forbidding to marry, [bidding] to abstain from meats, which God has created for receiving with thanksgiving for them who are faithful and know the truth.
Paul names two marks of what he has just called "teachings of demons": a ban on marriage and a ban on certain foods. Both look like extra holiness. So how can rules that seem stricter than Scripture come from Satan?
These two bans have a long history. One writer traces them from the earliest days to movements alive today.
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.
Why does stricter living count as leaving the faith? One writer answers by naming who is being denied.
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.
The stricter path is not the safer one.
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.
The verse does not condemn staying single. The trick is to take a path God calls one person to and make it a law for all.
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.
One writer follows the ban on foods to where it finally leads.
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.
Thanksgiving is not a formality added to a meal; it is the act that puts the gift back in the Giver's hand.
All that the Creator has provided must be received from Him with thanksgiving, and the acknowledgment of a dependence upon Him.
The last phrase of the verse describes a certain kind of person. One writer shows why that description matters.
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.
- Departure. The verse describes people leaving the faith from inside the Christian profession, not attacking it from outside.
- Disguise. The two bans arrive dressed as superior holiness. That disguise is what makes them dangerous.
- Denial. By refusing marriage and food, they deny God as Creator. By leaving the faith, they deny Him as Saviour.
- Distortion. Error takes a real exception, like Paul's own single life, and turns it into a rule for everyone.
- Defence. Those who believe and know the truth receive God's gifts with thanks. That is the antidote.
For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing [is] to be rejected, being received with thanksgiving;
Paul has just described teachers who forbid marriage and ban certain foods. He answers them not with a rule but with a fact about creation. So what makes a thing good, and what makes it fit to use?
A religion of rules can look holier than ordinary Christian life. One writer refuses to treat it as the safer mistake:
Strict self-denial is no more Christian than loose living, though it wears a nicer face. It is a showy attack on the God who created and sustains man. It sets up a superior holiness of its own, and it ends in shameful acts against nature.
Another writer traces where the denial lands. To reject these two gifts is to strike at God twice over:
Having turned away from the faith, they deny God as our Saviour. And by refusing marriage and foods, they deny God as the Creator. That means losing all true reverence for God. In the end it opens the door to loose and shameless living.
Israel lived under long lists of forbidden foods. The same word of God that once drew those lines now lifts them:
Under the law many things were forbidden to the children of Israel, among them things to eat. But under grace the word of God says, "everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." The word of God refused certain things to the Jew. The same word of God now sets apart for the believer everything created by God. If we can thank God for our food with a good conscience, then God allows us to eat it.
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Many treat food rules as a harmless private choice. One writer calls the refusal itself a moral matter:
If we refuse and reject what God has made for us to use, that is sin. Everything the Creator has provided we must take from His hand with thanksgiving, admitting that we depend on Him.
That verdict is about religious rejection, not about health:
What may harm a person's health in a particular case is not the question here. The question is what eating means spiritually. If someone knows a certain food makes him suffer, it is only sensible to avoid it. But eating or not eating makes no spiritual difference.
The freedom is wide, but it comes with one condition:
So the Christian, unlike the Jew, can say that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected. But there is the condition — "if it is received with thanksgiving." An ungrateful believer is a contradiction. Neither the simplest believer nor the cleverest can overlook the kindness and the wisdom of God.
God's word, not our own will, is what permits the use. That keeps freedom from sliding into appetite:
So the use of every creature of God is guarded. This is not blanket permission to do as we please... Their own will did not authorise the use of every creature good for food; His word did. And their hearts, having come to know His grace in salvation, draw near to Him in free fellowship... But that fellowship rests on His grace. It takes in the smallest things as not too little for God, because it has learned in Christ that the greatest things of God are not too great for His children.
What, then, should we say at the table? One writer holds the food is already set apart, so Scripture asks for praise:
What Scripture asks from us is not prayer but thanksgiving... So the Christian's meal table becomes an altar of praise... The prayer that is made is out of place. It asks God to do something He has already done, something for which He expects thanks or praise from loving hearts who know Him.
Gratitude does more than settle a question about diet. It turns eating into a daily acknowledgement of who keeps us alive:
Every mouthful we eat declares that we depend on God, and it should humble us before Him. We could not live without His provision for our daily needs. Knowing this would keep us from acting independently of God, would hold our appetites in check, and would keep us thankful to Him every day of our lives.
