Join Bob George in this enlightening episode of Classic Christianity Radio as he discusses the differences in biblical teachings between key apostles like Paul and Peter. With thoughtful Q&A sessions with listeners, Bob addresses the concepts of priesthood and ambassadorship, revealing how these roles empower Christians to represent God on earth. Discover the profound implications of living with faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ.
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 02 :
We’re going to go to Tony in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, listening on WWL or NL. Tony, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
How y’all doing? Hi, Bob and Bob Christopher.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Tony. Doing good, Tony.
SPEAKER 04 :
Bob, I had to call you before and ask you about this same question, but I want to get some more understanding on it. The book of Peter, is it written to us Christians, believers?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I would say the main audience, because Peter was the apostle to the Jew, Paul was the apostle to the Gentile. It’s interesting to me how God did that because the most logical person in the world to have been a apostle to the jew was the apostle paul with all of his intellect and knowledge of the jewish religion in all ways shape and form he said as far as the obedience to the law he was without equal and instead of that he takes peter a fisherman that was not educated and says no you’re going to go to the jew and paul you with all your education and go down to the dumb gentiles it’s amazing to me but god wants us not to lean upon our own understanding and not to lean upon our own intellect uh but to rather to lean on him and i think that’s precisely why he did that so the book of peter would basically be directed to the jew but it’s also could be applicable to the gentile okay the question i wanted to ask you about the priesthood and uh
SPEAKER 04 :
I was talking to a friend of mine today, and I was asking her about, it was 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10. And the key verse is, we attain mercy. And that would be the Gentiles, wouldn’t it?
SPEAKER 02 :
It would be the Jews and Gentiles.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, we attain mercy. And he was telling me, he said, I said, we are individual preachers. But he said, no, he said, if you go to Paul’s writing, he calls us an ambassador. And I want to know the difference between ambassador and a priest.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, again, it says you’re a chosen people. And basically I say this is directed to the Jew, but it’s also applicable to us. You’re a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Now, that’s certainly in America. That’s Israel. So basically that’s why I say it’s directed to the Jew, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are a people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So, dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires that war against your souls, to live good lives among the pagans, that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visit. Now, the issue is that a priest, the job of a priest is to represent man to God. Christ Jesus is our high priest, and each and every one of us is, in essence, has a priesthood of being able to represent people to God. In other words, to go to the lost world that he’s talking about and tell them about how they can know God. That’s a position as a priesthood. Being an ambassador… means that that’s our job, that we’re an ambassador here on this earth and we’re in the world, but we’re not of the world. And so it ties into this thing that you’re aliens and strangers in the world. And we’re in the world, but we’re not of the world. And so we’re to be an ambassador as a representative of God here on this earth. And that’s our job is to represent the kingdom of God in a fallen world. And then as a priesthood, it’s to represent Christ to the lost and lost to Christ. So it’s both of those things.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, so you would say, because I was reading Colossians 1.13, he said, we have called you out of darkness into the mortgage.
SPEAKER 02 :
It says we’re called out of darkness in here, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and I looked at that, and he was telling me, he was saying, you can’t go to Peter’s, you have to go to Paul’s epistles. That’s for us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, that’s a Paul-only person. That’s nuts. That’s nuts. That’s nutty stuff. People, I appreciate what they are trying to do, but that’s just crazy to discount the other writers of the New Testament and to think that they know more about what should have been in the canon than the people who originally were the ones who put the canon together. And all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and not just Paul’s writings. See, they took that Paul is the ambassador and he’s the one alone that was given the message, the true message of salvation. But what they have forgotten is that in Ephesians 3, 5, that Paul talks about this. Yeah, Ephesians 3, 5, this mystery was made known to the apostles and to the prophets. And so that knocks out their deal and it was only to Paul. Paul was the administrator to administrate the mystery of the Gentiles coming into the body of Christ the same way as the Jews were. But he was not the only… This mystery was made known to the apostles and to the prophets. Paul came to fully explain it, but it wasn’t given only to him.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, so otherwise you’re telling me the whole Bible, it’s not only… Not to Paul. We don’t go to Paul’s epistles like they have revealed certain things to Paul and then reveal it to the other apostles like Peter.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you’re saying that’s dead wrong.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s dead wrong. God revealed the scriptures to John, to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke. He revealed truth to all of these, and that’s why we have the canon in our hands.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, Bob, I’m going to get off in just a second. Yeah, when he was telling me this, I couldn’t really defend myself, so I kept my mouth closed. But I just didn’t feel right, so I said, let me call Bob, because it said the priesthood, and then he had took me to Galatians 2.7, and he was saying unto the Gentiles, Paul was come to, and then the uncircumcision, I mean the circumcision, Peter had went to. And I couldn’t understand that. I mean, I…
