Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 Timothy 4:3

"forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth." — 1 Timothy 4:3 (ASV)

Paul now mentions two of their false teachings: forbidding marriage and ordering people “to abstain from certain foods.” This ascetic emphasis crept into the church in the first century and was widely felt in the second century under the influence of Gnosticism. The Gnostics taught that all matter is evil and that only spirit is good; thus all physical pleasure is sin.

What these false teachers forgot is that marriage is an institution that God established as the normal thing in human society . The idea of abstaining from certain foods goes back, of course, to the Mosaic law. But Christ has freed us from the Law (Galatians 5:1–6), so that we are no longer under its restrictions regarding certain kinds of food, “which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” Only those whose faith is weak avoid eating meat and restrict themselves to a vegetable diet (Romans 14:1–2). In spite of this, some still advocate and practice vegetarianism in the name of Christianity. Paul deals much more severely with this heresy in 1 Timothy than he did in Romans. Evidently the false teaching of asceticism was spreading in the church and the apostle struck out forcefully against it as a negation of our freedom in Christ.