In the prior articles we’ve noted that Christians who believe all foods are clean under the New Covenant are correct. However, they may be correct for the wrong reasons. This is because Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:5-10 do not actually teach that the Old Testament dietary laws are no longer in effect.
If these passages do not teach that it is acceptable for Christians to eat all foods, which ones do? Romans 14 and 1 Timothy 4 are two chapters that plainly and directly state that all food is clean and therefore fit for human consumption. However, there is a little catch.
Paul taught that if we are in the presence of those who believe that some foods are off limits, we must abstain if our eating tempts them to violate their conscience. This isn’t much of a problem in most modern settings. However, in the early church (as in some circumstances today) there were those whose scruples would not allow them to eat certain foods.
All foods are clean, but conscience is a funny thing
For centuries the Jews had avoided foods the Old Covenant declared to be ritually unclean. Each generation of Jews who had lived since God gave the law at Mount Sinai had passed this practice on to their children. What many of them failed to recognize was that the Old Testament laws were never meant to be permanent. The Old Testament prophets themselves foretold this (Jer. 31:31-34). The New Testament prophets affirm that the law was but a shadow, not the realities that were to come (Heb 10). The reality is found in Christ and the law was only our guardian until He arrived (Gal 3:24-25).
Consider then, how difficult it must have been for the earliest Jewish believers in Jesus to fully accept the fact that God had changed the Old Testament laws. A conscience once trained is difficult to re-educate. Even though these first Jewish believers in Jesus had the assurance of the apostles that all foods are now clean, it wasn’t so easy for their conscience to accept. In short, they knew that the food laws of the Old Testament were no longer applicable, but they felt guilty if they ate what just a few years earlier was off limits for Jews.
Gentile Christians had no problem accepting that all foods are clean
Gentiles had never lived under the Old Testament dietary restrictions. It caused them no mental anguish to eat any kinds of foods. However, it may have scandalized Jewish believers when they saw their Gentile siblings in Christ eat any food they wanted. Some Jews, who intellectually understood that all foods are clean in New Covenant life, may have eaten foods in violation of their own conscience.
Based on Romans 14, it would seem foods had become a controversy in the early church. As people are prone to do, they even began to ridicule each other over these differences of opinion. Paul sets the record straight saying twice in this passage that all foods are clean:
I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. (Rom. 14:14 ESV)
Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. (Rom. 14:20 ESV)
However, Paul is aware that some people have a weak conscience that didn’t permit the exercise of this new found liberty of the New Covenant.
“Paul understands, and wishes that all the Christians in Rome would understand, that Christ’s coming has meant that the Jewish laws about ritual purity no longer apply. But he recognizes that Jewish Christians may have difficulty in discarding a lifetime of teaching and habit, and so he reminds the strong that if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean.”1
The limits of Christian liberty
Paul taught that even though all foods are clean, there are times when Christians must refrain from exercising Christian liberty. When we engage in a practice that we know is right, we are hurting those who see us do it who know it is right but feel it is wrong. Our action may tempt them to do something that violates their conscience. When a person violates their conscience in this way, for them it is a sin (Rom 14:23). In such a case, the burden is on the one whose faith is stronger to abstain. The stronger abstains out of love and concern for their weaker brother or sister.
So, all food is clean, but there is a catch.
Reversion to the food laws in Ephesus?
In 1 Timothy 4 we get a hint at the content of some of the false teaching: abstinence from certain foods and forbidding marriage.
“The restrictions on marriage probably included everything associated with marriage, such as bearing children (discussed in 1 Tim 2:15).”2
All this would imply some form of asceticism (severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence). We can speculate that the Ephesian false teachers had replaced a focus on love, a good conscience, and sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5-6) with an outward showy display of pious self discipline.
1 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. (1 Tim. 4:1–5 ESV)
Paul’s hermeneutic appears to be, once again, based on the creation. God created both foods and marriage and to say that either is wrong is to call God a liar. So, the seriousness of this false teaching is that it moves the focus away from love to asceticism which has no value. This asceticism says that which God called good is actually bad.
“Deceitful spirits and teachings of demons”
Restrictions on foods were common in Judaism and it is not hard to imagine how the false teachings about dietary restrictions came to be in Ephesus. Paul is blunt in saying that the food restrictions of the Old Testament are no longer in effect.
It would seem the basis for Paul’s conclusion in this matter is that everything God created is already good. It isn’t a prayer or being thankful that makes all foods clean.
“But how does the prayer of thanksgiving sanctify the food, and what is the relationship between God’s creative goodness (argument one) and the believers’ prayers (argument two)? Nothing in the pastoral epistles suggests that Paul sees prayers as having magical powers; the food is already clean by God’s creative act and the gospel’s reaffirmation of that fact. A prayer of thanksgiving merely confirms in the individual God’s prior action of making food good for all.”3
“Made holy by the word of God”
Presumably then, what had previously made the food unclean was nothing more than God saying so (Old Testament food laws). The food laws are no more and therefore all foods are “made holy by the word of God” and a prayerful acknowledgement of the lifting of the kosher laws.
In 1 Timothy 4:5, when we read “word of God” we shouldn’t think “Bible.” We should think “God said.” It is true that the Bible is God’s word, however, I think what Paul was referring to here is a pronouncement from God (word of God) that the food is “holy” and is acceptable if eaten with thanksgiving.
To attempt to make the Old Testament food laws binding upon believers today is not a thing we should take lightly. This was a problem in Ephesus that Paul devoted part of his letter to deal with. Paul considered a reversion to the Old Testament laws, coupled with asceticism, to be a departure from the faith with a devotion to “deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1 ESV).
Under the New Covenant all foods are clean
Let us rejoice in the liberty which we have in Christ. We must refrain from its use when it may tempt another Christian to violate their conscience. Let us not appeal to asceticism nor revert to a law which God has taken away.
“A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.” — Martin Luther
References
- Moo, Douglas J., Romans. Edited by D. A Carson, R. T France, J. A. Motyer, and Gordon J. Wenham. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994.
- Mounce, William D. Word Biblical Commentary, Pastoral Epistles, Vol 46, Nelson, 2000, 532.
- Ibid., 537.