- Creator — Banning marriage and food is not extra holiness. It claims a higher holiness while denying God as Creator.
- Gift — What God made is good, and refusing His provision on religious grounds is itself sin.
- Freedom — God's word once fenced off foods for Israel. The same word now sets apart everything for the believer.
- Thanksgiving — The one condition is thanks. An ungrateful believer contradicts what he says he knows about God.
- Communion — God's word guards every meal, and thanks turns the plainest food into praise and fellowship with Him.
for it is sanctified by God's word and freely addressing [him].
Paul has just described teachers who forbid marriage and ban certain foods. He answers them with two things — what God has said, and how a believer receives what God gives — so what word does he mean, and what kind of prayer?
The ban on foods was not neutral advice. It treated God's own provision as something that defiles.
Demons play on man's sense of being defiled. As the cure they suggest avoiding certain foods and marriage — the very things God has provided for His creature's welfare. That makes God the cause of man's lack of godliness. … Nothing that God has provided for His creature is defiling.
Where the ESV says "made holy," older translations say "sanctified" — the word the writers below use. They trace this back to what God said after the flood, when He gave every living thing to man for food.
It is sanctified by the word of God and prayer — that is, by God's grant to Noah (Gen. 9:3-4), and by the receiver's thanksgiving.
Under the law, Israel had lists of clean and unclean animals. Kelly reads this verse as the end of those lists — with one condition attached.
So the ordinary prohibitions of the law disappear, for in this respect as in others the law made nothing perfect. The gospel … shows that all God's ways are right, in creation as well as in providence. So the Christian, even if the Jew could not, can say that every creature of God is good and none is to be rejected. But there is a condition — "if received with thanksgiving." An ungrateful saint is a contradiction.
The Greek term Paul uses here is not the ordinary word for asking God for things.
The word used here goes beyond the ordinary word for prayer. It implies the fellowship with God that redemption has now opened to us. It encourages us in all intercession, because of the access we have into the grace in which we stand. But it is still prayer to God, in a way that is as full as it is free. His love permits this, now that His righteousness has been shown.
The verse joins something that comes down from God with something that rises from us.
For us now, as Christians and in Christ, everything is restored. So the creature is sanctified by the word to me, and prayer goes up from me in response.
This shuts the door on the idea that the Christian may do as he pleases.
God's word and intercession guard the use of every creature. This is not blanket permission to do as one pleases. … The receiver showed his faith in "God's word" by answering with his "intercession." Not their will but His word approved the use of every creature good for food.
The everyday use of this cuts both ways: refusing God's gift, or taking it without thanks.
Even animals that were unclean for Israel by the law's standard are perfectly fit for us to eat. The word of God sanctifies them, along with the thanksgiving prayer of the person eating. If a person does not thank God for his food, he has no proper right to eat at all. For every creature is God's property, and in receiving it we ought to recognise His rights first of all.
Commentators differ on what we should say over a meal. Some say God has already done the sanctifying, so our part is to give thanks, not to ask:
The common idea is that we must pray over each meal before we can properly eat it. But the opposite is true. The food is sanctified by the new position the Christian now stands in. … The action Scripture calls for on our part is not prayer but thanksgiving. … So the Christian's meal-table becomes an altar of praise.
Others read the verse as leaving something for the household to do:
It is sad if Christian households do not complete this sanctification by prayer as they use the food He has so mercifully provided.
The two things named here are treated elsewhere as the pattern for handling everything God gives.
"The word of God and prayer" are put together as the sanctifying power in the enjoyment of all the natural gifts of God (1 Tim. 4:5).
- Granted — Food is made holy first by God's own word of grant, going back to what He said to Noah. The old restrictions of the law fall away.
- Good — Every creature of God is good. To refuse His provision for religious reasons insults the Giver instead of honouring Him.
- Received — The gift comes with one condition: receive it with thanks. An ungrateful believer is a contradiction.
- Returned — The word comes down to us; prayer goes up in answer. The word Paul uses means free, confident fellowship with God, not just asking.
- Repeated — Word and prayer together sanctify the enjoyment of every natural gift. So the meal-table becomes an altar of praise.