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. We take this hour to invite you to call in with your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, which we can discuss on the air. You can also call in to discuss any disagreements you might have with the host. I'd be glad to talk to you about that as well.

The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, sometimes during the show, all the lines are full. Right now we have two lines open, so this is a good time to call. 844-484-5737 and we'll be glad to talk to you when we can get to your call. Right now, we've got a call from John in Salyersville, Kentucky. Hi John, welcome to the Narrow Path. Good to hear from you.

John: Good afternoon, Steve. I was going to get your opinion on how our flesh wars against our spirit. We have a different will, our flesh has a different will than our spirit. Also, when we speak in unknown tongues, the Bible says that our soul prays but our understanding is unfruitful unless we interpret. Do you believe that the Lord had the same situation that we're in when he was here on earth?

Steve Gregg: Which kind of situation? You mean that he was a human being with a flesh and a spirit?

John: Yes. Well, that his flesh and his spirit had different wills.

Steve Gregg: Well, yes. His flesh was just like ours. In other words, he had appetites of the flesh. It's not sinful to have appetites, by the way. Animals have them too and animals are not sinful. It's not a moral issue to have an appetite.

The problem is our appetites can certainly dominate us and we can place them first like an idol in our lives. We just say, "Whatever I want, whatever I crave, whatever I desire, I'm going to go for that." Now, that's making the appetites of the flesh, or what the Bible calls the lusts of the flesh, an idol. The word lust means desires of the flesh. There's certainly no sin in eating when you're hungry. There is a sin in stealing food from somebody so you can eat.

There's no sin in having sex in the proper marital context, but there is wrongness in having sex outside of that. There's nothing wrong with sleeping at night when you've got time to sleep, but it's certainly wrong to sleep if you're a sentry and you're supposed to stay awake and people's lives are at stake. In other words, the body has its cravings just like animals have, and humans have those too, and so did Jesus.

The Bible says he got tired and he fell asleep in a boat. He got hungry when he was fasting. He had all the same appetites we have. The difference between Jesus and all of us is that when it came to choosing to either obey the appetites of the flesh or to restrict himself from doing so, he was always obedient to his Father.

This is the thing: animals don't sin no matter how they exercise or indulge their flesh. People, however, have things that we have a moral obligation to govern our flesh in ways that do not harm other people or do not violate God's codes of righteousness. So, there is a conflict. Paul said the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

Jesus even knew this. Jesus said, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He knew because that was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew very well he was willing to do his Father's will, but it was hard. The flesh wanted to avoid being beat up and crucified and things like that. However, he submitted to the spirit and not to the flesh and that's why he gave himself up to be crucified.

That's what people do when they're walking in the power of the Spirit of God. Paul said, "If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." That's Galatians 5:16. So we have the will of the flesh and we have the will of the spirit.

I think the will of the spirit is not different from what Paul referred to as the will of his mind. He said, for example, in Romans 7:22 and 23, "I delight in the law of God according to the inward man." Now, the inward man I believe is his spirit or his mind. "But I see another law in my members," that's in my flesh, my body, "warring against the law of my mind."

In other words, my mind approves of the law of God. There's no problem there. I want to obey God. My mind is on God's side. Like Jesus said, the spirit is willing in a believer, but the flesh is weak and he says, "I find this other force in my flesh that's warring against what I want to do with my mind."

Paul made a very interesting statement in Ephesians chapter 2. He talks about how the converts that he's writing to, the Christians, before they were Christians, he says, "Among whom we also all once conducted ourselves," that is the sons of disobedience are the people mentioned in the previous verse. He says, "We used to be among them. We used to be sons of disobedience, too. Among those we also once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind."

Now, in this place, the Greek word for desires is the word wills. Before we were Christians, we were fulfilling the will of our flesh and the will of our mind. Something has changed since that. We don't fulfill the will of our flesh and the will of our mind at the same time if the will of our flesh is in contrast with the will of our mind.

What he's saying is there's what our flesh wants. That's the will of the flesh. That's what we have to be careful about because it wants things that some of the things it wants are things that we can't indulge rightly. Now, the will of the mind before we were Christians and the will of the flesh were the same.

He says when we indulged the will of the flesh, we were doing the will of the flesh and of the mind. That is, our mind and flesh both wanted the same things. But that was before we were saved. When you're saved, you repent. Repent means you change your mind. Now, you don't change the flesh, you just change your mind.

