Join Steve Gregg on another enlightening episode of The Narrow Path where the complexities of Lordship Salvation and Free Grace are thoroughly explored. Caller Ashley from San Clemente queries about her church’s stance on baptism, sparking a deep conversation on what it truly means to accept Jesus as Lord. Delve into historical and theological perspectives that challenge modern views and bring clarity to age-old debates.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour as we usually are on weekdays. We take your phone calls during this hour and you can call in if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you see things differently from the host and want to balance a comment. These are the things that we are always glad to talk about on the air with you. All right, now I’m looking at full switchboard. Don’t call right now. You’ll get turned away. But if you call in a little while, randomly, you will probably catch the line has opened up because all these lines I’m looking at that are full now will be eventually cleared and available for your calls. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. 5737. And we’re going to go to the phones directly and talk to Ashley in San Clemente, California. Hi, Ashley. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. Thank you so much, Dave, for taking my call. I have a question. I’d like to get your opinion on the Lordship salvation versus free grace view. My friend, she goes to a church and she was denied baptism until she read a book by John MacArthur because she couldn’t give the exact repentance and faith moment. And she sincerely loves the Lord and she has an incredible testimony. But And when they told her to read that book, I thought, oh, that kind of rings a bell for me. That sounds like a Lordship Salvation type book. And so I wanted to call and see what your thoughts were on it because I have friends in both camps and no one seems to agree.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, I have my disagreements with John MacArthur because he was a Calvinist and he was a dispensationalist and he was a cessationist. All these things I was on the other side of the aisle from him about. I will say I did appreciate his book, The Gospel According to Jesus, which did promote what people sometimes call lordship salvation, because he took Jesus seriously. I was raised in a church that didn’t emphasize lordship salvation, and basically I guess we could have called it a free grace church. We didn’t use those terms in those days. I mean, I’m 73 years old when I was growing up. I don’t think the term lordship salvation or free grace were terms that were bandied about. But there was certainly the idea that, you know, we’re saved by grace and not by works. And that is true. We are. However, it’s also true that grace comes through faith and grace changes those who receive it. Grace transforms us. We’re regenerated. If we’re not regenerated, we’re not born again. And so we are born again by the grace of God through faith. But having been born again, we are now new creation. We are different. Our hearts have been changed. And our hearts have been changed to embrace Christ as our King and our Lord. Anybody who is unwilling to embrace Christ as King or Lord can hardly be said to be born again. So at least there was no one in the first century church, no one in New Testament times, who was considered to be a Christian unless they embraced Christ as Lord. That was the basic confession of a convert. Jesus is Lord. And Paul said in Romans 10, 9, he said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you’ll be saved. So, yeah, there weren’t any Christians there. in the first century, who had not acknowledged Jesus is their Lord. Now, that’s what lordship means. If he is the Lord, what is a Lord? A Lord is an owner. In those days, a Lord was somebody who owned servants and slaves. So, if somebody has a Lord, they’re saying that they’ve been bought with a price. They’re not their own. They are a slave of the one that they’re calling their Lord. And that’s why Jesus thought it strange in Luke chapter 6 when he said, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don’t do what I say? It simply was incongruous. Why would you call somebody your Lord if you didn’t see yourself as obliged to be his slave and do what he says? That was a given. That was a given throughout the New Testament. You never find any New Testament teacher who suggested that people who rejected Christ as Lord were somehow saved despite that because the claims of Christ are that all authority in heaven and earth had been given to him. That is, he’s the boss. He’s in charge of everything. When you violate divine authority, you’re in rebellion against divine authority. And so you don’t become a Christian by continuing to be a rebel against God. You become a Christian by repenting of being a rebel against God and embracing Christ as Lord. That is the simple teaching. Now, dispensationalism, which came along in the 1800s, branched off into different and one of them is called hyper-dispensationalism, which is probably what the free grace people are promoting. They’re saying, no, the lordship of Jesus is not essential for salvation. You can accept Jesus as your savior first, and then maybe if you feel inspired someday to do it, you can accept him as your lord. But in the meantime, you’re saved by him being your savior. The only problem with that is there’s nothing in the Bible that ever speaks of accepting Jesus as your Savior. There’s not a word. Not a word in Scripture talks about accepting Jesus as your Savior. But there is, you know, much about embracing Jesus as your Lord. And, again, Romans 10, 9 is where Paul said, if you confess Jesus as your Lord, then you’ll be saved, which means, well, he’ll be your Savior at the same time that