The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: 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 taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you'd like to talk about on the air, we'll be glad to hear them and talk about them. If you disagree with the host about something, we'd love to hear what you have to say about that. You can balance comment, correct something that was said wrongly, or just something you disagree with. We welcome that every single day. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

And the only announcement I need to make is that starting day after tomorrow, starting Sunday, I'm beginning like an eight-day itinerary in the Seattle area. I'll be speaking a lot of different places in the Seattle area and for we have a lot of people listening in Seattle, so just want you to have a heads up there and check it out. If I'm speaking near you, you're welcome to join us. I'd like to have you do that.

And then a week from Monday, I'll be in Spokane, speaking there, a three-hour Q&A at a church there in Spokane. And then I'm going into Idaho. Some of those Idaho events are not yet nailed down, but we have a couple of weeks till then, almost, and so we'll have those for you if you're in Idaho or have friends who are, you want to tell them about it.

To know where these events are and what time and so forth, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and you'll find there many tabs to choose from. One of them says Announcements. When you click the announcement tab, just scroll down to the dates relevant, and it'll tell where I'm speaking, what time, in most cases what I'm speaking about.

And so, and that's different every place because I just when people invite me to speak, they usually tell me to speak on a particular subject they want. So each place has a different subject. Anyway, check that out if you're in Seattle or Spokane or even Idaho, thenarrowpath.com under Announcements. And apart from that, we have no other things to announce here, so we'll go to the phones and talk first of all to Michael calling from Inglewood, California. Hi, Michael. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Michael (Guest 1): Hi, Steve. Thanks. Okay, I have three questions from 2 Samuel. Just three different verses in 2 Samuel. I'll just ask one today and then the rest next week. But in verse 15, it says that—

Steve Gregg: Which chapter?

Michael (Guest 1): Sorry, 2 Samuel chapter 1, verse 15. It speaks—David basically killed the Amalekite who said—yes. But wasn't that kind of like presumptuous or kind of because the Amalekite, he was lying, but David didn't know he was lying. Also, Saul was not the Lord's anointed anymore.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I've always felt like David was a little severe about that. Yeah, what happened, of course, the last—now the books of Samuel used to be one book. In the Hebrew Bible, there's just the one book of Samuel. And when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the Greek words are much longer than the Hebrew words because Hebrew doesn't have vowels, so it took up too many pages, so they made the book of Samuel into two books. They made Kings into two books. They made Chronicles into two books. They made Ezra Nehemiah into two books because just the Greek versions were much too long compared to the Hebrew.

So we have 1 and 2 Samuel, but 2 Samuel picks up right after where 1 Samuel leaves off because it was the same book, it's just the next chapter. And of course, Saul's death is in the last chapter of 1 Samuel, and we read that Saul was wounded in battle with the Philistines and he fell on his sword and killed himself. But when you come to the next chapter, this runner from the battle comes to David, who's waiting news of the battle, and essentially says that he killed Saul.

And said he found Saul wounded and he killed him, and he took his bracelet, his crown or something, and brought them to David, thinking David would give him a reward. Now this man who did so was an Amalekite. Ironically, Saul was supposed to kill all the Amalekites and didn't do it, and so this Amalekite at least claims to have killed Saul in the end. But he apparently was lying because we have the actual story in the last chapter of 1 Samuel. We see Saul killed himself because he's mortally wounded. So this man was lying, hoping for a reward.

In fact, in the next chapter, David is talking to somebody else, when Ishbosheth was killed. And the people who reported it, David said, "You know, when a man came and told me he'd killed Saul hoping to get a reward from me, I had him killed, and now I'm going to kill you too because you killed Ishbosheth." So he had them killed too. David was kind of doing some bloodthirsty stuff there, and it's hard to know, you know, why he was as ruthless as he was with these guys.

But he did tell the guy who claimed to kill Saul, "You should have been reluctant to kill the Lord's anointed, so you're going to die." And he killed him. But David apparently knew he was lying and knew he was seeking a reward because he later spoke of this guy who was looking for a reward. I don't know how he knew he was lying. After all, the guy was carrying Saul's bracelet and crown, which would kind of give credibility to his story. How you going to get Saul's crown and bracelet off him unless you killed him? But of course, what apparently happened is this man must have stumbled upon Saul's dead body right after Saul killed himself, and as an opportunist grabbed the crown and the bracelet and said, "I'll go tell David I killed him, get a reward." That's what was apparently going on.

Now David, I don't know how David knew the man was lying, but he didn't trust him. But he says, "Your own mouth, your own words condemn you because you say that you killed the Lord's anointed, so I'm going to kill you." You know, it may even be that David didn't know he was lying and thought he had killed Saul and just thought, "Well, how dare you kill the Lord's anointed?" Only later David would learn that the story was different. But the man basically confessed to what David considered to be a capital crime.

