4:3† ^Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which the Almĭghty has created to be gratefully shared in by the faithful that know the truth.† The Gnostics made up their ascetical rules based on the philosophy that creation and matter were inherently evil. There were two schools. One school of Gnostics tried to escape from material things so that they might meditate to be spiritually enlightened. The other school indulged in material sin so that they could show that they were spiritually detached from any consequences of materially connected sin.
The Scripture gives us the truth on what products were created to eat, and what the faithful should share in. Christians often try to use this passage to exempt themselves from Gŏd’s food laws, but this only makes the text unclear because they have to redefine or introduce new definitions to key terms like “truth”, “sanctified”, “blessing” and “word” in order to make their interpretation work. The truth is that Yãhweh did not create everything to be eaten or shared in by the faithful.
We should observe that Paul says the same thing about marriage that he says about food. Marriage was defined and designed to operate within the Scriptural bounds from the beginning. Someone might claim that forbidden foods, previously defined as not fit for food, are permitted by Paul’s statements. But by the same argument one could say that relationships previously forbidden by Gŏd are now permitted, such as fornication of any kind. The logic by which the laws of clean and unclean food are rejected by antinomians, therefore, may be equally applied to marriage. Since they redefined what is fit for food, they should also, by the same logic, admit to a redefinition of marriage that permits any kind of fornication. And since they ought to find this absurd, then should also find the fault in the logic of rejecting the Scriptural definition of what is fit for food.
6:15¹ ^The relative pronoun is feminine accusative singular, and agrees with the previous word “appearing” (ἣν, τῆς ἐπιφανείας).
6:15² ^The Almĭghty’s own times.
6:15³ ^The subject of the sentence is one very long phrase after the verb.
6:16‡ ^The texts describes the Almĭghty at the time that Paul is writing, after Yĕshūa̒ has ascended to heaven to resume the glory he shares with the Făther. The Almĭghty is referred to with singular pronouns, but he is a being of more than one person.