you acknowledge his Lordship. So this is not really ambiguous. I’m always amazed how, I mean, this free grace thing is brand new. I mean, it has come up in the last hundred years, which is, in terms of 2,000 years of church history, brand new. And it’s, to my mind, it just waters down what the Bible says and what Christians always knew the Bible said from the time of the apostles until now. So I’m on the lordship side. But I mean, calling it lordship salvation… I don’t know that it should have a title. This is just called Christianity. It was never anything else than this until the hyper-dispensationalism came along. So, yeah, I mean, if somebody is holding to the so-called free grace doctrine, they’re basically going to have to cut out more than half of the New Testament. And that’s what dispensations sometimes do. They say, for example, the teaching of Jesus isn’t really relevant to us because he was teaching for the kingdom, and the kingdom didn’t come, it was postponed, they say. So the gospel teaching, the teaching of Jesus, isn’t really relevant to our lives in this dispensation. They say that the first half of Acts, likewise, isn’t relevant. They say Paul’s preaching, which began sort of near the middle of the book of Acts, well, that’s relevant. So maybe half of Acts is relevant to us. Then Paul’s epistles are relevant to us. But they would say Peter’s epistles and James and John’s epistles and Jude. These are not for us. They’re for the Jews, they would say. So basically, hyper-dispensationalism takes away from us most of the New Testament and all the Old Testament. So we really are stuck. We really end up with only maybe Luke, not really even Luke, but part of his writings in Acts. And we have Paul’s epistles. And that’s really all that’s relevant to us. And this is what the Gnostics taught us, or Manichaeans. This was the Manichaean doctrine, which was a heresy. But it’s become very popular, especially in American evangelicalism. It certainly is not universally held here. It may be the doctrine that many of us were exposed to when we were saved. But then we have to remember, some people, when they first came to believe in Christ, they were exposed to and immersed in Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormonism. And frankly, they think they’re right just as much as any Christian thinks they’re right. The point is, we Christians would say, no, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are following doctrines that are not historic Christianity and are not what the Bible teaches. And I would say the same thing about the hyper-dispensationalism. It’s not what the Bible teaches, and it’s not historic Christianity at all.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, wow. I had no idea. Thank you so much for explaining it to me. That makes perfect sense. Just one last question about that, Ben. As far as repentance, she was saying their view is that you must submit to the Lord, turn away from all sin, and if you are unwilling or you’re unwilling to let go of, say, for instance, of a setting sin, then you’re deceived and not saved, and they won’t baptize you. What would you think about that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, when you come to Christ, you surrender. Jesus said, if anyone comes after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. So if you haven’t denied yourself and taken up your cross and begun following Jesus, then Jesus said you haven’t come to him yet. Many people have not and think they have. Remember Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, he said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, enters the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father in heaven. And he says, many will say to me that day, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name. We cast out demons in your name. We did mighty works in your name. And I’ll say, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. So, I mean, there are a lot of people who think they’re Christians, and they might even verbalize that Jesus is Lord, though they may not know what the word Lord means, and it may not mean that to them. But Jesus said, yeah, a lot of those people, I’m going to see them, and they’re going to tell me how much they did for me. And I can say, I never met you. I never knew you. Now, here’s the thing. Becoming a Christian. Some people think becoming a Christian just means getting a ticket to heaven. Because if we don’t have that ticket to heaven, you go to hell. So people want to get that ticket to heaven. And many churches are willing to sell those tickets at a greatly discounted price. In other words, they’ll say, you don’t have to do anything to get to heaven except… Come forward at this altar call. Raise your hand with every eye closed and every head bowed. Say this prayer. You know, join the church. Get baptized. Now, a lot of churches will tell people who’ve done these few things, well, you’re saved now, when there’s obviously no evidence that they are. Because you can’t confirm salvation has happened if all that means is you’re going to heaven when you die. How in the world would you know from any experience whether that’s true? But the Bible says Jesus didn’t come just to save us to go to heaven. He came to save us from our sins. Jesus said whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. But whoever the Son sets free shall be free indeed. It says in the first chapter of Matthew, his name shall be called Jesus because he’ll save his people from their sins. Now, if a person is living in bondage to sin and they don’t want to be free from it, well, then they’re not ready to be saved from it. You know, if you’re If you’re holding on to an electric fence that’s going to kill you and someone says, here, quick, let me help you let go of that. You say, no, I