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, again, here again, that was the basic audience that Paul took the message of the gospel into other lands except Israel and into the Gentile world. Peter also, that didn’t mean that Peter never saved a Gentile. And it certainly didn’t mean that Paul never preached the gospel to the Jews, because he did. But his main mission on earth was to preach to the Gentiles, and Peter’s was to preach to the Jew. And that’s why, as far as we know, Peter, as far as we know in the Bible, Peter never left the Jerusalem area. Now, people say that he was martyred in Rome, but there’s no evidence of that at all. That is true. totally speculation uh so uh but the issue is that uh uh i don’t know what what you’re talking about is a people that’s into paul only and again it is they’re bereans the berean bible study yeah and i heard you on the radio so i was talking to one person and you were saying the same thing you told me you said that’s nonsense Yeah, it’s basically doing something that really divides the body, that they have no need to do that at all. A lot of them have a great understanding of the salvation through the life of Christ Jesus, and you’re no longer under the law and grace, at least some of them that I’ve met. But when they start coming down to the fact of Paul only, that is nonsense. Why do you think Peter’s in the Bible? And why do you think the rest of the writers are in the Bible? And those are called scriptures. And no one could write scriptures except the apostles or an amanuensis of an apostle, someone who had been with Christ from the beginning. So to me, it’s a way of dividing the body that’s unnecessary. So, Tony, again, if Christ Jesus is alive living in you, you need to just concentrate on letting the word of God teach you and get away from these people that are always trying to drag you away into something else. Okay, thank you, Bob. And just rely on the fact that God is able to teach you and is totally able to do that and will complete the work that he began in you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re going to go to Aaron in Porterville, California, listening on Cave Ride. Aaron, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Bob. Thanks for taking my call.
SPEAKER 02 :
You’re welcome, Aaron.
SPEAKER 06 :
I just had a couple thoughts on the question of a couple callers back regarding the scare tactics. And just first of all, I guess I want to say that I likewise am opposed to scare tactics that are characterized as such, but I think a pretty important distinction needs to be made. The first one comes from an observation of reading Acts. I thought it just blew me away when I realized this, but in all the varying… Gospel messages that the Apostles preached that are recorded in Acts, not one of them mentions the love of God. But all of them do take special note of the people’s spiritual condition in relation to God as being dead and in need of salvation and facing judgment. So I guess that’s my first observation, is that the message of the Apostles… while maybe not preaching health, fire, and brimstone, did incorporate some element of that in their presentation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I think you’ve got to make a distinction there, Aaron, between telling people that they’re dead spiritually, which is basically, I think, an absolute must in salvation. If I don’t know that I’m dead spiritually, why would I return to the resurrected life of Christ Jesus any more than if I didn’t know that I was a sinner spiritually? why would I turn to Christ for his forgiveness? So to teach a people that you’re dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your sinful nature is, to me, the dynamic of solid evangelism. But again, we were talking about something totally different than that, and that’s using those kind of scare tactics. We’re called the bride of Christ. Now, how would you like to be told that if you didn’t marry your wife that you were going to go to hell? And, you know, that would be a real motivation for getting married. So the issue is people can use all kinds of things, and God can use all kinds of tactics. But I think there’s the problem is using tactics. And I don’t want to go out with a tactic personally. And that’s what I said. This is a personal thing. I don’t want to go out with a message of you’re going to hell. Because the issue is that I can tell you how to go to heaven. And that’s the issue. Now, if you don’t accept and believe the way to go to heaven, why to tell a person that the object of that, the opposite of that, because if you go to heaven, you have to have a hell, is that you will remain separated from God through eternity. And if that needs to be mentioned, I think that’s fine. I just don’t think that should be the… the focal point of a good gospel presentation.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. I agree. I guess my concern was just that the stumbling block of the cross, the moral culpability of us all, the fact that humanity is in pretty dire straits in relationship to God outside of the cross, that that not get passed over in any way in the presentation of the gospel. And that’s the heart of it right there.