And we know that David considered it to be a great crime because David had had opportunity to kill Saul twice previously, once when Saul was sleeping in his camp and once in a cave when Saul didn't know David and his men were in the cave when Saul was relieving himself in there. David was close enough to do harm to Saul, and his men said, "The Lord has delivered your enemy into your hand," because Saul was seeking David to kill him. And David said, "God forbid that I would touch the Lord's anointed."

Now interestingly enough, you mentioned that Saul wasn't the Lord's anointed anymore, David was. The truth is that when David was privately, secretly anointed in his father's house, the Spirit of the Lord left Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, and the Spirit of God came on David. But that was secret, no one knew of it, it was done in a private ceremony, and David knew it, of course. But apparently even after that, David wouldn't kill Saul because he called him God's anointed.

So I think referring to him as God's anointed doesn't mean he still has God's anointing, but he is the one that God at one time anointed. You know, I'll leave it to God to be his judge. You know, he's the first man to be anointed as king in Israel, and David didn't want to be the one to take matters into his own hands, especially when it could be interpreted as opportunistic for him since clearly he could seize power. But the people who are loyal to Saul would blame him and he'd have trouble in the kingdom. And that did actually happen anyway. I mean, people did accuse him of hurting Saul, like various people of the ten tribes after David became king of Judah.

Anyway, there's a lot of complexity there. I don't know if David knew the man was lying and decided to kill him or if he actually thought, "Maybe this is the truth, maybe this guy did do what I wouldn't do and what I feel shouldn't be done." So even though God had departed from Saul, the fact that God had once chosen Saul and his Spirit had been in Saul just made, in David's eyes, Saul somebody to be treated with more respect than that, even though he had now become demonized.

So I can't answer for David's actions there, but he obviously acted as he thought was right. Now did David do the right thing? Was that the right thing? I don't know. God doesn't blame him for that necessarily. Lots of things get done in war that you could later look back and say, "I don't know if that was the most just thing to do." But in time of war, you know, people's sense of justice is a little hazy. And so David may have done an unjust thing, or perhaps he was—maybe it was right that the guy who claimed to kill the king should be put to death.

It's one of those things the Bible doesn't evaluate for us, it only tells it. And that's the thing about the Old Testament. Very seldom, well at least not most of the time, it may tell us how God felt about somebody's actions. But more often than not it just tells us what their actions were. It's just narrating a story, it's not editorializing. And that's the case here. You know, it tells us that David did this, it doesn't say, "And God was pleased that David did that," or "God was angry that he did it." It just tells us he did it.

And that's, you know, this is what's so important about reading the Old Testament. People assume that if the Bible tells a story, somehow there's an endorsement of it, of the thing that was done. And that's why a lot of people say, "I can't believe, you know, in a God who would allow this disaster to happen in this story," or something like that. And a lot of times like what Jehu did when he slaughtered the whole house of Ahab and Jezebel and stuff. He killed a lot of innocent people.

He was used by God to bring judgment on the house of Omri of whom Ahab was the last member of that dynasty. But then Jehu did a whole bunch of other killing too, which the Bible doesn't say it was right or wrong, but you're supposed to kind of recognize it was wrong, you know, he kind of didn't do the right thing. So the stories in the Bible don't always editorialize.

Those portions of the Bible are in fact historical narratives, and they don't profess to be very much more than that. Other kinds of passages in the Bible are poetry or worship or prophecy or wisdom, but the stories in the historical books, they're just telling us what happened. And a lot of times things happen were pretty ghastly and things that probably a more godly person or at least a person informed by Christianity would not have done. But of course we have to remember none of those people were informed by Christianity. Christ hadn't come yet.

So they were operating in the light they had. And sometimes God, you know, like Paul said on Mars Hill, "In times of ignorance God winked." Sometimes people didn't have a full understanding of the mind of God and so when they behaved in war the way people act in war, God winked at that. That is, he didn't hold them fully accountable for it.

At the end of David's life, he was eulogized by God as a man who'd been perfect before the Lord except in the case of Uriah's wife, that's what it says. So David did some imperfect things, but God didn't hold most of those against him. He did remember the death of Uriah and David taking Bathsheba as a really bad downfall of David's kingdom. Anyway, yeah, reading the Old Testament provides those challenges to us sometimes, and we just have to say, "Well, I'll guess I'll have to assess for myself whether I think that was a good thing for David to do or not." But regardless of what I conclude, it happened, and my choice to think it was good or bad isn't going to change anything about the history. I appreciate your call, but just be aware of that when you read Old Testament history. It's not always describing things that God ordained or said should happen, it's just telling us what did happen. Michael, another Michael in Santa Cruz, California. Hi, Michael.

Michael (Guest 2): Hi, Steve. I thought I might be you. Yeah, last two times I tried to call you, I was intercepted by an important call, so I had to hang up. But that did not happen today.

Steve Gregg: All right. What's your question?

