In this episode, Bob George addresses common struggles and misconceptions about biblical teachings. From discussing the implications of Jesus’ teachings in the context of the New Covenant to seeking clarity on what it means to carry one’s cross daily, Bob offers answers that bring clarity and focus back to the centrality of Christ in everyday life. Tune in for thoughtful discussions and practical biblical insights that will inspire and challenge you.
00:00:01 Introduction to Classic Christianity Radio
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Today we are pleased to present a special radio show featuring call-in listeners from Bob’s original people-to-people daily radio program that was on the air for over 30 years, offering real answers for real-life problems as he addresses common questions as well as the tough issues of today, directing callers to the centrality of Christ in you, your only hope of glory. We want to remind our listeners that Bob George Ministries needs your financial support to continue to have Classic Christianity Radio on the air. Please visit BobGeorge.net to find out how you can help support us financially. Let’s now join Bob as he presents practical biblical insights as he helps people experience a life of faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 01 :
Indianapolis, Indiana, listening on WXLW. Jason, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Bob. It’s a privilege talking to you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thanks, brother.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, I’ve read your book recently, Classic Christianity, and struggled with a lot of the things that you address in your book, and it’s helped quite a bit. My question is, is the area of forgiveness, I think you’ve mentioned this before on your radio station, and I missed it, I think, as far as your answer. It’s concerning your sins each day in conjunction with the Lord’s Prayer, and In that prayer of the Lord, asking forgiveness or confessing sins, you know, as far as forgiving our debts as we forgive our debtors. As far as, you know, confessing sins each day, you know, I know for an instance, you know, this past, well, each day I stumble and wanted to know where’s the line as far as confessing sins and how many times a day and all that. Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Larry, sometimes what you ought to do is just do a word study on confession as it relates to sin and see how many passages there are in the Scripture. I think Steve Simon and I were having lunch together today. I think you mentioned there are eight passages in the entirety of the Bible and four, let’s see, six of them or something like that in the Old Testament and then two in the New Testament. One, James, confess your sins one to another. And then 1 John 1, 9, that everybody uses as a Christian bar of soap out of context. They’re washing something else besides themselves. I don’t know what we’re washing, but it isn’t us. We have to understand something that, number one, the Lord’s Prayer is not the Lord’s Prayer. We’ve called it the Lord’s Prayer, but it was a prayer that he gave to the disciples. And prior to giving that to them, he said, when you pray, don’t pray like the heathen do. They keep on babbling the same prayer over and over again. So what do we do? Take the prayer that he gave us and babble it over and over again. You never see that prayer as an example. You never see that prayer prayed in any of Pauline’s writings who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. Any of Peter’s writings or any of the other writings. It wasn’t given for that purpose. It was a prayer, quite frankly, that was given under the old covenant. And that’s what we have to understand, Jason. And that’s where this misunderstanding comes in, is in not understanding the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. Now, the new covenant went into effect when Jesus died, didn’t it? Right. In other words, a will, if you have a will, when will that go into effect? After you die, yeah. So the new covenant did not go into effect at Jesus’ birth. It went into effect at Jesus’ death. If you really were to take a clear delineation of Scripture, you would have the old covenant, which is the Old Testament. You would have the four Gospels, which is a recordation of the life of Christ. And then you have the new covenant beginning in the book of Acts. Because the Gospels are not in the New Covenant. The Gospels, the New Covenant began at Jesus’ death.
SPEAKER 06 :
So it’s kind of a transition.
SPEAKER 01 :
Absolutely. Okay. So the New Covenant says there’s sins and lawless acts. I will remember no more. And where these have been, not will be, but have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins. The New Covenant talks about the total forgiveness of sin.