want to hold on. I like it. I want to hold on to this. Well, then you’re not going to save from it because you want to keep your hands on it. If your sins are killing you and alienating you from God and you want to hold on to them, then you’re just not ready to come to God on his terms because he commands us to not sin. Now, here’s the thing. I said if you’re not willing to give up your sin. I don’t think, and I don’t think the Bible teaches, that when you become a Christian, you never sin again. I don’t believe that. I believe in many things we all stumble, James said. But there’s a difference between saying I am determined to give up a life of sin in order to live a life of obedience to God on the one hand And on the other hand, say, I can’t live a perfect life, so I’m not going to bother trying. I’ll just hope for a free pass from God because I said a prayer and I asked Jesus to come into my life, which the Bible never mentions doing, anyone doing, never commands us to do. I did these things that the preacher said would get me in. But I don’t want to quit sinning. Well, okay, that’s not becoming a Christian. Becoming a Christian means you surrender to Christ. You deny yourself. You take up your cross. You become his disciple. That’s the only kind of Christian known in the Bible. And so that’s why some of this modern teaching is so dangerous, because it gives the impression that you don’t have to be a Christian in the historic or biblical sense of being a Christian, which means a follower of Christ. You can continue to follow your own selfish lusts. And still get in because you said a prayer. Now, in the Bible, nobody got saved by saying a prayer. At least no one became a Christian by saying a prayer. Let’s put it that way. And, you know, they became a Christian by following Jesus, by forsaking their old life. and living for Christ. And by the way, Paul talks about that in Romans 6. He says, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He says, no, don’t you know that when you’re baptized, you were baptized into the death of Christ, you die to sin, and you’re raised in newness of life, which is to be a holy life. The Bible says in Hebrews, if you don’t pursue holiness, he says, without that, no one will see the Lord. So, you know, I mean, people who say, listen, I got a real cheap deal from you. you know, standing out in a dark alley and opening their trench coat and saying, here’s a ticket to heaven. It’ll just cost you, you know, you won’t even notice you paid it for it because it’s not going to cost you anything at all. Well, that’s, charlatans do that, but the Bible doesn’t. I mean, and some people say, well, Paul did. No, Paul did not. Paul said what saves a person is faith that works through love. That’s what he said in Galatians 5, 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, he listed a whole bunch of sins, fornication, idolatry, you know, all that kind of stuff. And he said, those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And he said it again in Galatians 5. He listed a whole bunch of sins. He called the works of the flesh. He said, those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. So if someone thinks that Paul taught some kind of free grace that didn’t require following Christ and giving up your sins, They haven’t really read Paul. They’ve only read the verses that they liked. And they’re misunderstanding those, too. So, in my opinion, there’s great danger. There’s lots of cults. There’s lots of cults in the modern world that name Christ. And I believe that any church, I mean, they could be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They could be the Watchtower Society. Or they could be a church that has a denominational name on them. But if they’re preaching a different gospel than what Paul preached, Paul said, let them be accursed. And if somebody is preaching that you don’t have to embrace Christ as Lord, then they’re simply saying the opposite of what Paul said and what Jesus said and what, frankly, the whole Bible teaches. So I don’t mean to sound hard, but I mean, it concerns me that so many churches change the gospel and they will be responsible for maybe millions of people standing before God saying, Lord, we were your followers. I never knew you. Who told you you were lying?
SPEAKER 08 :
No. What you said is just, it’s curious to my eyes. It’s so powerful, so convicting, and so beautiful. I completely agree with you, and it makes perfect sense. And especially when you said that, you know, he came to save you from your sins, but if you’re not willing to give up your sins, you know, he can’t save you from them. Right. That makes perfect sense to me. So thank you for answering my question. You did it beautifully. And I will share this with my friend and give her some clarity, too. So thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Great to hear from you, Ashley. By the way, this call, you can play it for her because it will be on our archives at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 08 :
Perfect. I’ll look for it. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
Great talking to you. Thanks for calling. You too. Bye-bye. Bye now. Yosef from Knoxville, Tennessee. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you, Steve. So I wanted to get your thoughts on an argument that I’m reading from a book saying that Old Testament Jews didn’t have the ability to keep God’s commandments and God’s law of themselves. And the argument uses Paul in the New Testament, specifically in Romans, to kind of strengthen that case. Two concepts. You’re familiar with Deuteronomy 30, where it says, you know, the commandment is not too mysterious, not too far, all these things.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s near you, but in your mouth. Yeah, it’s not too hard for you.