Michael (Guest 2): I definitely, as you know, have a view about the whole spiritual dimension different than the host, different than yourself. Of course, you're Buddhist. And I've come to realize that it's like oil and water, at least at the exoteric level. You know what that means? Not esoteric, but at the ordinary, conventional level of say the—

Steve Gregg: You mean the practical level?

Michael (Guest 2): Well, the teachings that reach most people versus what might be a more arcane, more among say monastics or priests or whoever, I don't know.

Steve Gregg: But so before you go further, let me just see if I know what you just said. Did you just mean to say that Christianity and Buddhism are like oil and water at the level of at least popular understanding of those two? Is that what you're saying?

Michael (Guest 2): More or less, specifically Christianity as it's presented, let's say, in the Protestant evangelical form, that there's only one way and you know and so forth. That and the general Buddhist or Buddhist Hindu view just doesn't mix. There's no—you and I could not have a dialogue—

Steve Gregg: Well, actually I'm really glad you finally discovered that. You've been calling me for 20 years or more, and I always tried to tell you that. You were always trying to tell me that Buddhism and Christianity pretty much on the same page, and I've been saying, "No, Buddhism doesn't even believe in God, and Christianity is all about God." So I mean, and that's something you resisted for a long time, but I agree with what you're now saying.

Michael (Guest 2): But there's just one thing I wanted to run by you. In our last conversation, you said that the Buddhist may get to a place of peace and contentment as with the Christian, but for different reasons. The Christian is doing it as acting in a way to glorify God, and the Buddhist doesn't believe in God so it would have a different basis. But let me ask you this, Steve. The Christian who's open-hearted, who's kind, who has compassion, who wants to be a positive force in the world, and the Buddhist who's open-hearted and manifesting the same qualities, would it really be that different? I mean, if I see a person or if you see a person who needs some help and we both reach out of a feeling of wanting that person to be okay at least momentarily, would it—because you're a Christian and I'm a Buddhist, would the action and the motivation really be any different? Both to me would be a response—

Steve Gregg: Yeah, okay. So in other words, if both people, a Christian or a Buddhist, both help a hurting person, are they both moved by the same kind of compassion? Is that what you're saying? The action probably wouldn't be that different. There'd be many things that are different at a deeper level, but I mean, the truth is even an atheist may have compassion on the poor, or a Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim or you know a person of almost any religion could.

Now many religions don't give any reason to have compassion on the poor. For example, in my understanding, Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, because of their belief in karma and reincarnation, if you're consistent with them, to my mind, you could say when you see someone in misery, "Well, that's their karma." You know, they—

Michael (Guest 2): Steve, that's been brought up. That if somebody used the teachings in that way, that would be considered an error. It's never—

Steve Gregg: But that's the way that the Hindus used it. We know before Mother Teresa came to Calcutta, she found nobody interested in helping the lepers and the poorest of the poor, and it was only her Christian worldview that motivated her to lay down her life and wash the disgusting lepers and things like that. But the Hindus around, they thought she was doing the wrong thing because she's interrupting their karmic cycle.

Michael (Guest 2): You know what the caste system is, right? You've heard of that?

Steve Gregg: Yes I do, yeah.

Michael (Guest 2): Yes. The Buddha, the historical person Gautama, was very critical of that. And it maybe someone's karma, if you will, to have a certain experience, but that would never be a reason to ignore that person or to withhold help or kindness or compassion.

Steve Gregg: Well, apparently a lot of the people in India did think it was a reason because they felt like if karma is saying you should be miserable because of something you did in a previous life, then I shouldn't make you not miserable because then you'll still—karma will require you to be miserable in the next one. If you go through the misery now, you won't have to go through it in the next life.

Michael (Guest 2): Right. But along the same line, Steve, in all fairness—and I'm not dissing your belief system or the Christian belief system, I'm just asking a reasonable question. Couldn't it not be said that if you help somebody who's in need, that you're violating God's will? I mean, you can almost substitute God's will for karma.

Steve Gregg: No, the presence of people in need presents a mandate for Christians to help. And that's what God himself does. Now God does allow some people to be poor. God, at least everything that happens, God doesn't stop it from happening when he could. We can say that everything that happens is not directly mandated by God, but we can say everything that happens was not prevented by God who could have prevented it, because God can do everything. The fact that he doesn't prevent me from being in an accident or doesn't prevent me from being poor doesn't mean that he thinks me being in an accident or me being poor is a great thing.

But he just doesn't prevent me from experiencing that. But when he does allow someone to experience those things, that becomes in his mind, apparently according to the Bible, a mandate for people who can help to do so. And he wants us to help other people, not only because it's good to help people, but it makes us better people too. We're becoming more like Christ when we put others ahead of ourselves.

So I mean, like I said, a Buddhist and a Christian could both be zealous to help poor people, but for different reasons. I mean, the Buddhist is looking to advance in his, you know, in the scale of his religion. And he's, you know, like you've said, Buddhism gives him peace and gives him tranquility and things like that.