SPEAKER 06 :
Now, when the… Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, they’re covered before they ever occur. God not only died for your sins, but he died for the sins of the whole world. It says God was in Christ reconciling the entire world unto himself, not counting their sins against them. Now, that’s New Covenant teaching. So, and John says that he not only died for our sins, but the sins of the whole world. So, what you have is God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not counting their sins against them. Then in Romans it tells us, if while we were yet enemies, that’s lost, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, that’s already happened, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? So in order to give us a life that he wanted to give us, which was eternal life, he had to deal with sin eternally. So you not only have eternal life, you have eternal forgiveness. Because if you didn’t have eternal forgiveness and he gave you life, you’d lose it the next time you sinned. So in order to give you a life that was indestructible and unable to be lost, he had to deal with what caused spiritual death, and that was sin, and he had to deal with that eternally. And so that’s what took place at the cross. So in the prayer that you’re talking about, people, again, put a period where it doesn’t belong because in verse 14, there’s a for. Now, when you have a for, it means keep reading. It’s in other words, I’ve said something, but now I’m going to explain what that means. So a for or therefore is an explanation of a meaning of something. Now, here’s the meaning of what he just said in that prayer. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Now, could that be true after the cross where God was in Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself, not counting their sins against them?
SPEAKER 06 :
In other words, if… I’m sorry. In other words, if…
SPEAKER 01 :
If I have something against… No, no, let’s get that clear because that will answer your question.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Could that be possible after the cross? For if you don’t forgive your brother who has sinned, your Father in Heaven will not forgive you. Could that be possible after the cross?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, how could it be possible when at the cross he took away the sins of the whole world?
SPEAKER 06 :
I guess that’s a, obviously it’s not a contradiction because the Bible doesn’t have it.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, no, it’s not a contradiction at all. It’s two covenants.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m taking it as a contradiction, I guess, on my own personal.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good because you see, Jason, that is a contradiction unless you understand the Old and New Covenant. You see, that was under the Old Covenant law. The Old Covenant law, everything was conditional. If you do this, God will do this. After the cross, it’s do this because God has already done this. After the cross, it’s forgive your brother as Christ Jesus has forgiven you. Before the cross, huh?
SPEAKER 06 :
He gives us the power to be able to do that.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, you’re missing the point, Jason. It’s not what you do. It’s what he did. Before the cross, you were under a conditional old covenant. Here’s the law. Keep it. Here’s a part of the law. If you forgive your brother, your father will forgive you. If you don’t, he won’t. At the new covenant, the law is nailed to the cross. You’re no longer under the law. You’re now under grace. And in the new covenant, through that one act of Jesus, now under the new covenant, you are a forgiven person if you are in Christ. You don’t get forgiven anymore. You are a forgiven person. In him, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Now, that’s why there’s not one verse in the entire new covenant that tells anyone to ask God to forgive their sins. Not a one. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
It is amazing. I guess what I struggle with, I guess, is what I’ve heard from other teachers, pastors, is that we’re forgiven judicially, but as far as on a personal relationship as God our Father, we want to confess our sins.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, that’s the most obnoxious teaching that I know of in the Scriptures. And the most erroneous. There is no such thing as judicial forgiveness. It’s just forgiveness. Can you imagine with me for a moment of standing at the foot of Christ Jesus, who bled and died to take away the sins of the world, and looking up in his face with his theological jargon and saying, Now, Jesus, when you said, Father, forgive them, was that judicial or was that parental? I think he’d have thrown up on them. You see, all of that’s nonsense. There is no such thing as judicial. A guy called in one time and said that was forensic. I said, my God, you’ve got Quincy involved in this thing now. There’s no such thing as that. If God says you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven. How do you enter into that? By faith. Only by faith. There’s no such thing. See, that is a person’s excuse to say, oh, well, that’s this kind of forgiveness, and then put a billy goat butt on it. There is no butt. When God says, I’ve taken away your sins, he’s taken away your sins. How do you enter into that? By faith.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. Well, you make it so clear. I appreciate your ministry, and I’m going to put your book down, and I’m going to pick it up again and read some more.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, brother, you hang on a minute because we’ve got some information we want to get to you, okay? Okay. Okay, you hang on, Jason. Let’s go to New Orleans, Louisiana. Let’s go on WLNO. And, Robert, you are on the air.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Bob, how y’all doing today?