SPEAKER 04 :
So this author says, like, oh, no, this actually refers to the gospel, because look, Romans 10, that’s clearly, so obviously that couldn’t have been referring to the commandments.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, Romans 10 quotes that passage from Deuteronomy, that in Deuteronomy, he’s talking about this word, which is the covenant that is laid out there in Deuteronomy. And Paul says, yeah, the same thing is true about the gospel, the word of faith which we preach. He said, this applies to that too. So, were the Jews able to keep the law? Well, all that Romans tells us is that they didn’t keep the law. It doesn’t say they couldn’t. Frankly, if they couldn’t, it’s hard to know why God would hold it against them. You know, if If my four-year-old can’t carry a 100-pound bag of concrete, I’m not going to punish him for that. How could he be punished for that? He can’t do it. Now, I think God expects people to obey him. And in Luke chapter 1, which is, of course, recording before Jesus was born, so talk about Jewish people who were under the law before Jesus came, it says that John the Baptist’s parents, Well, here’s what it says about them. It says they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. So this is, of course, Zacharias and Elizabeth. Now, there’s no suggestion that they were the only people in the world that this would describe, but God certainly chose a very godly couple to be the parents of John the Baptist. And it actually says they were righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. That’d be the Torah. They were blameless. Now, they’re not the only ones that that is said about. Even before the Torah was given, Job is described that way by God. He’s a blameless man. You know, he eschews evil. He’s a righteous man. There are people like that described in the Bible, and there’s no reason to deny that. I mean, frankly, there’s nothing in the law of Moses, the 613 commandments in the law, None of them were impossible for somebody to keep if they were desiring to do so. Now, someone might say, but nobody’s perfect. Well, that’s true, but the law had something for that, too. There were sacrifices. There were ways to atone for sin, just like there are for us in Christ. Not the same kind of atonement, necessarily. I mean, not the same effectiveness. But the point is, a person could be faithful and obedient to the law If they stumbled, as we all do, they offer the proper sacrifice for it, and that covers for it. And so, in other words, they’d still be blameless. They wouldn’t be absolutely perfect, but they’d be blameless. God would be holding nothing against them. Now, again, I don’t know of any of the 613 laws given in the Torah that a person couldn’t do. None of them were superhuman feats. You know, don’t kill anybody, okay? That’s not superhuman. I’ve never killed anyone. And, of course, I’m a Christian, but I think even if I wasn’t a Christian, I wouldn’t be inclined to kill anyone. Now, some people say, didn’t Jesus say that, you know, it’s not just murder, it’s hatred, anger toward your brother? Didn’t Jesus say it’s not just committing adultery, it’s having it in your heart? He did. But the law didn’t specify that. I mean, Jesus is clarifying deeper things that are not actually stated in the law of Moses, except that the law did say don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. I guess, you know, depending on what that looks like, that’s a violation of coveting. But like the rich young ruler came running to Jesus and said, what must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus said, well, keep the commandments. He said, which ones? And Jesus rattled off. mostly examples of the Ten Commandments, but he also mentioned love your neighbors, you love yourself, which is not in the Ten Commandments. But the point is, the man says, I’ve done this all my life. Now, Jesus didn’t say, who do you think you’re fooling? I know you couldn’t have done these things. No one could do these things. No, Jesus took it at face value. No doubt there were Jews who were conscientious and kept those laws. Jesus didn’t say, no, you haven’t. He just said, well, If you want to be perfect, you can sell all you have and give it to the poor and come follow me. Now, frankly, sell all you have and give it to the poor is not in the commandments. It’s not one of the things in the law. So the man said he had already kept the commandments in the law. And Jesus said, well, do you want to go further than that? You can sell all you have and follow me. But Jesus did not contest that. that the man had done that. Paul even says in his epistles, when he’s given his testimony, that he was essentially blameless according to the law before he was a Christian. He said in Galatians 1.14, he says, I advanced in Judaism, meaning the law, beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. Now, he didn’t say he was perfect. But he said he was zealous for the law and no doubt kept it fairly routinely. He also says in Philippians chapter 3, verse 4 and following, Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks they may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning the zeal persecuted in the church, concerning the righteousness which is… In the law, blameless. Okay, so it sounds like, you know, I don’t hear anyone, including Paul, saying that nobody can keep the law. He says, you know, before I was a Christian, I was blameless concerning the righteousness contained in the law. And so were the parents of John the Baptist. And so were, apparently, a number of other people. The rich young ruler seems to have been. So whoever tells us that, you know, nobody could keep the law before Jesus came, well, they couldn’t keep it. all the way in their heart all the time. Nobody has a perfect heart. But the 613 commandments weren’t essentially about what’s going on in your heart. They’re about what you’re not permitted to do as a Jew. And it was not impossible to do those things. Now, of course, Jesus came to open up, pull the curtain back behind the motivations that people have and pointed out that you may be keeping the law, But what God’s really interested in is what’s going on in your heart. And that really gets really beyond what the law itself said. So we could say nobody could be as perfect as God wants people to be without Christ. Nobody can be Christ-like entirely without Christ. I would agree with that. But when it comes to the law that God gave them, the bar was lower for them. And I believe that it was not a bar that people could not get over. But Paul makes it very clear that Jews, for the most part, didn’t live better lives than Gentiles. That’s what Romans 2 talks about. You know, you say you’re a teacher of babes, and you know the law, and the Gentiles don’t. But you break the law just as much as they do. Now, he’s not saying you must inevitably break the law. He’s actually condemning them for breaking the law. You can’t condemn people for it if they have no choice. So I’m going to say I have to disagree with that author if he’s saying that Jews were not able to keep the law.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I guess the other side of that, what the argument would say would be like Romans 520, that the author would say that the purpose of the law was to increase the transgression and to reveal sin, and that’s how we know that we’re condemned in a sense. So what would you say to that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I mean, when people do bad things and there’s no law that’s been given to them, they’re doing bad things nonetheless. They just don’t know they’re bad. When God gives them the law and it addresses those things that they’re doing, says these are wrong. Well, then suddenly they know they’re doing the wrong thing. Yeah, I would say that. But again, I’m not sure what the. what the upside of this is, of your author’s point. I have to take a break, though. Maybe I’ll come back and let you, if there’s more to this than you’ve said, I’ll let you come back to it. We have other callers waiting, too. We have another half hour coming. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or from our website, thenarrowpath.com, where everything is free. Check it out, thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER 06 :
The Narrow Path is one feature of the teaching ministry of Steve Gregg. Steve’s philosophy of teaching is to educate, not indoctrinate his listeners. He believes that Christians should learn to think for themselves about the Bible and not be dependent on him or any other teacher for their convictions. We hope to teach Christians how to think, not what to think about the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we have another half hour ahead to take your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, the Christian faith, or maybe you disagree with the host, I want to say why, we’d be glad to have you do so. The number is 844-484-5755. 37. And before the break, we were talking to Yosef in Knoxville, Tennessee. We got a lot of calls waiting, Yosef, so I can’t keep going long, but I didn’t want to cut you off so abruptly. We could bring this call to an end with dignity. You had another point that you had raised, and I just gave an answer but didn’t get a chance to hear your final words.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and you don’t have to go super long, but I guess the point would be that they said that God’s intention with the law was for them not to be able to keep it because it was to, I guess, multiply the transgression.