And people who are living to get tranquility and peace, they might find it in Buddhism, I'm not saying they wouldn't. Christianity also provides those same things, but not while you're seeking them. Christianity provides those when you're seeking God, not seeking your own peace and tranquility. If a person seeks his own peace and tranquility directly, he probably won't be a Christian because becoming a Christian can bring persecution and hardship on you and you may have to forsake all that you have to be a disciple like Jesus said.

So people who are looking for a more enjoyable experience of life, there's other religions that'll do that. But Christianity acknowledges there's a God that we're created to glorify and that we want to glorify him. And in the process, we find peace and joy and so forth. So it's a byproduct.

Michael (Guest 2): I think that your—and it's an understandable view because the so-called New Age thinking is so pervasive now. And the idea that you can be the best person you can be, manifest your potential. That's not what the Buddha taught. What Christ and Buddha do have in common is the call to transcend the self-centered orientation.

Steve Gregg: But what is the motive for doing so? Why would I want to transcend that? What is a Buddhist seeking to obtain?

Michael (Guest 2): Because again, according to what the Buddha taught and not only there but the Vedas, that when we live only for ourselves and our own benefit, then we're violating a law of the universe which is interrelatedness. We're all connected—

Steve Gregg: Okay, but you're missing the bottom line. What I'm looking for is the bottom line. Suppose I miss it. Suppose I miss the law of the universe, what harm is done? What do I care? Why do I care if I'm, you know—

Michael (Guest 2): Because then life will continue as the same old, same old.

Steve Gregg: Okay, and why don't I care about that? Why do I care about that? I'm not being sarcastic, I really want to get down to the nugget here. Why do I care whether life continues as the same old, same old or not?

Michael (Guest 2): Well, so the person who would be called to embrace the Buddhist path or really any spiritual path for that matter—

Steve Gregg: No, but my question is this. My question is this. Why—I mean, you're a Buddhist, you've been a Buddhist for many years, though you were born Jewish, but you embraced Buddhism many years ago and still do, and you've investigated Christianity obviously and other religions. So why did you choose the Buddhist path? What is it you hope to accomplish and why?

Michael (Guest 2): To come to true peace, not conditioned peace, not peace based on or happiness based on having something go well. I'm old enough to realize that everything changes. So the peace that's beyond all understanding as it's described in the Bible, that that made sense to me. That was something that seemed worth shooting for when I was young, and the Buddhist expression of it seemed to make sense. But I realize even though the paradigm is different, the worldview is different, I do see real parallels, real similar themes—

Steve Gregg: Right, and that's characterized many of our discussions over the years. And I'm going to have to move along because I have a break coming up here, but what I've tried to get across to you, and I'm sorry that I haven't been good at communicating it, is that seeking for peace as an end in itself is really quite a selfish thing. And the reason I would do it is because I don't like to be in turmoil. I don't like to be unpeaceful. I want peace for me. I want to be happier, I want to be more peaceful.

Now there's nothing wrong with wanting that, but that's not very religious. An atheist could want that too. What Christ calls us to is to deny ourselves and take up our cross, a path that doesn't seem to bring—it doesn't seem to be a path to peace at all. Jesus said in the world you'll have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world.

The point here is that Christians find peace when they're not looking for peace, because they're not looking for anything for themselves particularly. Now you might say they're looking to go to heaven. Unfortunately, that's how the gospel's been presented much of the time and so many Christians are just being Christian as they understand that word because they hope to go to heaven.

That's not what Jesus taught. Jesus didn't teach anyone to become a Christian so you can go to heaven. I don't remember Jesus mentioning that, nor the apostles. But you do it to please God. In other words, you cease being concerned about yourself primarily and now you're primarily concerned about God, which is the right orientation. That's what humans were made to be, oriented toward God. And as we orient toward God, he gives us back whatever whatever he sees fit to give us, and generally speaking that's peace and joy and certainly salvation.

But the point is when people are just looking to God to dispense things to them like a merchant or like a benefactor, they can look to anyone that way. God is the creator of the universe, we do things to glorify God because that's what the whole universe exists for. And we do experience peace and such because of it, but it's not because we're looking for it for ourselves, at least it shouldn't be. Anyway, Michael, we'll have another talk again someday, we've talked probably a hundred of them. I need to take a break. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. We have a 30-second break and we'll come back, we have another half hour, so don't go away.

Guest (Female): As you know, the Narrow Path radio show is Bible radio that has nothing to sell you but everything to give you. So do the right thing and share what you know with your family and friends. Tell them to tune in to the Narrow Path on this radio station or go to thenarrowpath.com where they will find topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all the radio shows. You know listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg, share what you know.

Steve Gregg: Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you'd like to ask a question about the Bible or the Christian faith or discuss a difference you have with the host like our last caller did, feel free to do so. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And we're going next to the phones and talk to Jacqueline from Marietta, California, kind of in my stomping grounds near Temecula. Hi, Jacqueline. Welcome.