You can't change your flesh until you die and then you're going to be resurrected in a better one. At this point, we have no power to change our flesh in terms of its moral goodness or badness, but we can change our mind. He's saying when we were in the world obeying the flesh, we were doing so because we wanted to. We were fulfilling the will of the flesh and of the mind.

But we've changed our mind now. Our mind now wants to obey God. Our inner man is agreeable with God's ways, but it's still at war with the flesh that hasn't changed. That's why we have a conflict that sometimes unbelievers don't have. Unbelievers don't have the conflict because they're doing the will of the flesh, but they're also doing the will of their mind. What their flesh wants is what their mind wants.

But we who are Christians have repented. We've changed our mind. Our mind now wants to obey God, but the flesh still hasn't changed and won't anytime soon until we die. So there's both. Now, Jesus, his flesh craved things, too. We know that because he was tempted in all points as we are.

We read of his temptation in the wilderness by the devil. He's tempted by his hunger for food. He was tempted by the kinds of things people are tempted by, but he said no to all of them. That is to say, he walked in the Spirit and did not fulfill the lusts of his flesh. He's the only person who's ever lived who did that perfectly.

Now, we do it imperfectly, but we can still do it if we walk in the Spirit, which we don't do all the time but should. If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. He did it all the time. He had the same struggle we have. That's why it says he was tempted in all points like we are but without sinning. He had the same struggles, but he defeated them and we are not as good at that. I appreciate your call, John. Rob in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi, Rob. Welcome.

Rob: Hey, Steve. I'm in a discussion with my nephew. He's kind of dabbling with the idea of open theism. We've gone through a lot of scriptures together, but I decided to develop a deductive argument using a syllogism and I was wondering if I could give you my four-point syllogism and see if you can punch any holes in it.

Steve Gregg: Okay.

Rob: All right, so number one: God is complete and nothing can be added to him. Number two: learning something is adding knowledge. Number three: if God doesn't know the future, then information is added to him when that future event takes place. Therefore, God knows the future.

Steve Gregg: Well, it sounds pretty good to me. As far as I know, the premises are good. They sound reasonable. If the premises are good, I would say your conclusion follows logically. Yeah, that's good.

Rob: Well, perfect. I'll call him and tell him to listen to this and tell him Steve Gregg says it's right, therefore it's right.

Steve Gregg: Well, remember I don't hold openness theology, but I'm not offended by it like some people are. I don't have an axe to grind against it. I have a lot of friends who are openness theologians and I appreciate their process. After all, what you just gave us is a logical philosophical argument, and there's nothing wrong with logical philosophical arguments.

That's what C.S. Lewis said when he wrote a chapter about this in Mere Christianity. He said this is a philosophical question, it's not a biblical question. He was, of course, saying that God does know all future things. He was not an open theist. But it's correct to say that when we say that God knows everything, the Bible does say God knows everything. The question of whether the future is a thing or not is disputed.

There are things that exist right now and God knows all of them. There are things that will potentially exist in the future. They don't exist now, so they aren't things yet. Some would say to say that God knows everything means he knows everything there is, everything that exists. But future things have not come into being yet, the choices we're going to make and things. Therefore, they would argue to say that he doesn't know those is not to deny that he knows everything.

Those aren't things. Those don't exist. So that's how they would argue it. Now, that's a philosophical question. The Bible doesn't answer. Of course, the Bible does seem to imply that God knows the future in terms of him predicting through prophecy things that would happen, including things that people would choose to do, which are the very things that people say aren't determined because we have free choice. Yet if God knows what people are going to do before they do it and we have free choice too, well then there are aspects of God's foreknowledge, in fact, of the whole subject that are, to my mind, beyond our ken, what we don't fully understand. But logically, assuming your premises are good, and they seem to be good to me, then I'd say you've got a logical argument.

Rob: I appreciate it. If you don't mind just a quick follow-up. I've heard you address this before in almost the same manner you just did, but given the logical premises, though, how do you think an open theist would respond to the fact that if God doesn't know something doesn't exist, but when that thing does come into existence, he now learns something new that he didn't know previously? So therefore, it's added to him. So by conclusion then, God is not complete at this point. He is not complete until everything's completed in the future.

Steve Gregg: Well, I guess the thing that they might challenge you on, and I don't know if that's a legitimate challenge or not, is you started out by saying what? God is complete in himself, right?

Rob: And nothing can be added to him.

