Steve Gregg tackles a wide range of listener questions, including whether being Jewish guarantees salvation, the meaning of God’s chosen people, Hebrews 6 and the possibility of falling away, dispensationalism and the future of the Kingdom, infant baptism, and the role of the New Covenant. Along the way, he discusses the growth of Christianity throughout history, the nature of sin, and what it means to faithfully follow Christ in a world filled with competing theological views.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon. And the reason we’re live is so you can call in if you want to, if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you’ve heard the host say something you don’t think is quite right, you want to balance it or correct it, feel free to do that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And I guess I should be announcing that we do have a Zoom meeting tomorrow night, as usual, on Wednesday nights. They’re not every Wednesday, but the first Wednesday of every month. And so you can read about that. on our website at thenarrowpath.com under announcements. It’s at 7 p.m. Pacific time. You’re welcome to join us for it if you want to, just to listen in or to participate, either one. And we do that once a month. So, again, you’ll find the information about that at thenarrowpath.com under announcements. And that’s the only announcement I need to make, I think, right now. So I’m going to go to the phone lines and talk to Timothy in Baltimore, Maryland. Hi, Timothy. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. I do have a question. I wanted some clarification. I was talking to a friend of mine, a Christian friend, who a Jewish person goes to his church, and I asked what the reason was he… um converted to christianity and we started talking about uh that he said well it doesn’t matter because all jewish people um will inherit the kingdom of god and my response was you know john 14 6 um no one comes to the father except for me you know christ says and he But in the scriptures it says that, you know, the Jews are God’s chosen people. And I couldn’t really explain what that meant. It was like a covenant with Abraham. I was wondering if you could clarify all that.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, yeah, the Jews in the Old Testament, God chose them. But that doesn’t mean he chose them to go to heaven. He chose them for a job. It’s like if you hire somebody or you send somebody who’s a messenger for you, they now have been chosen for that purpose. Will they do it? Well, you hope they will, but they might not. But there’s no special privilege associated with it. It’s like being picked for a football team at PE class or something in junior high. It means you’re chosen to do something, to play on the team. But whatever privileges may or may not attach to it would have to be worked out separately. Abraham was chosen, or his seed was chosen, to become the blessing to all nations. Now, there is no promise made specifically that he would go to heaven or hell or anything like that. There’s no mention of salvation in the promises God made to Abraham. Only promises that his seed would bless all the nations, and his seed was Christ. So the Jewish people eventually came from Abraham. And they were the ones that God chose to bring the Messiah into the world, as he promised. So they were chosen to bring the Messiah into the world. Now, they were also expected, of course, to obey the Messiah when he comes. But some of them did and some didn’t. The ones who did were saved. The ones who did not were not saved. And that’s pretty much how it is with all people, Jews and Gentiles. You have to be basically, you have to obey Christ, you know. In fact, Jesus said to the Jewish listeners in Matthew 5 and verse 20, I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. So he said that all the Jews are going to be in the kingdom of heaven. Well, Jesus was talking to Jews. And he was saying that they have to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, who were also Jews, or they’ll by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus certainly didn’t agree with them on that, nor does anything in the New Testament. Frankly, either it’s the Old Testament, because the Old Testament doesn’t promise heaven to anybody. There’s no mention of heaven or people going to heaven when they die in the Old Testament. So, you know, the New Testament would be where you’d find the kingdom described. In fact, the term kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven comes from the New Testament. It’s not found in the Old Testament. The idea of God having a kingdom is found in the Old Testament. But the expression kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven is only found in the New Testament. So it sounds like he’s kind of confused about that. He’s right that the Jews were chosen. God chose them, and they fulfilled their mission almost unwillingly because not only did they bring him the sign of the world, they tried to kill him, They tried to kill the prophets before that, but God used them for the thing that he chose them for. And then, of course, like I say, once Messiah is here, it’s up to every individual to decide whether they’re going to be his followers or not. And most Jews decided not to, though many thousands did follow him, and they became what we call the church.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Thank you. That does definitely clarify that. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. So did he say that he was not a Christian at all? He’s just Jewish?
