In
1 Timothy 4:1-3, Paul warns Timothy that people whose consciences were seared (i.e. cauterized, from
κεκαυστηριασμένων) with a hot iron would, as hypocrites, begin speaking lies as they are led to do so by the influence of seducing spirits because they had embraced demonic teachings (doctrines of devils).
These false prophets and teachers cause people to fall (literally, to apostasize, from
ἀποστήσονταί, which means to stand off or away from the faith).
How do they do so?
By using and enforcing arbitrarily derived, man-made, un-Biblical standards, particularly, in this case, forbidding marriage and the eating of certain foods considered un-kosher.
In the realm of marriage, Paul desired the Corinthians to remain as he was, which was either single, married but separated, or widowed and thereafter celibate (See
1 Corinthians 7:7). Opinions vary on Paul's matrimonial status.
But note! Although he expressed his opinion and desire as a personal conviction, he never once instituted it as a church standard. More than once in
1 Corinthians 5-7, Paul writes by express commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ, and differentiates those commands from his personal preferences.
If anyone had any seemingly legitimate right or authority to institute into the churches he himself had founded as an apostle any personal conviction or standard, it would have been Paul. And yet, we see he refrains. Why? Why does Paul refrain but we get a pass?
Later in 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses food, and the only statement he makes about what we should or shouldn't eat is whether or not our appetites should cause a brother or sister to stumble and fall. But otherwise, nothing is to be refused, even food sold in the local markets, even if it was previously offered up to an idol prior to you going to town to purchase it.
So, here again, a preference with a solid, Biblical reason to avoid eating certain foods, so we don't sin against Christ by sinning against the brethren (See
1 Corinthians 8:12). But otherwise, no actual standing order of prohibition against eating meat (or flesh, as Paul writes it in
1 Corinthians 8:13). This same theme is evident in
Romans 14.
Paul refused to allow his personal views, privately held, that did not come by express commandmant of the Lord Jesus Christ, to become church standards.
Rather, he emphatically warned his "Son in the Gospel" that some men were going to do just that, and in so doing, were going to cause apostasy in the church.
There is no difference therefore, between forbidding to marry or forbidding to eat certain foods and forbidding anything else not otherwise prohibited by the express commandment of the Lord Jesus. If such a right existed, it would have existed in and with Paul and company. Yet we see clearly his refusal to maintain such a right.
No one in the church has the right to overrule or institute anything the HEAD OF THE CHURCH has not instituted in the church.
To do so is to claim extra-Biblical authority over Christ's Wife. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He is? If any man tried that on your wife, would you take it easy and let it slide? But somehow we think Jesus is all chill about turning His Bride into the playground of our personal whims and wants?
Well did the psalmist write "There is no fear of God before their eyes".
Simon Peter also mentions a type of eye that some men, who happen to be false teachers, have. He called it the "eyes of adultery" (
2 Peter 2:14).
The Lord will recompense the wicked, that is, in this case, all those who would try to pervert the church with their unceasing from sin eyes of adultery and turn the Bride of God's Son into their personal whore.
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