1 Timothy 4:3

3. Some of their particular tenets are now specified. They present the ascetic side of Gnosticism as distinguished in our note on 2 Thessalonians 2:7. Jude and John deal with the licentious side. Hence Paul imputes to the leaders not so much sins of the flesh, as sins of the spirit.

Their sin consisted in an apostasy from the Christian faith, and the formation of a spiritual influence, power, and ultimate despotism, based upon the diffusion of an austere and oppressive superstition among the people.

Forbidding to marry From an ascetic view of the sinfulness of matter an exaggerated estimate of a virgin life was propagated. This same view among the Christian Gnostic heretics rejected the real manifestation of Christ in the flesh, maintaining that his was a body in appearance only, and condemned by 1 John 4:3, as antichrist. A matter-condemning celibacy was antichrist, because it condemned the incarnation. This doctrine of the angelic nature of a celibate life deeply infected the Church. It tinges the writings of the earliest post-apostolic fathers, the coloring growing intenser until monasteries and nunneries covered the face of Christendom. These became the organized support of the absolute despotism of the Roman conclave. The last display of this superstitious reverence for virgin life was the enforcement as an article of faith in our own day of the dogma of the immaculate conception of the blessed virgin, followed by the proclamation of the infallibility of the pope. Paul might well say, even in his own day, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work,” (2 Thessalonians 2:7;) and John as significantly assert that the elemental “antichrists” were already “many” in existence. 1 John 2:18.

Abstain from meats Note on Romans 14:1-6.

Created to be received These meats, matter though they be, are not concrete and solid lumps of sin. They were not brought into existence by the principle of evil; nor are they the eternal evil principle itself, opposed to the true God. They are created by the true God, to be both the proper gratification of our created appetite and the proper support of our bodily life.

Received Of them which believe This does not mean, as Alford, quoting Calvin, maintains, that the world and its gratifications are created for believers alone; but that they are rightfully used by true believers when thankfully used. Christian faith enjoins the enjoyment sweetened by the gratitude.

Know the truth The truth of 1 Timothy 3:16, that matter and flesh are honoured by the incarnation.