SPEAKER 09 :
He said he converted to Christianity, and I asked why he did. And he basically said he thought that was an easier way because of the church. And he kind of described the church as, I interpret it as more of a Naaman and Clement kind of church. Oh, yeah. I haven’t been there.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, so in other words, there’s no evidence that he’s really converted, but he was attracted to an easier way that promised more health and wealth and that kind of thing. Yeah, that’s too bad. You don’t get saved by joining a church or by desiring an easy way. You know, Jesus said we have to count the cost if we’re going to be his disciples, and that’s going to be a rough way. So I think someone maybe needs to clarify to him. He’s obviously confused on several points. All right.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I appreciate your call, Tim. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 11 :
What’s that? All right. God bless you. Kerry from Fort Worth, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 02 :
Steve, I’ve got a couple questions concerning dispensationalism. I was talking with a friend, just kind of discussing, and he was talking about mainly the premillennial position of the dispensationalists, that there had to be a a millennium because the prophecy in Jeremiah 31 was not completely fulfilled and talking about where we don’t need to teach our neighbor and we don’t have to learn and things like that.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I think lots of people read that wrongly. Let me read it, and then I’ll tell you what they’re saying wrong. Because I used to think that way, too. Because it says no one will say to his brother, know the Lord, because they’ll all know me. But that’s when we talk about the people who have come into the kingdom. That’s when we talk about the ones who have come to Mount Zion, to the Messiah, and had the law written on their hearts. It says… In Jeremiah 31, 31, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them out by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my peoples. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. Now, these are promises made to those who are in the covenant with him. Now, he said he’s going to make the new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, but he’s only making it with the believers among them. And Jesus did meet with the believers in the upper room, and he did make that new covenant with them. And every Christian who follows Christ participates in that covenant. And all of them know the Lord because we get to know him personally. Unlike the Old Covenant, where only the priests really had access to the scriptures and everybody else had to learn about God by hearsay from the teaching of the priests. And that’s what he says won’t be true anymore. You won’t have to have people telling you how to know the Lord. Everyone who’s in this covenant will know him. You see, in the Old Covenant… Not everyone in that covenant knew God personally. That just wasn’t an available thing. He didn’t write his law in their hearts. He didn’t come to dwell in them. So they were just like people who learned about God by hearsay. And in some cases they saw miracles and things, but many generations of them never saw any of those. But the new covenant is different because God’s going to have a personal relationship to every person. Jesus said in John chapter 14, He that loves me and keeps my commandments… My father will love him and we will come and manifest ourselves to him. And so, you know, he manifests and he reveals himself to everybody who loves him. That wasn’t true in the old covenant. So everyone in the new covenant knows the Lord and doesn’t have to depend on some priesthood to explain him to them. They have personal knowledge of him. They all know him from the least to the greatest. But, you see, I think what people mistake, they think that because God’s going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, that everybody in the house of Israel and the house of Judah is somehow going to be welcoming of that. And we see that wasn’t true. Jesus came and he did offer this to the house of Israel, the house of Judah, and most of them rejected it, but some didn’t. And so he made that covenant with the faithful remnant. And that, too, is what the Old Testament said would be the case. It said only the remnant would be saved. So, yeah, reading that wrongly would make you think that when he makes this new covenant, everybody on the planet is going to know God and won’t need to be evangelist. No, those are the promises made to those who are in the covenant with him. And Paul makes it very clear that he, in 2 Corinthians 3, he says he’s a minister of the new covenant. So there’s the gospel. The gospel is the new covenant. So those who receive Christ through the gospel and become followers of Christ are in the new covenant, and these things are true of them. That’s what he’s saying.
SPEAKER 02 :
So the part where it says that you won’t have to teach your neighbor, that’s referring to the priesthood? That we no longer will depend upon the priesthood?
SPEAKER 11 :
Right. Yeah, every Christian, every Christian knows the Lord. Remember, John said this in 1 John 2. He said, you have no need that anyone teach you, but as the anointing that dwells in you teaches you all things. Now, that’s the Holy Spirit. So because we have the Holy Spirit, He teaches us all things. We don’t need men to teach us. Now, can we benefit from people teaching us? Yeah. I mean, if they tell the truth, you know. I mean, there are people who’ve learned more than we have learned yet. And if they tell us what they know and we receive it, then we’ve learned something from them. But we don’t need them to know God. God knows us all individually and communicates with us. So that’s what he’s saying.
SPEAKER 02 :
One more question real quick. This third temple that the dispensationalists are saying was built, did that have already been fulfilled in the resurrection where Christ said, if you destroy this temple, I’ll raise it up in 3A?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, the thing is the description of the temple. that the dispensation is based this on, especially Ezekiel 40 through 47, doesn’t seem like it’s referring to Jesus’ body. But it could be figurative. I don’t know. Certainly Jesus’ resurrection body is the temple, and we are his body, and we are the temple. We are living stones in the temple. So we are the third temple. But I don’t know that, I’m not sure that Ezekiel, was talking about the body of Christ because he didn’t say he’s describing a third temple. When Ezekiel got that vision, there had only been one temple before, and it had been destroyed. So the next temple would be the second one. Now, that was eventually built by Zerubbabel, but it hadn’t been built yet when Ezekiel received the vision. I believe the vision that Ezekiel received was not of a third temple, but of a second temple. So that second temple was destroyed in 70 AD, but we are the third temple.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Could it be that the teaching of the tithe in the New Testament is a dispensational teaching?