SPEAKER 01 :
We’re doing good, Robert. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. I’m looking forward to June. But I was calling to ask a question, Bob. That was good for that hour with you. It says, God is the same today, yesterday, and forevermore. And I know the changes of the covenant. So they’re trying to tie in the Old Testament with the feeling you came to. So I know I don’t mean that, but I’d like you to expand on it a little bit.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, God is the same yesterday and today and forever. He’s never stopped loving man. He never stopped judging sin. He decided to do that once and for all at the cross. And that is carried on and will carry on until the end of time. No man will ever go to hell because of his sins, only the sin and the rejection of the work of Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. As far as his dealing with man, it says the reason that he issued in a new covenant was because of us. And he not changed his mind and issued in a new covenant, we’d all be dead. There would be no salvation for us. Because under the law, no man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law. So it’s a good thing that he issued in a new covenant. Did that mean he changed his mind? No, he always knew he was going to have to do that because God sees all things. But we need to forget about that. That’s God’s characteristic, not ours. But the issue is that there is no change in God at all. He had a plan. Man failed. And so he issued in a covenant of grace where he gives every person an opportunity to accept salvation by faith. Some do and some don’t. And that’s just the way it is. You’re going to have people who are going to die in their sins and in the uncircumcision of their sinful nature. Amy was sharing with a Jewish lady today that she has been so kind to for almost a year who has cancer. And went today, and she talked about how depressed she was. And Amy started explaining that you’re never going to experience freedom and depression until you come to know your God. And her deal was, I do not want to talk about this kind of thing. I’m an atheist. Well, she’s been an atheist everything since she knew her. But Amy has loved her in the midst of it, continued to try to share Christ, but she’s as hard as a brick. What will happen to her if she continues in that? She’ll die in her sins and in the uncircumcision of her sinful nature. Period. And so some accept and some don’t. God has never changed his plan, Robert. He always said that man would come to him on the basis of faith and faith alone.
SPEAKER 02 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, my brother.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Thank you, Bob.
SPEAKER 07 :
Classic Christianity Radio thanks you for your support of our online and radio ministry. Make sure to visit bobgeorge.net to order a copy of the Closer Look Bible Study Series. A Closer Look Bible Studies features eight in-depth study guides that detail hundreds of Bible verses to help you deepen your understanding of the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. A Closer Look Bible Study Guides are an excellent tool for both individuals and larger Bible study groups. Please visit bobgeorge.net to order your copy of A Closer Look Bible Studies, as well as many other wonderful books, CDs, and study guides. With your support, we can continue to share the good news of Jesus Christ. Let’s continue now with our Classic Christianity radio program.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s go to San Antonio, Texas, listening on KCTA. Todd, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Bob. Hi, Todd. I really enjoy your show.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thank you, brother.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’ve been reading your books, too.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good, thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
My question is kind of a simple one, really. Jesus said to deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow him. What does he mean by your cross?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I can honestly say I’m not 100% sure. I think there’s a lot of different meanings that you can apply to that. But I don’t have a cross to pick up. So it has to be an allegory. It’s certainly you and I don’t go out and pick up crosses and carry it with us. So it has to be an example of something. And I think it’s an example of what he said to deny ourselves and recognize that apart from him, we would have no life. Whoever wants to save his life, he goes ahead to explain, we’ll lose it. And whoever loses his life for me will save it. Well, is he talking about that you have to go out and be a martyr in order for your life to be saved? I don’t think so. But he’s talking about what good is a man if he gains the whole world and then lose or forfeit his very self. If anyone’s ashamed of me and my words, the son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory. There’s a lot of passages here that are hard to put your arms around is exactly what he was talking about. But when I read that passage, and you’re talking about picking up the cross and following him, well, what was the cross? Well, it was the place where Jesus took away the sins of the world. Now, and Peter made a statement that you’re never going to grow and mature. And the reason is because it says you’re blind indeed and have forgotten that you’ve been cleansed of your past sins. And there are a lot of people who are not growing in their faith because they are blind and have truly forgotten that they’ve been cleansed. They’re still trying to keep themselves cleansed. So whoever wants to or he must follow or deny himself, that would be, Lord, not my will, but yours be done. That would be an attitude, wouldn’t it?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