SPEAKER 02 :
So it wasn’t God’s original intent in a sense because God never wanted… Paul did say when the law came it increased the transgression. It doesn’t say that’s the purpose of the law. He’s just saying that’s the effect it had because men were sinners. It didn’t make them better. It just defined their sins more glaringly. But that doesn’t mean God didn’t give them law with an obligation to keep it and that he didn’t want them to do it. Of course, he did want them to do it. I mean, the same people who say that are often the people who say the Sermon on the Mount was not given for us to keep it, but to simply show us that we couldn’t. This is a dispensational position. I don’t know if the author you’re reading is dispensational. I would assume it because it’s kind of the same argument. God didn’t give the law for people to keep it. He just gave it to show them they couldn’t. Oh, Jesus didn’t give the Sermon on the Mount in order for people to keep it. He just wanted to show us that we couldn’t. The idea being… that God wanted to illustrate that his standards were way too high for anyone to meet so that we need to just humble ourselves, recognize ourselves as hopelessly wicked, and receive grace instead. Well, we can do that without saying that God doesn’t intend for us to keep his laws. In fact, it says in Jeremiah 31 that when God makes the new covenant, he will write his laws in our hearts. which means we will now, from internal motivations, keep the law. So, I mean, certainly keeping God’s commandments is necessary. Jesus said in John 8, 31, he said, if you continue in my words, you’re my disciples indeed. Okay, so if you obey what he said, that’s certainly what it means, you are my disciples, you’re following me. And when Jesus gave the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, 20, he said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe everything I have commanded you. So it’s not just that he gave commands to them. He tells them to make disciples by teaching their converts to do everything Jesus commanded. So someone says, well, God really doesn’t want us to do those things. He just wants us to know we can’t. I don’t think Jesus got that memo. I don’t think anyone in the Bible got that memo. Paul certainly didn’t. Paul believed that he needed to obey God. Peter certainly did. He told the Sanhedrin when he was threatened with death, we have to obey God, not man. We ought to obey God, not man. So in other words, you threaten me with death, telling me I have to disobey God. Sorry, I can’t do that. I can’t disobey God for you, to please you, even to save my life. Now, this is the way the early church thought about things. This is the way the apostles thought. It’s not the way dispensationalists of a certain kind have thought. And they usually say, well, yeah, God didn’t expect anyone to keep the law or the Sermon on the Mount. He just wanted us to see how high the bar is so we’d be in despair that we can’t get over it, so we’d seek grace. Well, no. When we do find that we haven’t gotten over it, we should seek grace and we should recognize that we need his help. But that’s not the same thing as saying he didn’t intend for us to obey.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, that helps a lot. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you. Okay. Let’s talk to Michael in Englewood, California now. Hi, Michael. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. Good to talk to you again. The first thing I wanted to say is Matthew713.com is really great. And I go there to, you know, if I have a question, I try to go there first before I call. But my question for today is I was listening to a debate on one person was saying Jesus is not the Father. He’s not the Almighty God using, you know, he prayed to the Father and things like that. And the other person said, tried to use John 1030 and, you know, 1 John.
SPEAKER 02 :
And the Father are one.