Jacqueline (Guest 3): Hi. I have a question for you. I've been studying Luke then Acts and some of John, and I've started to see two things more nuanced that I'd love your thoughts on. So I'm going to read my notes and then ask the two questions plainly at the end, and I hope my notes won't take too long, but I've got it as organized as I could.

So when I read Luke chapter by chapter, I started to notice a progression in how Jesus' identity was revealed. In Luke 1, Gabriel calls him a son of the Highest. Luke 2, the angel declares him Christ the Lord. Luke 3, the Father speaks at his baptism, "This is my son in whom I am well pleased." Luke 4 and Luke 8, the demons call him Holy One of God and Son of the Most High God. Luke 9, Peter when asked directly said he is the Christ of God. And Luke 24, the disciples initially think he was merely a prophet, the two men on the road to Emmaus, but the book ends with them worshipping him, and that Greek word for worship only appears twice in the entire book of Luke.

And I also tried to read Luke through the lens of how the disciples would have perceived Jesus' words in their first-century Jewish context. They understood the Kingdom of God as David's kingdom being restored through the Messiah. So when Jesus speaks of the kingdom throughout Luke, they're hearing it through that messianic expectation.

And one thing that stood out to me is that during his ministry, only the demons call him the Son of God. The disciples believed he was the Messiah, the Christ, but that title "Son of God" seems to carry a different and higher weight. Then at the Transfiguration, after the disciples witness Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah, Peter wants to build three tabernacles for them.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Jacqueline, just a minute. We've got a couple of minutes, and that's a pretty good Bible study you're doing. Do you have a question for me?

Jacqueline (Guest 3): Yeah, so the two questions is, so basically Luke, it seems to be a progression that Luke seems to be deliberately building towards. They see him as a Messiah, but at the end they see Jesus as someone truly worthy of the worship that only God deserves. And then also, I grew up thinking Jesus is God and then secondarily the Son of God. But the more I study, the more I see the New Testament consistently leading with the Son of God. And then in John where Jesus breaks down, "I and the Father are one, I am in the Father, the Father is in me," and he prays that we would be one just as he and the Father are one. So what is the question?

Steve Gregg: You have a question?

Jacqueline (Guest 3): Yeah, so it has to do with the Trinity of when Jesus is saying "I am," is he claiming that he is the Father specifically, or is he saying they share the same divine essence—him, the Father, the Holy Spirit—but that they are still uniquely their own persons yet fully share in one divine nature and mutually indwell one another?

Steve Gregg: Okay, yeah, that question could have come without the Bible study before, but it's a good question. The Trinitarian doctrine would be of the second way of saying it. I mean, your first option you were questioning about is whether Jesus is the same person as the Father. That does not appear to be workable in the Bible. Jesus spoke of the Father as another than himself, even another witness.

You know, he said, "I bear witness of myself, but I have a second person bearing witness and that's my Father." So obviously in a society where it's important to have two different separate witnesses to establish something, for him to call the Father a second witness is saying "I'm not him, he's someone else." Jesus actually never said he was the Father. The Bible nowhere says he is the Father except with the possible exception of Isaiah 9:6 where it says his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

And many Hebrew scholars say the term Everlasting Father would be better understood the Father of eternity. I'm not sure how much that changes anything, but Jesus is in a sense the Father's manifestation of himself, but he's always distinguished from the Father in the New Testament. But not from God necessarily. I mean, God is not just the Father. God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit according to Trinitarian doctrine.

Now lots of Christians have different ways of understanding the Trinitarian doctrine. I'm a Trinitarian myself. And the Bible doesn't ever explain it. So when you say, "Well, how does this really work? Is he saying he is the Father or that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit have the same essence and yet they're separate persons?" Well, that second option is the way that the Trinitarian doctrine has come to be framed, that God is one in substance and three in persons.

Now those that terminology and that expression is never used in the Bible. It's a theological formulation that came up in the fourth century when the church was trying to work all these things out. All that the Bible really says that leads us to the Trinitarian doctrine is that there is one God, not many. But also the Father is God and the Son is God and the Spirit is God and they aren't each other.

When Jesus said he was sending the Holy Spirit, he said, "I'm going to send another Comforter. I'm the Comforter, I'm going away, I'll send you another Comforter, the Spirit of truth." On the other hand, he said that the coming of the Spirit of God is him coming to them. He said, "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." And this is in the context of promising the Spirit to come.

But he also says in the same context, few verses later, "He that loves me and keeps my word and the Father will love him and we," meaning the Father and he, "will come to him." And that clearly is referring to the Spirit also coming to them. So the Spirit coming to us is the Father and the Son coming to us, is Jesus coming to us. And yet the Spirit is spoken of as another.

