1 Timothy 4:1

1 Timothy 4:1. Now. Better ‘ but,' as introducing a contrast to the mystery of godliness in 1 Timothy 3:16.

The Spirit speaketh expressly. The reference is clearly not to Old Testament prophecies, which would have been cited in terms, and quoted as Scripture, nor to our Lord's words in Matthew 24:11, which if known to St. Paul, would have been assigned to Him, but to the direct teaching of the Spirit at or about the period at which St. Paul wrote. Whether that teaching came immediately to the apostle, or through the utterances of other prophets, we cannot decide. On the whole, the atter view seems the more probable. There seems, from 2 Peter 2 and Jude 1:17, to have been about this time a burst of prophecy throughout the Asiatic churches indicating the approach of a time of trial and persecution for the faithful, the increase of heresy and iniquity; and to such utterances, analogous to those to which St. Paul refers in Acts 20:23, and to his own warnings on that occasion (Acts 20:29-30) he is probably alluding. 2 Thessalonians 2 presents predictions of a like kind.

Some shall depart from the faith. The ‘falling away' or apostasy of 2 Thessalonians 2:3.

Seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils. The apostle here distinctly recognises a preternatural element in the workings of evil in the Church. They are many and diverse in contrast with the unity of the Spirit, but they have this in common, that they all lead astray. So St. John (1 John 4:1-3) and St. Paul himself (1 Corinthians 12:1-3) recognise the work of evil spirits in the simulated prophecies or ecstatic utterances which disturbed and startled the assemblies of Christians, and give tests for discriminating between the reality and the counterfeit. The meaning of these words determines the interpretation of those that follow. ‘The doctrines of devils' or ‘demons' are not doctrines about demons, as some have contended, pressing the text into the controversy against the Romish doctrine of the worship of the departed spirits of the saints, but' doctrines that came from demons,' the frenzied ravings as of men possessed by a nature more evil than their own. Comp. St. James's description of false wisdom ‘as earthly, sensual, demon-like ' (1 Timothy 2:15).