Note: I originally wrote this post as an article for the Bible Bee Alumni Group’s newsletter. You can learn more about the National Bible Bee here.
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with
thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. 1 Timothy 4:4-5
I was blessed by God with the amazing privilege of being raised in a loving Christian household by parents who were committed to teaching the faith to their children. I wouldn’t trade my upbringing for anything. But, like so many others who grew up in conservative homeschooling families, I slipped into a lot of legalism as a child and teen. Even today, I’m aware of areas of life in which my natural thought process is legalistic, and I’m sure I don’t recognize my legalism in other areas. I can’t blame anyone else for the way I internalized certain messages and took things too far. It was a self-imposed legalism. But I do wish someone had shown me the beautiful truth contained in these verses of 1 Timothy 4.
Everything created by God is good. It’s a simple statement. Maybe it should be an obvious statement. Maybe it should go without saying that a good God would only create good things. But legalism searches for workarounds, refusing to believe that creation is good.
Legalism is often driven by fear. When legalism hears God’s instruction to Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17), it misses the generous gift. It hears only the Law and the warning. In fact, it is so afraid of eating from the tree in the center of the Garden that it determines only to eat from the trees along the perimeter, refusing to touch most of the fruits God created for enjoyment and nourishment. Or it goes even further and declines to eat at all, preferring starvation to the risk of disobedience.
It seems harsh to call this “teachings of demons,” but those are the words Paul uses to describe the liars with seared consciences who forbid marriage and certain foods (1 Tim. 4:1-3). We may think demons would only be interested in promoting sexual immorality and gluttony. But while they certainly teach those vices, they are apparently content to promote an ungrateful abstinence from marriage and foods as well. These foods were “created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (v. 3). God made these foods because He wants to give them to His children, but false teachers stand in the way, barring Christians from receiving God’s gifts.
I find it interesting that Jesus was accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34). Of course He was neither of these things. He was perfectly sinless and never succumbed to either excess. But He must not have cared too much about staying as far away as possible from all appearance of gluttony and drunkenness. He turned water into good wine and gave it to those who had already been drinking (John 2:10). One of the last things Luke records Him doing before His ascension is eating fish (Luke 24:42-43). As shocking as it may sound to our legalistic and Gnostic ears, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking” (Matt. 11:19).
I wonder sometimes about the complaint of the older brother in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. Pouting outside his younger brother’s homecoming party, he accuses his father of never giving him “a young goat, that [he] might celebrate with [his] friends” (Luke 15:29). It is hard to believe that the same father who divided his property at the younger son’s impudent request would refuse his older son’s request for a young goat. The best explanation I can think of, though it is purely speculative, is that the older son never asked. Fathers love to give good gifts to their children, and even more so our heavenly Father gives “good things to those who ask him” (Matt. 7:11). But the legalistic older brother in me doesn’t want to ask. Maybe he is too afraid of looking like his younger brother. He wants to boast that he has gotten by without grace.
The devil is happy to lead us in the prodigality of the younger brother. He is pleased when we squander our inheritance “in reckless living” (Luke 15:13). But if he cannot make us despise and throw off the Law altogether, it serves him just as well to deceive us into thinking we are keeping the Law. If he cannot convince us to misuse God’s good gifts like the younger brother, he can tempt us not to use them at all like the older brother. He will do all that he can to keep us standing outside the banquet hall, willfully rejecting the Father’s gracious celebration.
If it is hard to accept that creation is good, it is even harder to believe that simple, everyday gifts are holy. This is Paul’s explanation for why nothing should be rejected if received with thanksgiving: “it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:5).
God’s holy word makes holy the ordinary gifts of marriage and food. It is noteworthy that these are two of the things that Ecclesiastes says to enjoy during our short lives (9:7,9). When we receive these gifts with thanksgiving, we are partaking of what God has sanctified.
Only God can make the unclean to be clean and the common to be holy. The holiness of our marriages and mealtimes is not found in the radical way we live. It comes from God. So next time you kiss your spouse or eat a bowl of cereal, consider the amazing reality that these gifts are holy by the word of God and prayer. God showers us with daily blessings to be enjoyed–good things that are not only permissible but holy.
Coram Mundo 