SPEAKER 11 :
The teaching of the tithe in the New Testament? I don’t know. I think I know some Reformed people who teach tithing also. And I know dispensational teachers who will say, as I do, that the tithe was for the Old Testament. That’s the Old Covenant. Although there are dispensational teachers who cannot resist the temptation to teach it anyway, because, of course, it gives them a chance to urge people to give more money. But the truth is, I think that dispensationalists are more often… the ones who would say that’s part of the old covenant. I guess people can take that however they want to. I mean, we should take it the right way. But a person who’s dispensational can go either way on it, and a person who’s not dispensational can go either way on it, I would imagine. But I think the correct way is, as I said, the tithe is an Old Testament regulation. It’s not mentioned in the New.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks a lot, Dave.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, Kerry. Thanks for your call. Let’s see. Tony from Greenville, South Carolina. Tony, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. Hope you’re doing well. Thank you. My question is, yeah, about I’m going to kind of tie this into a narrative that I think about dispensationalists. The first thing is in Ecclesiastes, you know, there’s nothing new under the sun. And it seems as though that the narrative of, dispensationalists and I listened to your Joel Richardson debate a little bit and I heard a little bit about his backstory you know he’s had a rough life but they seem to think that everything’s getting worse it’s getting you know back the whole thing’s going to you know where and that’s why Jesus has to come back and you know when I look at things I kind of look at them through a kingdom like you know hey things are really getting better look at our medicines I mean, and I’m talking over the thousands of years, right? Look what we can do. We can travel from place to place. We’ve got computers, communications, universities, free societies.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Yeah, I know that. I agree. So do you have a question there, or are you just pointing that out?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and that’s the question. Can that be called the benefits of the growth of the kingdom of Christ here on earth?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, much of it is. I mean, there’s no doubt technologies that have been developed that were evil and are evil. most technology is probably neutral. So it can benefit people of all ways. The ways that the kingdom of God has impacted the world most significantly are in the ways of social change and morality and, of course, conversions. And I make conversions to Christ a separate category because even people who never follow Christ, never are Christians, they benefit socially. And, you know, even our economic system, which has led to more prosperity than any other before, is based on principles that are found in the Bible. And, you know, many barbarous practices of pagan nations have been discontinued because the missionaries brought Christianity there and its influence made the people give them up. Not that the missionaries made them do it, but their conscience has made them do it when they heard the gospel. So, I mean, there’s been a lot of real improvements in the world. And anyone who says, oh, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, that’s kind of provincial. What they mean is, in my lifetime, in this part of the world, things have gotten worse, real bad. And I wouldn’t argue against that. I mean, in many ways, Western civilization in the past, in our lifetime, has, you know, it has had some declines. Although, of course, the kingdom of God is advancing in China and South Korea and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America much more than it has any other time in history. So, you know, if we just kind of make our decisions based on what I’m looking at in my lifetime, I could say, wow, the church has gone dead. You know, the kingdom of God is dormant. You know, we’re losing ground. But throughout history, the influence of Christ has waxed and waned in certain areas and But the net result of all the waxing and waning at any given time is the gospel is spread to more people. There’s more people following Christ. There’s improvements in societies that have adopted the gospel. So it’s like leaven in a lump of dough. It’s causing the whole thing to rise. Even as not everyone gets converted, you know, all people benefit from knowing the truth and from knowing what’s good and bad because what’s morally good and bad is also good for people socially and culturally. economically and politically. So I believe it would be a mistake to say that things are getting worse everywhere. Some things are getting worse, but the kingdom of God is still expanding. And even if it took a dip, if there was sort of a trough in the chart at this particular time, that doesn’t mean it won’t. It’s still higher than it was 100 years ago. And 100 years from now, it could be much higher than it is now. We don’t want to judge the whole trajectory of history by the little piece of it that we’re living in because things do go up and down. But I compare it to gold. You know, I bought some gold for $300 an ounce back in, what, 1979 or something like that. No, no, 89. It had to be. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it stayed at $300 for a long time. I don’t think it ever went down from there, maybe a few bucks, but it stayed at $300 for years and years. I finally sold it, but then it went up. But you see, if you check the price of gold every day, it goes up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down. But if you stand back and look at the progress over a year, it goes up. You know, after you look over 10 years, it shoots up. You know, so, of course, the gold I used to have for $300 an ounce, if I still had it, it’s… worth like $4,500 last I checked. So, you know, the same thing. You could look at a given day or week, and gold may be down compared to what it was a week or two ago. But it’ll go back up, and altogether, it just keeps being worth more and more, and that’s true of the kingdom. The kingdom has its ups and downs, but in general, it keeps going up.