So there's, you know, is this easy to explain? Not for me it isn't. I've never found it easy. I've always believed it because I don't know any other way to synthesize the data relevant to it in the Bible. There's only one God, that's emphatic. Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God. All those things are stated in scripture as well. And that they are distinguished from each other too.

So the simplest way we can say something that's true to all the scriptures, it seems to me, is that in a sense God is three, in another sense he's one. But I've said that's sort of like talking about my wife and me. In a sense we're two people, in another sense we're one. A husband and wife are one. Not the same sense, a different sense.

So the question becomes in what sense is God three and in what sense is he one? And that's a question the Bible does not answer. And that's why theologians have come up with, well, he's one in substance and three in persons. Now that may be a good answer. I don't know if it's a good one or not because the Bible doesn't give that answer in those terms, but it sounds like a good one to me.

If people have trouble with that, they can come up with alternative phraseology. But you are right about this, that Jesus primarily in the New Testament, especially in his lifetime, is identified as the Son of God and not so much as God in the synoptic gospels. The fact that he is God in the flesh is not really spelled out in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John's gospel, it is stated in a few places that he is God in the flesh, but even that is not in his own statements for the most part. Maybe one or two of them.

Like when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am," that strikes me as him claiming to be God. And when he said "I and the Father are one," he might not have been claiming to be God in that statement. He might have been saying we're of one mind about this matter, we're on the same page. But John definitely tells us that the word was God and the word was made flesh. So is this mysterious? It is.

And I always feel like I need to explain it to people because I'm a teacher, I should be able to explain this. But I don't think I can. I've been listening to an audiobook while I've been driving on this trip I'm on, J.C. Ryle giving expository thoughts on the Gospel of John. I've noticed how many times he says, "This is so deep that we just have to acknowledge we don't understand the depths of this sometimes, but here's what we can get from it." I was glad to hear someone talk that way because that's how I feel sometimes, although I also feel obliged to give an explanation when I know things are too deep for me.

In Psalm 131, verse 1, it says, "God, my heart is not haughty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters or things too high for me." There's something to be said for accepting what God says about things without having a full synthesis of how that all fits together. And I think that's where the Trinity is in that category. The Bible nowhere explains the Trinity to us. It is something we deduce from data points throughout the Bible on the threeness and the oneness of God.

So keep your studies going, but don't be surprised if you can't really fully understand. How is Jesus God? How is he the Son of God? How can he be both? Which is more important? Those things are not answers the Bible gives. The Bible does say he's God, the Bible does say he's the Son of God, somehow that works in the mind of God. And that doesn't mean that the mind of God accepts ridiculous things and we're too smart to fall for that. It means that God knows far more than we do about these things and he's talking above our pay grade. So that's at least that's how I look at it.

But I'm glad you're doing a very perceptive reading of the gospel of Luke and picking out a lot of good data. But as far as the Trinity question, that's the age-old question. I do go much more in depth to the Trinity, explaining these things in a lecture that's at our website, thenarrowpath.com under the topical lectures. There's a series of lectures there that's called Knowing God. In the Knowing God series, there's a lecture called The Trinity. And it's about an hour and a half, and I do tease out these points more than I can right here in this format with so many people waiting behind you. So I hope it doesn't just frustrate you that I can't give you more than that, but I certainly welcome you to take a look at or listen to that lecture. It may help in some ways that I couldn't right here. Rod in Northern California, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Rod (Guest 4): Yeah, thanks Steve. So I'm currently going through Hebrews right now, and I want to see if you can kind of walk me through what I stumbled across as it seems like a surface-level contradiction, but maybe you have an answer for it. So Hebrews 11:11, "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised." Okay, but then I remember when I was reading in Genesis, like that's not exactly how it played out. She didn't really seem faithful at all, in fact she pretty much lied to God at that point and he even called her out for lying. So it didn't seem like she was faithful. So that's kind of what my question is, I could take it off the air.

Steve Gregg: Okay, that's fine. Thank you. And likewise, it says that Abraham didn't consider his body now dead, but he believed what God promised about having a child through Sarah. And yet Abraham did say something about, "How can I when I'm 99 years old have a child and Sarah my wife being old too?" when God first mentioned it to him. So it sounds like both Abraham and Sarah had their initial doubts, and yet Hebrews tells us they had faith in the promise.

The way I have to see this is that they struggled with it initially, but they came to terms with it and believed it, and it wouldn't have been fulfilled if they hadn't. They did come to the point where they believed it, though it was no more believable in natural terms by the time they believed it. They still had to take it strictly by faith because they couldn't see how at that age they could have a child. But they came to believe the promise of God.

Now here's the thing. When Sarah laughed about it in the tent and God had to call her out, that's of course in Genesis 18, and God in a human form came with two angels to visit Abraham and had a meal with him. And it's at that point that God said, "Where's your wife Sarah?" She apparently had been cooking in the back where she had not been visible to the guests. And Abraham said, "She's in the tent." And God said, "Well, by this time next year she's going to have a child."