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, actually, the heart of the gospel is the resurrection. And that’s why Paul said, without the resurrection, we’re to be pitied of all people, and there’s still no sins. And so the focal point of salvation message is that you’re dead. And I’ve told people, in case you haven’t figured that out, that’s a worse problem than sin. Sin caused death, but death is your problem. We’ve stopped at the cross in our evangelistic presentations, Aaron, and in so doing have people coming forward, as an example, to accept forgiveness when the fact of the matter is they’re already forgiven or to gain forgiveness. So it’s while we were yet enemies, we already were reconciled to God through the death of his son. We were reconciled to God when we were lost. but how much more having been reconciled. Now that being an accomplished fact, shall we be saved by his life? So what we’re saved from is the consequence of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is eternal life. And I think what’s happened is we’ve stopped at the cross instead of going on to the resurrection in spite of the fact that Paul said that without the resurrection we’re to be pitied of all people, knowing full well that a cross had occurred where Jesus took away the sins of the world, but also knowing that that forgiveness that was provided then is only received in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. So you’ve got to put the whole package, the death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, I agree. Well, thank you for your time, Bob. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 01 :
You’re welcome, Aaron. Good to talk to you, brother. Classic Christianity Radio is a listener-funded program, and because of your generous donations, we are able to be on the air. Go to bobgeorge.net to order the best-selling book, Classic Christianity, by Bob George. Classic Christianity has been translated into 26 languages and is now available from our website in Spanish and English. As Bob tells it, God is calling people back to the simplicity of the gospel. back to his grace mercy and truth back to the person of jesus christ this book continues to change the lives of people around the world and it will change your life too please visit bobgeorge.net for additional information on how you can join us financially and help support the radio ministry with your prayers and support we can continue to share the good news of jesus christ let’s continue now with our classic christianity radio program
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re going to go to Ed in Lakewood, Colorado, listening on KLT. Ed, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes, I have a question about prayer. Basically, I was going to work one morning and I was saying my prayer 121 and asking for safety of my family and all that stuff. And then it hit me that, hey, God doesn’t have any of the afflictions that I have. He doesn’t have cataracts. He doesn’t have short-term memory loss or any of those things. So I wonder if I should be bugging him all the time. I just wonder what your slant was on that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Ed, again, I’ve said this numerous times, that God gave us two ears and one mouth, and I think there’s a reason for that. He wants them to use that proportionately. Man, mankind was created in the image of God. It was created for the purpose of being available to the living God. So when he created man with two ears and one mouth, there was a reason he wanted us to do twice as much listening as we do talking. And yet today in our Christian circles, all people ever talk about is praying and praying and praying and praying with no emphasis at all on listening, listening, listening and listening. And the way that you listen to God is through the word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. It doesn’t say that faith comes by talking or praying and praying to God. It says that faith comes by hearing. Your faith is not going to be increased by praying. It’s going to be increased by hearing according to the word of God. And so what we have done is because people are lazy, basically, and they don’t want to study the word of God and be like the Brians who literally truly studied the word of God and dealt with as Mary did and pondered these truths in their hearts. So we just talk about that we pray. Nothing wrong with praying at all. That’s communicating with God. It’s like saying, if all my wife did was talk to me and I never talked to her, it’d be a pretty boring household or vice versa. So what praying is, is a way of talking back to God. And basically, The things that we talk back to God are the things that we’ve been taught by God. That’s why he said to do more hearing or less listening than we do talking. It says, I have come to understand the truth of the nature of God and the heart of God, the mercy of God, the kindness of God. my talking back to him is going to be sprinkled with that kind of language of, Lord, I thank you for the fact that you’re a merciful God. I thank you for the fact that you love me more than I love me. And you love my wife more than I love my wife. And that you have everything in control. And all of those things are things that we talk back to God as a result of having learned the character of God. So to me, Ed… uh again as jesus prayed father it’s not my will but yours be done and i think that all of our prayers should be with that in our heart that god i’m not interested in getting my prayers answered i’m i’m interested in seeking your will in knowing your will and having your will executed in and through my life And so when I’m talking to God, if that is my attitude, it’s going to be, Lord, I don’t know what your will is in this particular regard, but I want to know your will, and I’ll know your will as it is worked out. As an example, with a sickness, you know that it’s my desire that my mother or my father or my daughter, whatever it is, be healed of this illness. But it’s not my will that I’m concerned with. I’m concerned with your will. And so I’m going to place them in your hands. And whatever happens, I’m going to praise you. And that’s an attitude of faith that we live by. An attitude of dependency upon Christ Jesus, our Lord. When we’re talking to him, Ed, we’re talking to a perfectly loving and a perfect just God. And we can trust him with that truth. And therefore, it’s not so much the asking. Quite frankly, there’s very little that I ask of the Lord, very little, except to thank him and praise him and to ask for wisdom. Sometimes it’ll be, but he is my wisdom. So in essence, when I’m asking for wisdom, I think his answer is, Bob, I am your wisdom, so trust me. So in the final analysis, what God is looking for is an attitude of faith, and an attitude of faith is saying, I trust you, Lord, in whatever happens. You know what my desire is, but that’s not what the issue is. The issue is, what is your will?