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, do you see that as an unfortunate narrative of the dispensational side of the group? Well, yeah, yeah. Negative, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, there’s something intrinsic in dispensationalism that kind of leads to pessimism about history because they believe that in the final era before Jesus comes back, the whole world’s going to be worshiping Antichrist. And they believe that, you know, there’s going to be all these plagues from Revelation and stuff like that. So the world would be like a hell hole and ruled over by a wicked ruler who forces everyone to worship him or die. Yeah, I mean, however good it gets between now and then, they believe that’s going to happen at the end. So since they want Jesus to come back soon, they almost have a… I think, and I’m not going to speak for all of them, but I know the people I know who are dispensational, they almost gloat in the idea that things are getting worse because they think, well, it’s got to get worse so that Antichrist will rise, then Jesus will come. But, of course, an Antichrist rose in Germany, you know, in the 30s and 40s of the last century, and Jesus didn’t come, and a whole lot of people had a bad time. you know, because of it. And there’s been many dictators and so forth who do terrible things. I don’t think we want an Antichrist to come and rule the world. If one does, we might feel comforted and think, well, I guess Jesus is coming soon. But it’s not a comfortable place to wait. Anyway, but see, non-dispensationalists, well, especially post-millennialists and some optimistic amillennialists, believe that the world’s just going to keep getting more Christ-like because the gospel keeps going out and making disciples. And dispensationalists usually focus on the headlines that are negative and assume that that’s the trend that will continue. But, you know, if you look at the overall trajectory, the kingdom of God is taking territory and has taken much more. I mean, a third of the people on the planet claim to be Christians today. The population of the earth, one-third, one person out of three the world over claimed to be Christians. That wasn’t the case 2,000 years ago or even 1,000 years ago. So, I mean, things – it depends on where you want to look at. Is the cup half full or half empty, you know? I think the dispensations often like to look at the half empty. And like post-millennial people like to look at the half full. And an all-millennial person just looks at it and says – Yeah, it could go up or down from here. Anyway, Tony, thanks for your call. It’s good talking to you. Nelson in Fort Worth, Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, I would like to know what shortwave radio station you are on. I don’t know. I think that comes on at 9 in the morning of your old broadcast, you know, where it rebroadcasts your caller inns.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, is that not listed on our website? I don’t know.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, it’s not listed under shortwave. Just continental U.S., maybe two or three other countries like Canada or whatever. But do you know the radio station? I don’t. WWCR shortwave in Tennessee, I’m not sure.
SPEAKER 11 :
Brother, I don’t know anything about shortwave. I don’t use shortwave. I don’t have a license for it. I know that we were on shortwave at one time, but that’s just. All I do is agree to go on, and people – we’re on 80-something stations around the country, and I don’t have – I don’t know the names of most of them.
SPEAKER 08 :
So you don’t know the radio station that they rebroadcast your caller in, huh?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, I don’t. That is my answer, yes. That’s my final answer. Huh.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Well, I’ll just have to try to listen again when they rebroadcast it. Yeah, I honestly don’t know. I’ll let you know.
SPEAKER 11 :
Sorry I couldn’t help you there. Maybe someone knows. Maybe they’ll call in and let us know. All right. We’ve got a break coming up here, and then we have another half hour. We also have some lines open. If you want to get on in the second half hour, you can call now and get in line ahead of the rest. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844- 484-5737. The Narrow Path is a radio ministry that’s been on the air since 1997. That’s 29 years now, daily, Monday through Friday. And we did take one year hiatus. I don’t usually include that in my statement. But yeah, we were on for four years. We had to take a year off for a purpose, and we’ve been on for 24 more years after that. And It’s a listener-supported. We don’t sell anything. We have no commercials. We don’t have any way of generating money. We don’t even have a mailing list. We don’t send out appeals. We just tell you. We tell our listeners. If you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can. You can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go on the website. You can donate there if you want to, although everything at the website is free, and there are thousands of things there for free you can download. But you can also donate there if you want to. The website is thenarrowpath.com. And, again, tomorrow night we have the Zoom meeting. You can find out about that at thenarrowpath.com, how to log on and be with us for that. I’m going to take a break here for just a few seconds, about 30 seconds, and then we’ll be coming back with another half hour. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