An attitude of I don’t want my will. I want yours. Do you want your prayers answered or do you want God’s will for your life? To take up your cross daily is to realize that Jesus Christ died on that cross to take away my sins, and as a result of that, I am a forgiven person. That is vitally important for a person to hang on to if they’re going to walk by faith. That is something that daily I thank the Lord for, that in him I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Is that what it means? That’s probably what it means to me more than anything else. But I don’t know. There’s all kinds of things that people could interpret that with. I have not sat there with a dogmatic interpretation of that passage. Some people have, but I haven’t.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s a pretty good insight. I know what you mean by being dumb as a mule. You’ve got to keep renewing your mind, it seems like.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, absolutely. We can be sitting there and praising Jesus one minute and then thinking the dumbest thought we ever thought in our life the next. And we have to just understand that’s as natural as anything in the world. And that’s why you have to every day, Todd, of my life, I get up and say, thank you, Lord Jesus, for your mercy and your kindness to me. I never wake up in the morning that that’s not what I’m saying to him is, Lord, thank you for your mercy and your kindness to me as I’m undeserving as I am that you’re my God and you’re my friend. That’s an attitude that comes from the reality of facing what we are apart from him, which is nothing. And what I would be apart from him, which would be nothing. And to recognize that we get we get all this puffed up feelings about ourselves and we think we’re so important and we walk around with all this self-importance and just strut around. And if we have a public ministry, we strut across the stage like King Kong and like we think we’re somewhere. Nothing or nothing. except children who have been saved by the grace of God. And we need to keep that mindset and that attitude. There aren’t any big deals in God’s economy. So I think that part of that is that denying himself. Come after me, he must deny himself. In other words, live as Jesus lived, and that’s in total dependency upon his father. And to daily be thanking him for his forgiveness that he provided for me at the cross. Daily to be thanking him for that. And to realize that I couldn’t save my life, only he did. And I died. I was dead. He died. He entered into my death with me. I entered into his resurrection with him. And this world really doesn’t have much attraction to any of us. So I don’t know. Those are just some insights that I have when I read that passage, but that’s one of those passages that I have difficulty just being dogmatic on at all.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, thanks for the insight.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thanks for your call, my friend, and I’ll put you on hold, and we’ll get right to you, okay? Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. Let’s go to Olathe, Kansas, listening on KCNW. Phil, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello, Bob.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Phil.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, how are you doing?
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m doing good, brother.
SPEAKER 04 :
I just want to tell you, your ministry has meant so much to me over the years. My question has to do with something that seems to be, maybe it was there before, but has come up in the last few years, and that is the thing of pushing ministries of accountability groups. And I was just wondering, I mean, I’m not saying that they’re not a good idea, but I’m wondering where is the biblical… Yeah. basis. The only thing I ever heard was about David and Nathan or something in the Old Testament or something. But I’m just wondering, is that something that is just, you know, people are supposed to do? Also, I noticed that it seems to be pushed at men and not really women so much like that. There seems to be a lot of double standards and a lot of things like you’ve got women of faith groups and then you’ve got promise keepers. And my experience with promise keepers were kind of negative, beating your overhead experiences. But Anyway, I just wondered what your take was on accountability groups.