SPEAKER 05 :
And the Word was God’s one. And here’s my question, because the person I was trying to prove that Jesus is the Father used 2 Corinthians 5.16. And what do you think about that? As in, we knew him while he was here, but now we know him no more.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, he says we once knew Christ after the flesh, but now we know him no more, meaning after the flesh. I think that I think after the flesh means simply as we know other human beings according to their natural, you know, appearances and natural selves. I mean, the Bible indicates, for example, in Romans chapter 1, that Jesus was of the seed of David according to the flesh. So that means his natural state. We knew Jesus, you know, just according to his natural state. presentation to us as a human being at one time, but now we recognize him as far more than that. Now, Paul may be saying we recognize him now as God, or he may simply mean we recognize him as far more than just a man, whether Paul thought he was God or not. Now, of course, the Trinitarian doctrine has always said God exists in three persons and is one God and one substance, and this is a doctrine that can be supported from Scripture. It is certainly one that was debated in the early church council, and I see in later councils, and eventually it was accepted as the best description of the data of Scripture on the subject. The only problem is that the Scriptures do not clarify anything about the Trinity doctrine. What the Scriptures give us is the affirmation that there’s one God, that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. We have those affirmations. And we also have the affirmation that there’s a distinction between the Father and the Son, and between the Son and the Holy Spirit. I mean, for example, Jesus, when he said he’s going to send the Spirit, I’m going to send you another comforter, meaning I’m the one you’ve had. I’m going away, and I’ll send you another one. Okay, so he makes a distinction between himself and the Holy Spirit. But in the same chapter, which is John 14, he says, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. meaning through my spirit. And then a few verses later he says, He that has my commandment and keeps them, he it is that loves me, and I will love him, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our home with him, meaning when the Holy Spirit comes among us, that’s the Father and the Son coming among us. So what do we do with that? Jesus distinguished between himself and the Father. He distinguished between himself and the Spirit, and yet he said the Spirit coming to the people is the Father and Jesus coming to them. There’s mystery here. And so, I mean, what can we say? Well, there’s two ways to look at it. We can stick with just saying what the Bible says and saying, I’m not sure how this all weaves together. You know, there are more things in heaven and earth, O Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Shakespeare said. There’s a lot of things above us that we don’t know. And there’s threads, lots of threads, but how to make them into a perfect tapestry has not been made known to us. And so we have the data from which the Trinity Doctrine has been formulated. We just don’t have a formulation of that data into the Trinity Doctrine anywhere in Scripture. That’s why it took three, four hundred years for the church to really kind of nail it down. And they apparently thought they should because there were a lot of heresies around. But the Bible does not give the impression that we have to fully understand this. It tells us that Jesus is not just a man. It tells us that he was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God. And that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Okay, so it’s talking about Jesus is the word who is God made flesh living among us. So we can say Jesus is God. in some sense, the word of God become a human among us. And that word is not other than God. He is God. Now, when Jesus said, I and the Father are one, that is an ambiguous statement because some people think that, I mean, a person can say that they are one with somebody else on a position. You know, we stand in the same place. We are one on that. We’re of one mind and so forth is what it means. Jesus might have meant far more than that when he said, I and my Father are one. The Pharisees thought he meant more than that because they picked up stones to stone him, because they thought he was blaspheming. But admittedly, his statement does not explain what he means. And that’s the problem. That’s the problem with the Trinitarian ideas. They’re not explained. Now, because of that, some people take the same data and they try to find what they would think is a better explanation than the Trinitarian, I don’t think they come up with one. I don’t know, I mean, they might come up with an alternative that works almost as well, but I don’t think they’ve come up with one that’s better. Now, obviously, if someone takes a different view than the Trinity… because they worked out the data differently, well, then they think it’s better. I’m just saying, of the alternatives I’ve seen, I think that Trinity makes the most sense without remainder of all the data it uses. I’m not going to go to the mat with somebody who says, well, I’ve got this slightly different angle and I see, okay, is Jesus God? Well, I’m going to say yes and no, which sounds, of course, self-contradictory, but he is in the sense that the Bible says he is. And he’s distinct from his father in the sense that the Bible suggests that he is. But that’s not explained. It’s not crazy, though. It’s not crazy to say that God is one and God is three any more than to say that a married couple are one and they are two. It’s different in different respects, not the same respect. So it’s not something I would fight hard over. If somebody is saying Jesus is nothing but a man, he’s not divine. He’s not, you know, there’s no sense in which God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. then I’m going to say I think they’ve missed one of the most important things about Jesus. But on the other hand, if someone doesn’t explain the divinity of Christ in quite the same terms that were adopted in, you know, 325 A.D. or later, then I’m going to say neither had anyone else or neither had much of anyone else described it that way in the first three centuries. So if the Bible doesn’t give us the formulation, then it must not be necessary for us to have the formulation. It certainly is necessary for us not to ignore any bit of data. And if the formulation we come up with leaves out some of the data on purpose because it doesn’t fit our formulation, then we have not been honest with the material. That’s how I would look at it. All right. Let’s talk to Richard in Portland, Oregon. Richard, welcome. Richard, are you there? Rather sad he was waiting for 40 minutes. I put him on and it looks like he’s gone. Okay. Sorry, Richard. I’d love to talk to you sometime. I would have loved to talk to you just now. Roberto in Bentonville, Arkansas. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Roberto.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, Brother Steve, Greg. Thank you for having me on. And we also use your resources online. My question to you is because of the previous callers, you know, previous shows that you had on, that were inquiring about extraterrestrials and aliens. My question would be, have you done any kind of, let’s say, documentary viewership? Have you watched any documentaries on the subject of extraterrestrials and especially what their messages are?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, I haven’t really done any of my own research. I mean, I’ve been driving late at night on overnight drives and heard coast to coast a few times, obviously quite a few times. So, you know, I’ve certainly heard people talk about alien encounters. I’ve heard lots of rumors. I don’t know if rumors are true or not. I don’t have an opinion. And honestly, it’s not something that I’m interested in. That is to say, if there are extraterrestrials, until they have some impact on the world or on my life, To me, it’s just a distraction. Now, if there are not extraterrestrials, then things are about the way I assume to be. But, you know, unbeknownst to me, there is life on other planets from other galaxies. And some people have had contact with them. Okay, like I said, until I have contact with them – It’s really none of my business. I don’t care if they’re there or not. There’s lots of animals in the jungle I’ve never seen, too. There’s parts of the universe, maybe there’s creatures there that I have never seen. But, you know, if there’s really strange birds and reptiles in the middle of the darkest jungles of the Congo, well, okay, unless I have some interaction with them, their existence is of no interest to me. And that’s how it is with creatures from other planets, too. Now, if they show up, then I’ll be interested in them, at least in that encounter. But you mentioned the messages they bring. Now, I have heard some things. I certainly haven’t researched it in depth, but I certainly have heard, I mean, people have been talking about this my whole life, and I’m 73 years old, so you certainly hear things. It seems to me most of the people who say that they got some kind of a message from an extraterrestrial are coming up with some kind of new age kind of message. You know, we are all one. You know, the universe is all one and stuff like that, which is kind of what Eastern religions argue. But it’s not what Jesus said. And since Jesus is, you know, the messenger, the Messiah, the son of God, sent by the creator to be the ultimate revelation of himself to us, You know, I’m going to go with what Jesus says, not what somebody said, an alien said. First of all, I don’t know how to vet the aliens for honesty. I don’t even know how to vet the people who claim to have heard from them. But I can vet Jesus because his resurrection from the dead is a pretty good credential. And, of course, I’ve known Jesus for over 60 years, and he’s never lied to me yet. So, anyway, are there aliens? There could be. However, the fact that they preach a different gospel than Jesus preached makes me think maybe they’re not real aliens. Maybe they’re demons. The Bible does say that in the last days people will be led astray by doctrines of demons. I don’t know if I’m not saying space aliens are demons, but that certainly is one view that Christians have held. And it certainly is, I think, an adequate view for the data that I’ve heard of. But, again, I haven’t looked into all the data available. So I don’t know if there’s life on other planets, but I do believe some people have had some kind of encounters with something that they take to be extraterrestrial, whether it is or not. Like I said, I mean, some people are just fascinated with all kinds of things like that. You know, I have found that there’s almost an infinite amount of information in the universe that I will never know. And so I’m going to probably concern myself with those things that I can know, things that actually come into my life, things that have a practical value to me. I remember when I loved to read the Sherlock Holmes books. I read them many times when I was younger. And in one of the first stories, Dr. Watson, when he first met Holmes, was surprised that Holmes didn’t know that the earth goes around the sun. And here Holmes is a scientist, a chemist. You know, he’s a brilliant logician. And he didn’t even know that the earth goes around the sun. And Watson told him about it and said, you didn’t know this? And Holmes said, no, I didn’t. And I’ll forget it as quickly as I can. And Watson said, why? And Holmes said, well, I consider my brain is like an attic. You can fill it with only so many things. Once you’ve got it full, to put new things in there, You’ve got to kick something out. And so I only want to have things in there that are relevant to me. And the fact that the Earth goes around the sun is not relevant to me. And that’s how I feel when people say, well, there’s a flat Earth or the Earth is billions of years old or there’s life on other planets, things like that. I mean, those are disputed things, obviously. But I couldn’t care less which view is true. I can’t see how any of them have any effect on the way I live for God or the way I serve my fellow man. So that’s kind of where I am on the extraterrestrials as well as other things. Absolutely. Thank you, Roberto. Good talking to you, man. All right. Let’s talk to Roxanne from Vancouver, B.C. next. Hi, Roxanne.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I just have a question, two questions quickly. My dad recently passed away, and I know he is going to heaven. Does that mean he’s going to heaven, like, right away? Or is he, like, waiting and then he’ll go to heaven? And then what is soul sleep?