Do you find that reading the Bible leaves you scratching your head with more new questions than you had before you read it, but don’t know where to go for answers? You may be interested then in Steve Gregg’s many online lectures, downloadable without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com. There’s no charge for anything at thenarrowpath.com. Visit us there and be amazed at all you have been missing.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live another half hour today. And taking your calls, looks like the lines have filled up, or else I would give you the number, but I’ll wait until some lines open before I do that. I should mention that all of next week, starting actually this coming Sunday and through the next Sunday, I’m speaking in the Seattle area in a variety of places. Those are all listed on our website if you’re in the Seattle area. I’ll be a week from yesterday, so… Next Monday, I’ll be speaking in Spokane, and I’m going to be in Boise. I believe it’ll be on Thursday of that week. The dates are all on the website. If you live in Boise area or Spokane or Seattle, feel free to check those out. Actually, I’m speaking this Thursday night at a little church in Petey. Oregon, which is kind of near Philomath. So if you’re in that area, you might want to check that out. Those dates and places and times are listed at thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says announcements. Our lines are full, so we’ll go back to the phones and talk to Robert in Pinole, California. Hi, Robert. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. My question is in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 4, 5, and 6. Well, I heard a pastor say that that has nothing to do with losing your salvation. I was wondering if you can explain those verses, if it does or if it doesn’t.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, there’s some pastors who have decided that you can’t lose your salvation. So when you find verses that do talk about losing your salvation, they say this has nothing to do with losing your salvation, because if they let it say what it says, they couldn’t hold that doctrine anymore. I’ll read it, and I’ll tell you what they do say, those who are saying it has nothing to do with losing salvation. He says there, For it is impossible for those who are once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, but in the Greek it actually says, and have fallen away, not if, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify for themselves the Son of God and put Him to an open shame. So it says, those people who have had these experiences, he said, if they fall away, it’s impossible… to restore them to repentance because they’re crucifying Christ a second time. Now, certainly if you fall away and you’re crucifying Christ, anyone who wants to tell you you’re still saved had better find another Bible to teach that because that doesn’t teach that. But they do have another way of looking. There’s a couple different ways of looking at this. that people use who do believe you cannot lose your salvation. One is essentially the Calvinist view. The Calvinist view is that if you have been really saved, you cannot fall away. And so there’s a couple of ways they can go with this. Some people say, well, it says if they fall away, you can’t renew them to repentance because they’re crucifying Christ again. what they will say is, well, you can’t crucify Christ again. He’s crucified once and for all. He can’t be crucified a second time. So the writer is talking about an impossibility. And he says, you know, if these people had fell away, there’d be no hope for them because you’d have to crucify Christ again, which you can’t. Therefore, they can’t fall away. Therefore, falling away is not even something that can happen. Now, the Calvinist believes if you’re really one of the elects, There’s also a doctrine called the perseverance of the saints, and therefore, if you’ve been born again, you will persevere in faith until you die. And that if… some of them would say, is talking about a hypothetical that can’t really happen. In fact, they say he’s actually strongly saying you can’t lose your salvation because if you did fall away, it would mean crucifying Christ again, which is impossible. So that’s how they understand. They think the writer’s trying to say it’s impossible to fall away. It’s hard to know why he would give so many warnings in his book, though, to people who are in danger of falling away and telling them not to do it. If they can’t do it. But the problem with this is that the word if isn’t even in there. He doesn’t speak about a hypothetical. The King James and the New King James says, if they fall away. But the Greek text never said that. The Greek text says, and have fallen away. So, for those who have been enlightened in the case of the heavenly gifts and so forth, and who have fallen away, it’s impossible to renew them again. So, he’s talking about actual cases, not hypotheticals. Now, there’s another way they look at it. He does mention they’ve tasted of the word of God and they’ve tasted of the heavenly gift. And they say, well, these people maybe haven’t really been fully saved. They’ve gotten close. People who’ve heard the gospel, they’ve tasted it a little bit. They haven’t really consumed it, haven’t really imbibed it. So they’ve never really gotten all the way saved. And then they fall away. Well, if that’s true, well, then correct. This does not speak about people losing their salvation because the people in question never were saved. in the first place. The problems with that are multiple. One of them is that the writer does not give the slightest hint that he’s talking about people who are not saved. He said they have been partakers of the Holy Spirit and tasted of the gift of, received the gift of God, you know, and tasted of the good things of God and so forth, and of the powers of the age to come. Well, yes, some of those things it says they tasted, but not all of them. They were partakers of the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, in the New Testament, the only people who partake of the Holy Spirit are Christians, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us, and apart from that, he’s not in people. So if the writer doesn’t mean Christians, he is sure going out of his way to confuse his readers. I mean, if he wanted to say, well, if