SPEAKER 07 :
I tell you what, that sure has helped tremendously. Thank you very much. God bless you and God keep you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thank you, my good friend, and thanks for your call, Ed. God bless you, pal. Bye-bye. Let’s go to Daniel in Denver, Colorado. Let’s go on KLT. Daniel, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, the question I had is what does it mean to walk in the Spirit?
SPEAKER 02 :
It means to walk by faith, Daniel, and it means to walk in grace. Jesus is full of grace and truth and walking in the Spirit. is in comparison to walking in the flesh. And when you’re walking in the Spirit, you’re going to be walking in truth as revealed in the Word of God, and you’re going to be walking in grace. Jesus is full of grace and truth. And so you’ll be walking in grace, and you’ll be walking in truth. So walking in the Spirit is no different than praying in the Spirit. It’s the opposite of praying in the flesh. You’re praying in the flesh. You’re asking for things. Praying in the spirit. You’re basically praising God. Thanking him for the things that he’s taught you. So it’s all the difference in the world. It’s where you have your mind. Is it placed down here on the earth? Or is it placed in spiritual things? So that’s what it means to walk by faith. Go ahead, Daniel.
SPEAKER 03 :
In a situation, let’s say, where you made some mistakes and you know there’s some… consequences out there that are not really too pleasant. Will walking in the faith mean that you just kind of ignore those and you just thank God?
SPEAKER 02 :
Walking in the spirit means that whatever you’ve done is walking in truth. Whatever you’ve done, your sins have been put behind the back of God never to see them again. God was in Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself, not counting their sins against them. And so when Christ went to a cross, he came not to cover your sins until the next time you sinned, but to take them away. A world of difference between atonement, which was covering, and taking them away. And so that’s what truth is. So if I’m going to walk by faith, then I’m going to walk by faith in that truth, that my sins have been put behind the back of God, never to see them again. But there was also a consequence to sin called death. And that’s what had to be corrected through his resurrected life, Daniel, is to correct the consequence of sin, which is death, by the offer of his resurrected life to us. So when I have come to Christ Jesus, I come to him for life. I am the way and the truth and the life, he said, and whosoever believes in me, though he were dead spiritually. Yet shall he live, and whosoever lives and believes in me will never die. And he said, do you believe this? Walking by faith says, yes, I believe that. That’s true. I count my whole life on that fact. And so now God is dealing with you on the basis of a new life, a new creature. And that new creature, now he’s going to reason with you as he would a father with a loving child. And when you go blow it, he’s saying, Daniel, that sin was put behind my back, never to see it again. Now I’m dealing with you as my child. Was what you did and what you were thinking consistent with who you are as a child of God? And we look at that and say, no, Lord, it was the very opposite, wasn’t it? He said, yes, it was. Well, what do you want me to do? Well, I want you to change your mind. I want you to realize that you began to believe a lie instead of resting in my truth. And that’s why every sin, Daniel, that we commit, the root of it was we stopped believing truth and we started believing the lie of Satan. And so in religion, you’re never dealing with the fruit, only the root. You’re only dealing with what you did. But never why you did it. God says, I know what you did. Now let’s get down to why you did it. And it’s always that you stop trusting. And that’s why when we walk by faith, we walk trusting truth and trusting the grace of God. Okay, brother?
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does that help, Daniel? Yeah, that helps. Okay, pal. God bless you, Daniel. And thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER 01 :
For more information about how to purchase helpful books and Bible study materials to guide you as you grow in your relationship with Jesus, thank you again for listening. We look forward to our next classic Christianity radio broadcast with you. In the meantime, remember to always put Jesus first in your life.
SPEAKER 05 :
Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.