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Well, soul sleep is the doctrine. held by Seventh-day Adventists and many Christians. I mean, Seventh-day Adventists, it’s their official doctrine. There are Christians of all denominations who privately hold this view, though it’s not the official doctrine of any Christian denomination I know. Soul sleep is the idea that when you die, you don’t go anywhere. The lights are just out. You’re not conscious. Your brain is turned off. The computer is shut down. And then when Jesus comes back, he raises you from the dead and the computer reboots, you know. And so you’ve got zero awareness of anything between the time that you die and the time that you rise from the dead at the second coming of Christ. Now, Christian theology does teach that we will rise from the dead when Jesus comes back. Let’s talk about our bodies will rise from the dead. But the Bible also says, for example, in James, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. That’s the last verse in James chapter 2. So the body without the spirit is dead. A dead body is one where the spirit is gone. Where is it gone to? Well, in Philippians 1, Paul said he was eager to depart and be with the Lord. So he figured that he’ll leave his body when he dies and go to be with the Lord. He also said the same thing. He taught that in 2 Corinthians 5. And he said, you know, knowing that while we’re in the body, we are absent from the Lord, but we’re eager to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. So Paul assumed that when we die, our spirits are, as he put it, absent from our body. But they’re not just nowhere. They’re present with the Lord. Now, of course, our bodies still go into the ground, so there still needs to be a resurrection of our bodies. If we’re going to live in the new earth in bodies like God intends, then we’ll have to have bodies again. But in the interim, it would appear that the spirit goes to be in heaven with Christ if you’re a Christian. And then someday, when Christ comes back, all the bodies will rise again. and our spirits will be rejoined with improved versions of our bodies, very much improved, glorified versions of our old bodies. So that’s what I take to be the teaching of Scripture. And, you know, there’s a number of passages, like I mentioned, that seem to point that direction. The Bible doesn’t talk very often about the afterlife. A lot of people are surprised at that because they think Christianity is all about the afterlife. It’s not. It’s about this life primarily, but this life also has ramifications in the afterlife. So the Bible is not absent references to the afterlife. It’s just it doesn’t come up very often. Almost the entire Bible tells us how to live in this life and to please God and to glorify God, which is the concern of the Christian. The afterlife only becomes a concern at the point of death. Before that, we should be living to glorify God, and that’s what the Bible focuses on. But I do believe that in the few places it does mention it, that it teaches what I just said. All right. Richard from Portland is back. We must have lost him the last time. Hi, Richard. Welcome. Hello.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve had time to calm down. I’m calling to ask your advice as to what to do. We have a relatively new pastor here. in the last year or two. But she was very disappointed in the results of the last election and made the declaration that racism and sexism is alive and well in America today. And then most recently, this Sunday, she even had in the bulletin asking the parishioners to come downtown and help protest the ICE people in downtown Portland. And it’s like, you know, I’ve always been a conservative. But then to hear this, it’s like, you know, I thought that Christ was pretty apolitical, and maybe one of the motives for Judas to betray him was that he wasn’t as political as he wanted and disappointed and ratted him out. Yeah, some people think that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, let me just say this. When somebody says the last election went the way it did because of racism and sexism, I wonder on what basis they say that. True, Trump’s opponent was a non-white woman, but to say people would have voted for her if she wasn’t a non-white woman is absurd. There are women that many conservatives would vote for, many Christians would vote for. There are non-white people that many Christians vote for. In fact, there’s quite a few politicians who have been elected to office, high office, who are non-white and who are women. So, you know, one might say, well, instead of saying racism and sexism is behind this, maybe people didn’t like the candidate. You know, the fact that she was of a different race and a female simply gives her an excuse to say people didn’t like me, so they’re racist and sexist. I didn’t vote for her, but I’m neither a racist nor a sexist, and I don’t know anyone who is, and most of my friends didn’t vote for her. In fact, most America didn’t vote for her because she wasn’t a very good candidate. People didn’t like her personality. People didn’t like her intelligence level. People didn’t like her policies. So, I mean, that’s why I think a lot of people didn’t vote for her. Now, there may be some racists and some sexists out there, but they don’t sway elections because there’s a ton of non-whites, and women who are elected to very high offices, including governorships and things like that. So I think your pastor is not making an intelligent statement. Now, I personally, you know, I’ve got this. I mean, the fact that she’s a female pastor and the Bible doesn’t allow that is another indicator that she’s probably not what we call a Bible-believing conservative person, Christian person. If she’s against ICE, that sounds like she’s in favor of criminality because ICE is simply going after criminals. I mean, maybe they’re a little rough sometimes, and police sometimes are a little rough. So are criminals. Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen everything that ICE has done. But what ICE people are doing is what ICE has done for decades now, and it’s what their job is. It’s what Congress has elected for them to do. So, I mean, I don’t really see how you should protest ICE. Maybe protest Congress. If someone thinks that ICE shouldn’t be arresting criminals, then go and have your congressman make laws that protect the criminals. But don’t blame the law enforcement when they’re going out enforcing the law. That doesn’t make sense at all. I mean, I think people need to be rational. Unfortunately, some people let their irrationality take over. I’m out of time for this call. I’m sorry. And for the day, you’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener supported. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk again tomorrow. God bless.
