hardly speak of a demon's hypocrisy, and Scripture gives no ground for giving a conscience to a seducing spirit.

Its main features are seduction, untruth, and hypocrisy. Its dreadful companion is a seared conscience that the truth cannot get through. Its fair pretensions are enforced celibacy and strict self-denial, and by these it gains a reputation for holiness among men.

People have often taken the Spirit's warning in the first three verses as applying to the Church of Rome. We believe it points instead to the deliberate trafficking with demons that we see today in spiritism... Spiritism teaches that both celibacy and vegetarianism are necessary for anyone who wants to be a good "medium." This fulfils both parts of the verse.

"Some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of men who peddle legends." So three parties were involved in this falling away. First, the victims of the errors. Second, the unseen power of evil, the spirits or demons that misled them. Third, the legend-peddlers who were the channel. This shows the importance of a correct translation. It does not mean that the demons were the ones speaking lies in hypocrisy, any more than that they had their conscience branded with a hot iron... A man can speak lies in hypocrisy. We can hardly speak of a demon's hypocrisy. And Scripture gives no ground for saying that a seducing spirit has a conscience. But this is exactly true of the false teachers whom these unseen agents of evil carried along.

The demons speak lies while professing to maintain the truth. The devil we know "is a liar" (John 8:44) and deceived our first parents by speaking lies in hypocrisy. The truth has no power over the souls of those who fall away, and they give heed to teachings of demons. This proves that their consciences are so seared that they can no longer tell good from evil.

Then there would be speaking lies "in hypocrisy," making a display of religion. And all this man's religion, or what man has invented, would "sear the conscience." It would deaden it to God's religion, the religion of "the truth." Man's rules would back it up: his "forbiddings" and "abstinences," which people must obey and practise, though they are so contrary to the thoughts and gifts of God.

Paul speaks of some who have a "defiled mind and conscience" (Titus 1:15). He speaks of others who, in departing from the faith, have their "conscience seared with a hot iron" (1 Tim. 4:2). That means a hardened conscience, one that no longer feels what should cut it to the heart.

Those who teach the law today do not keep the law, any more than the law teachers in Galatia kept it. Professing what they do not carry out makes a man dishonest. It makes him a hypocrite; he pretends to be what he is not. He is deceiving himself, as we read in Galatians 6:7. As he goes on deceiving himself, his conscience slowly dies. It is burned, as with a hot iron, so that it no longer has any feeling. And without shame such men can stand up and teach what they know is not the truth.

Those who spread such things ignore their own consciences so far that these become seared as with a hot iron, and in the end lose all proper feeling. We must not dare to treat conscience in this way. We must always let it do its true, sensitive work. The sensitive parts of our body warn us against dangers that threaten our health and even our life. They can lose their ability to work without any warning. If grime covers the lens of a lighthouse lamp, nobody will see the warning light.

The verse names two things: those who "forbid marriage" and "require abstinence from foods." (The Roman Catholic Church forbids her priests to marry, and also commands her members to abstain from certain foods on certain days.) This harsh self-denial claimed to be superior godliness. People began to teach these false ideas even in the apostles' own day. Later they grew into systems like Gnosticism, and today occult movements such as theosophy teach the same ideas. They forbid what God has set up in creation, for marriage is something God has made holy.

In place of the truth, the one who abandons the faith puts on a religion of the flesh that claims the very highest holiness... In reality they have turned from the faith, so they deny God as our Saviour. By refusing marriage and foods, they deny God as the Creator. This means the loss of all true godliness that fears God, and it opens the door to loose and shameless living. These seducing spirits feed the pride of the flesh. They promise people the greatest holiness so as to lead them into the deepest corruption.

Strict self-denial is no more Christian than loose living, though it takes a prettier form. It is a showy attack on the Creator and Preserver of man. It sets up a higher holiness, and it ends in vileness against nature. Monasticism is war against God without knowing it.

Grace may call a servant of God, for special and worthy reasons, to a path that does not fit with marriage. The duties of marriage could not be carried out along with the aims of that path. So we see in the apostle Paul himself, as he lets us know in 1 Corinthians 7. But that same chapter upholds the ordinary rule of marriage... Only the call of God comes first, and the man so called never looks down on the ordinary rule because of his exception. Error seizes the exception (even error cannot survive without a scrap or show of truth) and turns it into a human rule. This is Satan taking the place and rights of the Lord. His aim is to bring God into contempt and to lead people, dazzled by the empty hope of higher holiness, into the depths of corruption.

So the same disrespect of God appears in telling men to abstain from foods. He created them to be received with thanksgiving. No doubt all people were meant to share the benefit, and they do so in their measure. But many eat like animals, without real thanksgiving and often without even the form of it... Satan lifts some to such a height of philosophic folly that they deny these gifts come from His hand — the hand of the One who reconciled them to Himself by the death of His Son. Next they imagine the gifts are temptations from an evil being. At last they conclude that there is no such thing as creation, and so no Creator. So the error, small at the start, becomes the start of a very great evil.

All that the Creator has provided must be received from Him with thanksgiving, and the acknowledgment of a dependence upon Him.

The Holy Spirit spoke plainly about the last days of the house of God... He was warning believers about the terrible conditions that would spread on earth, even inside the Christian testimony. The people we read of here are inside the Christian testimony. It says, "some will depart from the faith." The antidote to all this is the phrase "those who believe and know the truth." Where there are such people, there is no possibility of falling away or of listening to seducing spirits.