Now God had already told Abraham that in chapter 17 that Sarah's going to have a child, so I guess he had come to terms with it though he laughed at it initially. But this may have been the first time Sarah heard of it, and she laughed. When she overheard it, she laughed. And God said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for Yahweh?" And then Sarah kind of realizing she'd been caught, she said, "Oh, I didn't laugh," and he said, "But you did."

Now I personally believe that when the man came to Abraham's tent, neither he nor Sarah knew it was God. He was just showing normal Eastern hospitality. He saw some guys, it was the heat of the day, he was in the shadow, he saw some travelers through the desert, he ran out to them, said, "Come have a meal with me," typical Middle Eastern stuff. He would have done that to anybody. We don't know that he knew it was God. Although he does refer to his guest as "my Lord, my Lord," but the word Adonai is used all the time meaning "sir," basically. It's what you'd say to any man speaking respectfully to him.

But it's when the man said, "Sarah will have a child," Sarah probably assumed this guy was just an ordinary guest who wanted to wish a blessing on the house, and he hadn't seen the lady of the house yet. He didn't know she was 90 years old. And so she kind of laughed and said, "Little does he know." And then the man said, "Is anything too hard for Yahweh?" And that's the first time the guest actually identified himself as Yahweh. And that's when Sarah, I believe, was shocked and embarrassedly she said she didn't laugh.

But he said, "But you did." But after that, I think once she knew it was Yahweh who made the promise, I think she believed it. But I think when she laughed, she didn't know it was Yahweh. She thought was just a guest with a general well wishing on the house. That's how I read the flow of thought there. So it's true both Abraham and Sarah laughed in unbelief when they first heard the promise, but once they knew it was really a promise from God, they accepted it. And because they did, they were able to have the promise fulfilled. That's what Hebrews is telling us. So yes, Sarah did laugh, she did disbelieve it, and then later she did believe it. And that's what Hebrews is referring to the second thing. And therefore, I don't see it as any contradiction, though it is an interesting juxtaposition of those passages.

Let's see here. We've got quite a few callers. I'm looking to see who's next. I think it's going to be David's been there the longest. David from Missouri, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

David (Guest 5): Hi Steve, I'm a first-time caller. Appreciate talking with you.

Steve Gregg: Great, you're a little muffled. Are you speaking on a speakerphone?

David (Guest 5): Yes.

Steve Gregg: Okay, it might be clearer if you don't.

David (Guest 5): Okay, hold on a second. Is that any better?

Steve Gregg: Much better. Go ahead.

David (Guest 5): Yesterday you had a caller and I think he was talking about why hasn't the Lord come back yet, and you were quoting a scripture in Ephesians, I believe, that said until we all come to the unity of the faith to a perfect man. I'm outside so I don't know where that's at, but—

Steve Gregg: That's Ephesians 4:13, yeah.

David (Guest 5): When I drive around my town and all the competing churches that are separated by their peculiar and different doctrines, I don't see unity at all. Like one on my street, I got a Seventh-day Adventist, I got a Lutheran church, and there's Pentecostal. So if the Lord can't come back until the people are united in the faith, how is that ever going to happen?

Steve Gregg: Well, first of all, maybe it won't happen anytime soon. You know, we've been told Jesus is coming back real soon. We have no way of knowing that. We don't have any unambiguous time indicators in the Bible saying when Jesus is coming back. Maybe he won't come back for another generation or two or three or ten. You know, back back in 1970, which is what, 56 years ago, we were told that all the signs were pointing to Jesus coming before 1982. We definitely had the impression he's coming in the 70s.

But he didn't. And it's been over half a century now since then, and the time flies when you're having fun or not. But the thing is another 50 years could easily go by, or another 150 or 500 years. We don't know. See, God's the one who's not in a hurry, we are. We're impatient about things. Come, Lord Jesus, you know. And Jesus is saying, "Well, I will when the time comes, when what I'm waiting for happens."

Now we do know it says in Revelation 19 that when the Lord comes, his bride will have made herself ready. Well, I believe there is a bride of Christ, and I think the true Christians in it are becoming sanctified. I think they're becoming more loving, I think they are more unified with each other. What you don't see so clearly is the same thing happening in the institutional churches.

But I'm not really sure that what Paul says about the maturing of the church will be seen primarily in the institutional churches. Institutional churches do not comprise the body of Christ per se. There are members of the body of Christ in every institutional church in all likelihood, but there's a lot of them who aren't in institutional churches. I'm one of them. I'm a part of the body of Christ, but I'm not in an institutional church, and many others I know are the same way.

So we shouldn't be saying, "Well, if God's waiting for the church to be unified, we got to wait for the institutional churches to be unified." Well, I think they've got too much skin in the game to change. In many cases, the reason they exist as separate denominations is because their distinctives are what give them their identity and the loyalty of their members and the income and so forth. There's a lot of carnal considerations that could make people of the institutional denominations not want to change, and maybe they won't.