people got close to being saved and fell away, they’re going to be harder to reach because they almost got there and now they’ve hardened themselves against it. That would be a sensible thing to say, and it would possibly be true. If people do not get all the way saved and they fall away, that is, they’re interested for a while, then they go off and aren’t interested, they might not be as winnable after that. But that’s not what this is talking about. This is talking about people who have partaken of salvation, the heavenly gift. They have partaken of the Word of God. They have partaken of the Holy Spirit. Now, if he believed, if the author thought, That there’s some way someone can partake of all those things and not be saved. Well, he should have told his audience because his audience wouldn’t have known that. Nowhere else in the Bible does it ever suggest it. And why did he go through so much trouble to list so many things? Why couldn’t he just say, well, if you get close to being saved and fall away, you’re going to be harder to win later. Why pile on one Christian attribute after another, after another, after another, and things that are true only of Christians? And by the way, when he said tasted of the word of God, tasted of the heavenly gift, taste to him doesn’t mean necessarily that they didn’t partake of it completely. Because the same author earlier in the book says that Jesus tasted death for every man. The same word, taste. So, you know, he tasted death. I think he swallowed it. I think he had the whole thing. He didn’t get partially dead. So it just doesn’t work. Now, so, you know, this is saying that there are people who get saved and who fall away. And now the hardest part for all people is it’s impossible to renew them to repentance. This is difficult because sometimes people do fall away and do get renewed to repentance. The Bible mentions some cases like this. James chapter 5 at the end talks about a case like that of a brother who goes off astray and another brings him back. There’s a number of places in the Bible that make it very clear that Christians sometimes do fall away and most of them do not suggest it’s impossible to come back. The prodigal son fell away from his father but he came back. So So it’s impossible to renew him is a hard call. There’s two ways I’ve heard that explained. One is it’s humanly impossible. Just like Jesus said, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples said, well, who can do that? And he said, well, with man, that’s impossible. But with God, nothing should be called impossible. So there are things that would be humanly impossible because they’re just too difficult. But God can override that impossibility. And so, as Jesus said about rich men, the writer of Hebrews is saying this about people who are not necessarily rich, but they have another reason for being hard to reach. And that is that they’ve known Christ and they’ve abandoned him. They’ve hardened their hearts against him. So that’s one way to understand that. Impossible doesn’t mean absolutely impossible. It means humanly impossible, but not for God. Now, another way to look at it is when he says, seeing they crucify to themselves again Christ afresh, in the Greek, that could be read, and some translations have rendered it, while they crucify Christ afresh. In other words, they cannot be won back while they’re crucifying Christ. You’ve got to get them to stop doing that before they’ll come back. it’s impossible to renew them to repentance while they’re doing that. Now, that’s not how it reads in some of our Bibles, but the Greek can be taken that way, and there are translators who have taken it that way. So there’s so many variables. This is one of the more difficult passages in the whole Bible, partly because almost every part of it has multiple variables. It could mean that. It could mean that. It could mean that. But one thing it clearly means is don’t fall away. Because it won’t be easy to come back.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. All right? Amen. Okay. Just real quick, I always took it as, when it says it is impossible to be brought back to repentance, because God would stop speaking to you. And the only way we come to Christ is when he’s drawing us, you know, through conviction of the Holy Spirit. But I guess that wouldn’t apply to that, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, if God stops convicting, then, of course, it’s impossible to come back. But he doesn’t mention that being the case. He mentions impossibility. He does not say God wouldn’t be convicting you anymore. Now, preachers have said that sometimes, and maybe that’s implied, but it’s not stated. So, you know, I think that’s kind of the same thing as saying when a person has abandoned Christ, they’ve hardened their heart. And, you know, even if the Holy Spirit’s trying to convict them, their heart is too hard to hear. But… Anyway, yeah, the great thing about that is that if someone thinks they have fallen away and they’re afraid they can’t come back, they can just prove themselves wrong by coming back. They can surrender to Christ. They can repent. They can follow him again. If they don’t, that’s on them. If they say, well, I can’t do it because the Bible says it’s impossible. No, I think you’re misunderstanding that passage if you think it’s impossible.
SPEAKER 07 :
But thank you for breaking that down. You gave me a lot to think about with the point of views. But like you said, don’t fall away. Don’t fall away.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s the thing. And it’s also a message that the writer of Hebrews has like four other times real strongly, don’t fall away. He’s writing to people.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, there’s a lot of warning.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, he’s warning them not to fall away throughout the whole book. All right, brother, thanks for your call. Let’s talk to Dalton from Springfield, Massachusetts. Dalton, welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hello.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hi.