SPEAKER 01 :
Probably identically to yours. Again, where do you find it in the scripture? Again, what do you need accountability group for? Wouldn’t it be great to go home to your wife and say, sweetie, I just wanted to hop everything I saw today, but I was in accountability group, so I was good. I mean, I think she’s going to be thrilled, don’t you? You know, if you can’t be accountable to God, why do you think you’re going to be accountable to man? And that’s where we run into these things. You say, well, you make a promise to God, and if you’re not going to keep that, I’ll guarantee you’re not going to keep it to me. And so these things, what they do is they put you in a situation where you’re gutting out your life for Jesus instead of allowing Jesus to live his life in and through you. So if you’re walking by faith in him… and Bob Davis is walking by faith in him, what do we need to sit around and be accountable to each other for? I mean, if I told him every thought that I ever had, he probably wouldn’t work here. You know, and so how honest are we anyway in our accountability groups? I’ve seen those things where people are lying out their teeth to each other. And so I don’t – you know, if guys want to get together – I don’t want to get together to be accountable to you. I want to get together to pray with you. I want to get together to study the scripture with you and to fellowship with you because I love you in the Lord. But to sit down and hold me accountable to my promises or hold me accountable to something, you’re not in a position to hold me accountable. And I’m not in a position to hold you accountable. You’re accountable to God, not to me.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, I’ve had friends at work and very close friends, you know, that I could be, you know, I could trust enough that I really felt close. I could share things with, and I didn’t really feel vulnerable with them like that. But, I mean, that was something that maybe was my own choice to talk about a problem with or something like that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I have a pastor friend of mine out in California that got into these accountability groups, and so he shared in an accountability group with some people that, a number of years prior to that, that he had kind of had a real infatuation with one of the ladies in the church. And he was just sharing how that can happen even to a pastor. They never did anything. They never got together. He was just tempted. He really was turned on by her. And so he shared that. And a couple years later, those people went back and got him fired from his wonderful church, a fantastic teacher of the Bible, got kicked off of the radio and everything else as they brought that out in the open, now accusing him of having an affair with somebody.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think I’ve heard stories like that before.
SPEAKER 01 :
Absolutely. So, again, you know, it’s like prayer chains. A lot of times it’s just gossip chains. And I believe in what God said. If you want to pray, you know, you can pray with each other. But why would you want to sit around in a group and think that you’re accountable or they’re accountable to you? I don’t understand where it got its popularity.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think what that may have originated out is men having maybe infidelity and sex problems.
SPEAKER 01 :
I think so, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Then they’ve got a double standard where women don’t. They’ve got a woman of faith movement. Well, I’m waiting for them to start a men of faith movement. I’ll show up first one to show up at their door. I mean, you know… To me, promise keepers are nice, but when I saw through it, it was just a bunch of people pounding you overhead and tell you you’re a horrible sinner and drop your knees and flow out tears and repent all over the floor and everything.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, the only promise keeper I know is Jesus.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that’s a good point.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, that’s the only one that I know that ever kept his promises, and I think the rest of us are kidding ourselves.
SPEAKER 04 :
I recognize all our good intentions in the world in doing something like that, but maybe it’s not everybody’s all good intentions. I don’t know. Right, right.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, as one of our guys just pointed out, several cults use those kind of groups, and I think they build themselves on it. And so, you know, to me, never been a part of it, never will. Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I appreciate it, and thank you, and God bless.
SPEAKER 01 :
You’re welcome, my brother.
SPEAKER 04 :
Have a good day, Bob.
SPEAKER 01 :
You too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Bye-bye.
SPEAKER 01 :
Bye-bye now. Thanks, Bill. Let’s go to Atlanta, Georgia. Let’s go on WGUN. Michael, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello, Joe. How are you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Doing fine, Michael. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Well, my question, and I’ll hang up and hear your answer, is we know that Jesus was God himself. And I think it’s Matthew, when the man came to Jesus and said, good master, Jesus said, why do you call me good? There’s no one good but Father. I just would like to hear your answer on that, that Jesus being God would say that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, Michael, what he’s saying is you’re willing to call me good, but you’re not willing to call me God, and only God is good. So if you’re not going to call me God, don’t call me good. So you’re talking, he basically was pointing out the hypocrisy of man walking around, which they’ll do today, say, oh, yes, Jesus was a good man, but he wasn’t God. Jesus was a prophet, but he wasn’t God. And so Jesus merely said, why do you call me good unless you want to call me God? Because only God is good. That was his reason, basically, of being able to put the pressure right back on the person making those statements. What are you going to do with the fact that I just called myself God? Okay, Michael?
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. I hope that helps.
SPEAKER 03 :
Goodbye.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord. Find more information online at bobgeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs and Bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.
SPEAKER 05 :
Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.
