Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (I Timothy 4:1-5 NKJV)
I wonder if the Apostle Paul is speaking here of those who are true converts but who go off the deep end or if these are people who really have never been saved? It says they will depart from the faith.
Given what I understand from Scripture about the fact that when God saves a person, He keeps them saved and will not let them fall from grace, I have to assume that if these were ever "in" the faith, in other words, God had saved them, that He will bring them back in repentance from their wayward ways.
This gives me pause to think. It is possible for Christian people who are in the faith to depart from it for a period of time, through being deceived. And why would they be deceived? They would become deceived through their own prideful arrogance, through listening to others who are deceived and failing to take what they are hearing to the bar of Scripture.
There is an insidious thing where sometimes Christians entertain thoughts and ideas that are unbiblical because they are being stirred up emotionally by others in that direction and they fail to search the Scriptures to see if these things are in accordance with what God says.
An example from my own life will illustrate this. Years ago my husband and I were members of a church in another town where we lived. This church had a perfectly good pastor who faithfully taught the Word of God.
However, there was a group of church members, pillars of the church, who decided they were no longer happy with this pastor any more. They had no good grounds to fire him. So they set about to gain a following for their cause. They manufactured stories about what a terrible person he was. Prayer meetings became gossip meetings as they prayed fervently about all the terrible faults this man had.
As these people spread their vicious lies, others began leaving the church because they did not want to be involved in the conflict. We considered leaving too, but out of respect and commitment to good preaching, we stayed to support the pastor.
Since they were having difficulty ousting him by spreading lies about him, they decided to withhold their tithing money in an effort to force him out that way. I suppose they thought if they could cripple the church financially there would be no choice but for him to be voted out.
Eventually, most of the people who would have voted to keep him left the church due to the conflict and the ones who wanted him out were in the majority. They held a meeting to take a vote. There were only four votes to keep him. Two were our votes. It was a sad day.
I believe these people are truly saved people, but they refused to follow the guidelines for Christian behavior in Colossians 3 and elsewhere. They seared their consciences and began speaking lies in hypocrisy. They gathered in small groups to roast the pastor at every chance they could get never taking into consideration what the Bible says about Christian conduct. In essence, they departed from the faith to chase after what their hearts desired instead of sticking to sound doctrine and Biblical Christian behavior as taught in Scripture.
I don't know for sure if this is the kind of thing this passage is alluding to or if the author is speaking about the wolf in sheep's clothing who has not been saved by God's grace. But it is sobering to think that we as Christians can fall into this kind of trap when we are not diligent to make sure our behavior lines up with Biblical teaching. Oh, Lord please help me to go to Scripture for Biblical responses on how to deal with issues that come up!
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