SPEAKER 03 :
I was curious. I’ve asked a handful of people to try to help me wrap my head around what exactly sin would be, and I’ve gotten a few different answers, and I was a little bit curious on what your take was. The worst sin? Just like in general, what could be sin, because I was trying to live a life free of sin as much as possible. And I was getting some different answers on what it could be, almost like if you do anything that Christ wouldn’t, it’s a sin. You know what I mean? And I was kind of just looking at grass.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, so the word sin, the Greek word for sin comes from the imagery of target shooting. The word sin in the Greek means missing the mark or missing the target. That suggests that there’s a target you’re supposed to hit. And whenever you fail to hit that target, that’s what sin is. Now, what is the target? Well, I believe the target is to be what God made us to be, obedient to him, submitted to him, pleasing to him. Loving him. You know, the Bible, God gave us a great commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. That’s his will. Now, when we fall short of that, we’re not hitting that bullseye. And that’s sin. you know, fortunately, God is not shocked when people sin. He’s seen an awful lot of people sinning, like billions. In fact, everybody he’s ever seen except Jesus sins. So that doesn’t make it okay. It just means that God’s not alarmed or, you know, put off or shocked or, you know, thinking, oh, I can’t believe you did that kind of thing. You know, how can I endure this from you? Realize that, unfortunately, the whole world has gone after the world and the flesh and the devil, and everybody has disappointed God. Everyone’s disobeyed God. And even Christians, James said, in many things we all stumble. And in the context, stumbling there would mean falling into sin. We all do that, even Christians. But the difference is you want to live a holy life, and most sinners don’t. The fact that you want to live a holy life means that your heart is inclined to the Lord, that you do love the Lord. That’s why you want to please him. And I hope that’s what it means. It usually means that if you’re genuinely a Christian, you want to live a holy life. And whenever you fall or stumble, you’re frustrated, of course. But all is not lost. You’re probably more frustrated than God is. I mean, God took care of all the sins of the world through Christ, so he’s not really, let’s say, fragile about this kind of thing. I mean, if God was peevish and had a short fuse or whatever, boy, he’d be tearing his hair out 24-7 because of all the sin that’s going on in the world. But God isn’t that way. God’s love. God hates sin, but he hates it because it hurts people, and he loves people. And it’s just like a father would hate the cancer that his son has. and want it to be removed. He doesn’t hate his son, but he hates the fact that his son is dying of cancer. And God doesn’t hate his people, but he hates sin because it destroys and hurts them. And when you’re a Christian, you hate sin too. And it sounds to me like that’s your attitude too. You hate sin, or at least you don’t want to sin. So it’s interesting because missing the mark, interestingly enough, sounds like you were aiming at something. You know, it’s like if you’re supposed to hit the target and you just take your arrows and bow and put them away and don’t shoot, well, you’re not missing the mark. You’re just not even trying. But if you’re aiming to please God, you will sometimes fall short. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But, you know, he doesn’t give up on you. I mean, as long as you don’t give up on him, as long as you’re still desiring to please him, you repent of what you did and move on. That’s why Jesus incorporated into the Lord’s Prayer, which he apparently wanted people to pray every day, since it includes a request for daily food. You know, it also says, forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our debts, our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. So, you know, he figured we’d need to pray that a lot. And we do. We also need to seek his help in overcoming sin, which I hope you’re doing also. All right?
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. God bless you, Dalton. Catherine from Stillwater, Minnesota. Welcome. Uh-oh. I hit the wrong button. Here’s the button she’s on. There we go. Hi, Catherine.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi there. Hi. I’m calling about a conversation you had yesterday about the Jesus movement and how a lot of us who are Catholic Lutheran, we moved into a more evangelical and got rid of a lot of tradition and history. And we’re finding the young kids today, meaning our children and others, are moving back into that traditional, historical. Yeah, a lot of them are. This question is about Baby baptism. So my son loves the Lord and his wife. They have three children, a five-year-old, three-year-old, and a newborn baby. They just got them baptized in the Anglican Church, and they sent us all their studies. And we went to the baptism, and we just didn’t see it in the Word of God. We just didn’t see it. But they do see it. So I just want to ask you what you think of that. And also, should we be concerned about those children, meaning thinking that they’ve been baptized and… are under that salvation?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I believe children are under salvation anyway until they reach an age of accountability. And once they reach that, then they’re going to have to answer to God for what they do that they knowingly do wrong. Now, let’s face it, there’s a lot of ignorance about in the world about religion and even among Christians about Christianity. And one of the things that I disagree with a great number of Christians about is infant baptism. I don’t believe in infant baptism because, like you say, it’s not in the Bible. And I think not only is it not mentioned in the Bible, I think baptizing infants is contrary to the whole meaning of baptism. I believe that baptism is a choice you make when you decide that you’re leaving your old life behind and you’re You’re choosing Christ as your king, and you’re going into his kingdom. I believe baptism was supposed to be the portal through which someone abandons the old life and comes into the kingdom of God through faith. And in the New Testament, they did it as soon as someone got saved. Peter told the people, repent and be baptized. which suggests that repentance is generally first. Jesus in