Have you ever wondered where we get the doctrine of praying over your food makes it clean and acceptable to eat? Look no further. 1 Timothy 4 has been used by millions to justify why they pray over their food, which is perfectly acceptable, but some of those same people also use it to justify why they can eat whatever they want, regardless of what God’s word says, as long as they pray over it. I would like to examine 1 Timothy 4:1-5 and explain why there is so much more meaning behind this text than we have been taught to believe.
The Text
“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, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 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 4:1-5 ESV)
Typically, evangelicals argue that this verse affirms that we can now eat whatever we want as long as we pray over it. They will even sometimes go further as to say that Christians who believe that God still expects his people to obey his dietary laws are teaching doctrines of demons, citing verse 1-3. The problem here is that they are arguing that since Jesus died on the cross, saying that we are to follow Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 is a doctrine of demons. With a bold face, they claim that demons tell us to obey God’s word. Without even going deeper into this text, a true Christian needs to have some sort of issue with that statement.
But what does the text mean if teaching God’s commandments is not a doctrine of demons? In the first century, there was this sect of people known as the Gnostics. The Gnostics followed various forms of Gnosticism, which mainly believed that matter was evil and that only the spirit was good; they believed also that this reality was not the ultimate reality, as this reality is but a shadow of the true reality. In Gnosticism, the Gnostics would often times claim that anything that brought you physical pleasure was sinful and evil; thus, things such as marriage/sex and eating was inherently evil. Gnosticism is very similar to today’s Buddhism.
Paul is addressing the issue of Gnosticism in this passage. He knows that the Gnostics will infiltrate the church and that many will be led away by such demonic teachings. Paul combats this teaching by first reminding Timothy that all things that God created are good, which echoes Genesis 1. Paul then reminds Timothy that nothing is to be rejected if it is to be received with thanksgiving.
“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 ESV)
There is a conditional statement here that many fail to recognize. Paul says nothing is to be rejected only if it is received with thanksgiving and made holy by the word of God and prayer. This means that some things are still to be rejected, affirming that there are foods that God commands us not to eat. The inverse of Paul’s words means that if the object that you wish to eat does not meet both requirements, it is not made holy and should be rejected. The two requirements that make food holy are 1) the word of God and 2) prayer. This means that unless the food meets both requirements, it is not to be received or eaten. This means that you cannot pray over a cockroach, eat it, and then expect God to be pleased; cockroaches are forbidden for consumption per Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, so it fails to meet the first requirement. The same goes for pigs, shellfish, rats, donkeys, catfish, etc.
It is true that everything God created is good; everything God created has a purpose and some are permissible for humans to eat, but some are not. We do not possess the power, nor the authority, to pray over our food and expect our prayer to trump God’s word which says that dead opossum is unclean and should not be eaten. So the next time someone says that all we have to do is pray over our food for it to be clean, remind them that we are not God and that God has already eternally established what we can and cannot eat.