But anyone who's following the leading of the Holy Spirit is going to change in the direction that the Spirit wants them to. And there are people leaving those institutional churches or changing them to follow Christ more faithfully. Now it may be if Paul says God is waiting for the church to come to a mature man, that when he says the church, he's talking about the people that God recognizes as the church, not the buildings and 501(c)(3) corporations that we call the churches.

I'm not condemning the institutional churches as they're not of Christ because there are people of Christ in those churches, but not all the people in them are. The true church, the true body of Christ that has to be unified, it is comprised of the entire global community of faithful people who love Christ, follow him, he's their head, they're members of his body, that means he's their Lord, and they're taking that seriously and they have his Spirit.

That's, you know, if you're in the body of Christ, you have his Spirit. So that wouldn't be true of everybody who calls themselves Christians. It's not true of everyone in the institutional churches, though I believe it is true of some people in all the churches. But God doesn't look at the institutional churches and say, "Boy, I can't wait till they get their act together." It may be that he'll just have to say, "Well, they're not going to get their act together, so I'll take the real church out of them and the real church can live as a community of people who love each other and are unified in the spirit and are following Christ faithfully without doctrinal and denominational agendas."

I don't know. I mean, someone asked me that very question last night at the meeting I was teaching, and I said the same thing. I don't know what that looks like, but I will say this. I find that as I travel around, I speak in many churches, many denominations, I meet people in my groups that are from different churches, and their churches don't all agree the same thing as the other churches do, but these people are following Christ. And in many cases, the Holy Spirit's leading them away from some of the maybe the errors of the denomination they're in to a more biblical understanding of the faith.

And he can keep doing that. And I don't even know depending on how God sees the membership of the true church, which I can't see that because I don't know who's really saved or not, God does. It may be that we're not so far from it as as we feel we are just because we're looking at the institutional church and say they're miles from each other, they're not going to join, they're not going to be unified. Yeah, well, maybe that's not what God's waiting for.

Maybe what God's waiting for is for the real Christians to start functioning as a community in the world, an alternative society to represent Jesus. And that might require at some point that they leave institutional churches. I'm not calling for people to do that, I'm just saying that might be how it'll happen. I don't know. So the thing is that Paul predicted it would happen. And yes, it might mean that his coming is further off than we dreamed. But that's okay because we're all going to die soon anyway. I mean, each of us is going to die within the next century, so if Jesus waits for a thousand years to come, it doesn't make any difference to us. We'll be with him anyway.

David (Guest 5): Yeah, well I'm your age, so yeah, it's pretty close probably.

Steve Gregg: Yeah. I hear you.

David (Guest 5): Well, I'll try to get back with you next week too on a couple follow-ups and appreciate you talking.

Steve Gregg: All right. Thanks for your call, bro. Let's talk to Patrick in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. Patrick, welcome.

Patrick (Guest 6): Hey, Greg. Thanks for taking my call. First-time caller.

Steve Gregg: Thanks for calling.

Patrick (Guest 6): Yeah, so I've looked at your work, Three Views on Hell, and one question I have—I believe there's a lot of validity to each of the three if one were just to look for proof texts and whatnot. But my one question is how much does conscience come in when you're looking because universalism, God reconciling all to himself, answers a lot of questions. And as far as conscience goes, how much do you believe that should come into play when looking at scripture and understanding these things?

Steve Gregg: Now when you say conscience, you mean our sense of the righteousness and character of God?

Patrick (Guest 6): Correct, correct.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well I'll say this. I as regular listeners and people who read my book know, I have not made up my mind which view of hell is correct because there's more than one that can be reasonably defended from scripture.

However, in my years of studying and thinking about this and even in writing my book, it becomes clear that my confidence in the traditional view has eroded considerably. I studied, you know, all the books I could find on it and the arguments for the view that I held by default, which is the eternal conscious torment view. I was amazed how few scriptures there were that actually supported that notion.

I thought it was like a common Bible doctrine, but I found out there's only about five verses that seem to say something about that, and they're ambiguous, and three of them are in Revelation, the most symbolic book in the Bible, so it's hard to know how much to take them literally. But there's a lot of scriptures for conditional immortality and a lot. And even for universal reconciliation, the third view, there's scripture for that.

But when people say of the two alternatives, which do you think you lean more toward? I would have to say when it comes to the bulk of verses in the Bible, conditional immortality seems to have the largest number. When it comes to the character of God as I understand it in Christ, universal reconciliation seems to hold some merit. I don't know which one is true. But if I were God, I'd want universal reconciliation to be true. And if I were God, I could make it happen. So that's the point.

So there's a lot to be said for alternative views, and I haven't settled on one. But I do think that the universal reconciliation fits the character of God like a glove, as I understand the character of God in scripture. And that's about the most I can say about it, especially since I'm out of time. I hope that's helpful. You've been listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a good weekend. Let's talk again Monday.