Mark 16 said, whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Of course, that suggests believing is first. You know, being converted comes first. Infants are not converted because they don’t know anything. I think people baptize infants. I won’t go into the reasons, but I will say this. A very long time ago, over probably, I’m going to say over 1,700 years ago, Christians began to baptize their babies. I’m not sure why they did this. I know that some of them think it’s like circumcision, like the Jews circumcised their babies, and they think baptism is like that. But, of course, the Bible does not indicate that baptism is like circumcision. The two are mentioned together in one place. Spiritual baptism and spiritual circumcision are mentioned together in Colossians 2, around verse 12, I think. But nowhere are the two equated. They’re just different metaphors for the spiritual things that happen to us. This new covenant parallel to circumcision is not baptism. It’s circumcision of the heart. Circumcision is a type and a shadow of spiritual circumcision. Just like water baptism, I think, is a shadow of a spiritual event, too. But anyway, they misunderstand that, in my opinion. Now, I believe that they probably sincerely misunderstand it. And I believe that when they do baptize their children, they’re doing it because they’re fully persuaded this is pleasing to God. And I think that the fact that someone wants to do what pleases God… is what God sees most. Now, it’d be best if everyone who wants to please God were correctly instructed about what God has said to do. But, let’s face it, a lot of A lot of people who love God and are even converted and are followers of Christ, they don’t have Bibles. This isn’t the case with anyone in this country, but, I mean, they don’t have Bibles. They don’t learn a lot of biblical doctrine. There’s a lot of things about God they don’t know. But God still loves them, and if they love him, I think he accepts them. But, unfortunately, baptism, which is very important, I think, for believers… It has been misconstrued for, like I said, close to 1,800 years probably, 1,700 or 1,800. So Catholics do it. The Anglicans do it. The Presbyterians do it. Methodists do it. The infant baptism. I just don’t see it in the Bible, so I don’t do it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. So if this was happening in your family, how would you handle it as grandparents?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I would tell them what I told you, and then I’d let the parents make their own decision. Okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right.
SPEAKER 11 :
I don’t think by doing it that they’re going to bring some kind of a curse on their child or anything like that. The only danger would be that when the child grows up, if that child comes to faith in Christ – They should realize that they need to be baptized now that they’re a Christian and realize that what happened in babyhood was just a ritual that was not found in the Bible. But, you know, I mean, there are people who don’t ever come to Christ, but they think they’re saved because they got baptized as babies. That would be, I suppose, harmful, obviously. Right. For the most part, I don’t think the child is harmed by it. I think the parents are not harmed by doing it with them. But I think that when, as the child grows older, you can, as a grandparent, have influence in their life. But I try to persuade the parents before trying to persuade the child.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. Well, good. Thank you. All right. But appreciate you very much.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, Catherine. Good talking to you. Rob from Oceanside, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question about Matthew 19, 28. It’s where Jesus follows up on that conversation you were talking about earlier with the rich young ruler. And he is telling them that, surely I said to you that… In the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his glory, you who follow me will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. First question, regeneration, what is the what and when?
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, well, there’s two ways that I know that that can be taken. There might be more than I’m aware of. Many people take the regeneration to be a term that means the same thing as the resurrection. Now, the resurrection of the body will occur when Jesus comes back. He’s going to raise the dead. And so some think that the regeneration means the resurrection. So that he’s giving an eschatological prediction that when Jesus comes back, these 12 will sit and govern, rule over the 12 tribes of Israel. And dispensationalists in particular think that that’s going to be in a millennial kingdom. Right. I don’t take it that way, partly because we have no other case in the Bible where the resurrection is called the regeneration. And the word the regeneration is found one other place in the Bible, the same Greek word, and that’s in Titus chapter 3, I think it’s around verse 5, where it says that not by our good works that we’ve done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, he said. Now, regeneration usually is understood to mean being born again, which has already happened for those of us who are Christians. We’ve been regenerated. So if that’s what Jesus meant, then he would be saying when the Holy Spirit comes, when he regenerates the church, during that season, the church age, in the regeneration, the apostles, the twelve apostles, will have spiritual authority over especially the twelve tribes of Israel. We know that when Paul met the apostles after his conversion in Galatians chapter 2. He says that they agreed that he and Barnabas were sent to the Gentiles, but they, the twelve, were sent to the circumcision, or to the Jews. And they may have been interpreting Christ’s statement that way. I mean, I don’t know why else they’d think that. Why would they be sent only to the Jews when Jesus said, go and make disciples of all flesh? But if they were understanding Matthew 19 the way I just suggested, the second way, That might have been where they got the idea that they’re supposed to focus their efforts on the Jewish evangelism and leading the Jewish church, at least at first. Later, they went to the Gentiles, too. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. All kinds of resources are there for free. Nothing is there for sale. You can donate if you wish at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
