1Timothy 4:3 - On Smacking and Whiffing and Totally Missing the Point...

”...hindering to be marrying, to be abstaining from foods, which God created unto shared with thanksgiving by the [ones] faithful and having come to know the truth.”

-These apostates, these ones standing away from the faith, from the truth, from Jesus - there’s no telling what kinds of things they might put forth in their self-styled Gospel...

-For starters, you can’t get married.  And you can’t eat certain foods.  You find traces of this in the ascetic teaching of the strict Essenes sect (which predates the Church), vestiges in both Gnosticism (which Paul addresses in Colossians 2.20-23) and Catholicism (where no priest or monk or nun can marry), and some might suggest even in Paul (where he suggests in 1Corinthians 7 that it is better not to marry, altho his is not a prohibition).

-Ultimately, whatever they put forth, all of these things have one thing in common, however.  They smack of works.  Trying to better oneself or curry divine favor and earn better spiritual standing primarily through self-effort.  And anytime you get a whiff of works in somebody’s teaching, in their approach to God, you can know for certain that they have not yet come to fully understand the truth.  The truth about God’s grace in Christ.  This was the very thing with which the Pharisees struggled (Matthew 23.23-24).  These ones prop up various things to do or avoid, as if the way to be clean comes through what takes place on the outside, or what you put in your body from the outside, when in fact clean begins in the heart.

-And so does worship.  And gratitude.  What we do find in Paul is a heart to receive and enjoy what God has created with a grateful heart.  God ordained marriage and blessed that estate to be joyfully shared by a man and a woman (Genesis 2.24, 1.27-28).  He designed us (and calls most of us) to start families which enjoy His breathtaking goodness and then to be a part of spreading the knowledge and celebration of His breathtaking goodness to families everywhere (Genesis 12.2-3).  AND He created all kinds of foods to be joyfully shared by all people (Genesis 1.29).  It is Who He is, and what He does, and these ascetics are totally missing the point.  Next verse...