Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of
demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3
who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5
for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. 6 If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. 7
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8
for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
I must address a theological issue that the text presents. But as I said back in Chapter 2 when discussing Paul’s comment about the Lord wanting all men to be saved, I
will not allow some systematic theological shibboleth to stand in the way of what the text says.
Paul warns about departing from the faith. The word that he uses is “apostatize” a common Greek word that is used a lot in the Septuigent (LXX). The LXX is the Greek translation
of the Hebrew OT, which would have been “the bible” that Timothy would have been using. Paul most often quotes from the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
This Greek word, apostatize, is everywhere in the Greek OT and usually refers to the unfaithfulness of God’s people in the OT and how they abandoned God’s covenant. The
term implies and this is very important, the term implies that these people knew the truth, had even for a time, embraced the truth and then later…rejected it, walked away, and renounced what they once believed…by behavior and by profession.
Brothers and sisters, you can’t abandon something you never had. You can’t throw away something that was never yours. The author of Hebrews speaks of some apostates as
having “tasted the heavenly gift,” “shared in the Holy Spirit,” and “having tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come.”
Nevertheless, they turned away from all of this. They turned their back to the truth and their personal experience of God and His grace, and would never come back.
But pastor Skogen, I thought you were a reformed minister! I assure you that I am, but want I want to be even more than that is a biblicist…what does the text say
and why would it say what it says, the way it says it?
Paul’s words clearly means that these folks were once believers but are no longer. We cannot avoid the problem by imagining that these people were never believers in the
first place.
A little humility is all we need to admit that we cannot and do not infallibly know who the true saints of God are. There are plenty of people we thought were Christians,
who thought themselvesChristians, who lived as Christians, who practiced the Christian faith, who prayed and trusted the Lord for this or that, who proved eventually not to be…they walked away, never to return.
No doubt those who have been chosen by God, redeemed by Christ, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, those who have been granted living faith in Jesus are saved, must be saved,
and cannot possibly not be saved.
But as one pastor put it: It is also a fact that many who seemed to be such saints and at least in some fashion really were believers in Jesus ceased to be such believers
at some point. Their departure from the faith is often described in the Bible in terms of abandoning what they once believed, turning away from what was once theirs, and even denying the Lord who bought them. That is all scriptural language.
Brothers and sisters, how we are to reconcile these two lines of biblical teaching may be difficult, and I confess they are, all the more because the Bible doesn’t reconcile
them nor does it tell us HOW to reconcile them.
But that both of them are plainly found in the Bible, even at times found by the pen of the same biblical author, is indisputable.
Examples abound in our own day. Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson wrote: “Time for some real talk… I’m genuinely losing my faith… Christians can be the most judgmental
people on the planet, they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people… but it’s not for me. I am not in anymore.”
After announcing his divorce, Joshua Harris, author of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” and former pastor of a mega-church in Maryland, renounced his faith, saying: “I have undergone
a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. By all the measurements I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”
Dave Gass, the former pastor at Grace Family Fellowship, , took to social media and announced: “After 40 years of being a devout follower, 20 of those being an evangelical
pastor, I am walking away from the faith. Even though this has been a massive bomb drop in my life, it has been decades in the making.”
Paul Maxwell, the well-known “Desiring God” writer. “I love you guys, and I love all the friendships and support I’ve built here. And I think it’s important to say that
I’m just not a Christian anymore…”
I could go on and on, not to mention that I read of a number of younger ministers, in their 30’s who gained immense popularity and then, took their own lives, leaving notes
about how Xnty failed them.
This is of course quite disturbing. And as I mentioned earlier, we want to say what the Bible says, regardless of what it does to our theological house of sticks but we
also want to know why. Why has the Bible said what it says, the way it says it? And this is where the rubber meets the road for us.
The point, is simple: We do not know the mind of God, we know what is before us and the temptation that is before all of us, especially those who have been in the church
for so long…is to take our salvation for granted…to become ho-hum about the work of God in Christ to rescue sinners.
We are always to be on guard against the temptation to drift…to lose our grip on the truth of God…to begin leaning on our own understanding and to wander into the path
of wicked…ever so slowly, because that is the way it works.
Prayer: Father, thank you for the light of Jesus Christ that has and continues to uncover the darkness that is in the world and the darkness that still seeks to reside
in me. Thank you for your grace that causes me to love the truth and to hate the darkness. Give me grace to walk in the light of your love and to honor my King of Love who has given Himself for me, in Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
