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.
Why would Paul tell the Corinthians not to receive the grace of God in vain? There could be only one reason why he would write that to a church of professing Christians. He is
warning them that it is entirely possible to begin the Christian journey…but not to finish it. After all, the Bible is filled with examples of those who started well and ended quite poorly.
Even Paul himself would speak from time to time of his own salvation as if it were something he was not yet entirely sure of…as if he had to persevere or else!
If
the apostle Paul took seriously the danger of drifting away from the Lord, of making shipwreck his faith, perhaps we would be wise to do the same. Remember when the great apostle said that he beat his body and made it his slave
lest after preaching to others I myself may be disqualified? Was he joking, being sarcastic? Or do you think that he realized the real temptation to take our salvation for granted that down the road we actually might throw it away altogether?
There are all kinds of warnings in the Bible, over and over again we are warned to stay diligent, to press on, to lay aside every weight that entangles, to gird up the loins of
our minds, to take all thoughts captive, to be aware of the way the evil one works and on and on it goes.
In our text, these evil people know exactly what they are doing. We are not talking about backsliding here, about a period of spiritual dullness or weakness; Paul is not describing
the experience of a believer being overcome by a particular sin or several sins for a period of time.
Spiritual life can wax and wane, we know that. Christians can be nearer to God or further from him, making strides or standing still or even slipping backward without ever departing
from the faith or making shipwreck of it.
There is a difference between a Christian who for a time is not living as a Christian should and a Christian
who decides no longer to be a Christian as the Word of God defines a Christian. Backsliding is not apostasy. It may look like it in some ways, and it is very dangerous, but it is as different as sickness is from death; as different as momentary cowardice
in battle is from taking money to spy for the enemy.
But, and here is the pinch: The warning is that it starts somewhere. The end result is that of having our consciences seared…we become dull to conviction, dull to the truth until
finally, we become enemies of the truth.
In the particular case of our text, we find characteristics that are not where the battle rages for us: forbidding marriage, and abstinence from certain foods would have been
characteristic of those embracing a form of Gnosticism which was a real threat to the early church.
Today, we have false teachers, in the church, telling us that we have to accept as God’s pleasure, same sex marriage, transgenderism, the welcoming of all kinds of perversions
or else we are unloving, judgmental, and uncaring about justice. But perhaps that is not the kind of teaching that threatens the church as much as a laxity, a renunciation in practice, of the necessity of holiness.
Perhaps for the most part the church sees the problems that I just mentioned and so attacks them, as well we should, but with a vibrato that is calculated to cover up a real existing
problem.
So Christians point out homosexuality as wicked, with a vehemence, while indulging all manner of heterosexual sins. Perhaps we decry woke ideologies creeping into the church,
while we give in to hidden addictions, that no one sees or so we think.
Could it be that the false teaching that is truly a threat isn’t loud, boisterous and demanding publicly…but rather, the slow drift of personal holiness…the not caring attitude,
or the, “I’ll just get by” practice of so many. The neglect of the church, thinking a casual acquaintance with the body of Christ will suffice?
And maybe you are thinking, “Well pastor, that is not what Paul is talking about.” Perhaps you are right…Paul is talking about where all of this ends up, where true church-going,
Christ-professing people have ended up, if this slow drift from holiness is not arrested.
We need to be wise as to where the battle lies in our day. It might not be the same attacks as we read in this text, but they are there, in force. We live in a different world
than the first century and we need to be discerning. I don’t want to make the mistake that C.S. Lewis so famously described in
The Screwtape Letters (xxv).
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which
it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which
is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion,
the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere ‘understanding.’Cruel ages are put on their guard against sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against respectability, lecherous ones [like ours, for example], against Puritanism; and whenever
all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make liberalism the prime bogey.”
You get the point. False teachers wouldn’t get the same traction recommending asceticism to
us as they did in recommending it in Ephesus long ago. It was a very different culture with very different tastes and tendencies.
Prayer: Father, help me to see and understand Your holy anger; anger against the sins of man that have and continue to hurt and destroy what You have made and what
You love. May I see more clearly Your desire to set things right and that You have promised that in Christ Jesus You will make all things new. May my worship and the worship of my church be that which takes being in Your presence with sober-minded joy. Keep
me from that which is profane and worldly especially in the worship of my God and Savior, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness (Click, show more for lyrics)