Steve Gregg: Right, and nothing can be added to him. But I guess that depends on what we're calling him. Does what he knows, is that an aspect of him or is that just something in the external reality that he is aware of? These are deeper philosophical questions than I can resolve.

Rob: I don't want to take too much of your time on this, but when I say added to him, I mean added to his omniscience. Because by implying that he doesn't know something that's going to happen in the future, when he finds it out in the future, now you've added to his omniscience.

Steve Gregg: Well, you could be right. You could be right. But there are those who would say it's not when he gets new information when something new information comes to exist, he knows it. It doesn't mean that he was incomplete just because there was nothing in that category for him to know. You know, but like again, that's a whole philosophical thing.

I think that many times open theists are arguing from a philosophical basis. So I'd say you have a good philosophical case. I'd be curious to know how he would respond to it.

Rob: I appreciate your time. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Great, Rob. God bless you, man. Good talking to you. Tell Dana we said hi. Bye now. Okay, Michael in Santa Cruz, California. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi Steve. Good to hear you. Can you hear me?

Steve Gregg: Yes, go ahead.

Michael: You and I have talked many times about the differences. I've always tried to emphasize the parallels between the classic view of the Buddha and the biblical Christian perspective. I personally don't see, I don't want to whitewash the theological differences or what Buddhism necessarily a theology, but the differences in the worldviews associated with each perspective. But in actual practice, the Christian who's trying to walk with God and Jesus and the Buddhist who's trying to follow the eightfold path, in real world terms, it's very close.

Steve Gregg: I don't deny that, but let's put it this way. If a man was being kind to a woman because he loved her and wanted to serve her, he would behave perhaps in the same way as a man who's being kind to her because he wanted to seduce her or wanted to do something to get some money out of her, get something from her.

Being kind would look very similar in both cases. What makes one good and one bad is the intention. So when we talk about, well, if you live by the eightfold path, you may look an awful lot like a Christian who's living by the Sermon on the Mount. There may be a lot of things that you have in common. People can act the same way or similar ways with very different motives, and the motive makes all the difference in the world.

Jesus pointed out that the Pharisees were very meticulous in keeping the laws that God gave them, which is a good thing to do if you're a Jew, but he said you've got bad motives for it. It's like you're all clean on the outside, but you're like a tomb that's been whitewashed on the outside but it's full of dead men's bones, it's dirty inside.

Whenever you and I have talked, you're a Buddhist, I'm a Christian, we've talked hundreds of times over the past 25 years or more. You don't seem to see what I'm seeing here, and that is that you could do almost all the same things during your day that I do during my day, but we're doing it for different reasons.

I have to ask you because I don't know the answer to this. What is the purpose or the object in Buddhism? What is the ultimate goal in Buddhism?

Michael: Am I on the air? Can you hear me? Yes, I heard it. I got distracted. What is the goal, what is the goal or the end in mind for Buddhism? To be released from the torment of the emotional afflictions, what Christians would call sin.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so it apparently is then to achieve a subjectively positive goal from the standpoint of the person who's practicing the religion.

Michael: To come to a state of being that is not conditional. In other words, when people experience ordinary happiness, things are going well, I feel great. Things aren't going well, I feel down. That endless instability. But Nirvana is defined as the peace beyond everything.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Michael, let me ask you this. Let's suppose that you live the Buddhist life perfectly and acquire the best possible outcome that a Buddhist can hope for. Whose interests are served by that?

Michael: It's twofold. One, the person who comes to the Nirvanic realization or peace is no longer suffering in the ordinary sense.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so his interests are served.

Michael: His interests are served. And number two, that person is no longer bringing to others the pain, bringing the toxicity into the field of his or her relationships. So the person is a non-intimidating, non-abrasive presence in the world.

Steve Gregg: Okay, and that's what I thought you'd say. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing in itself. I'm just trying to point out to you that you're always trying to tell me that there's not really very significant difference between Buddhism and Christianity. I believe that those two goals are achieved by living the Christian life, but those are not the primary goals of Christianity.

The primary goal of Christianity is to glorify God. We were made for his glory. So to submit to Christ, to live according to his teachings and his standards, to be like Jesus, we do that for the purpose of pleasing and glorifying God, which is the purpose that the whole universe exists for.

The existence of the universe is to glorify God. Most of it does. It's the people who don't do it very well. The heavens declare the glory of God. The stars, they show forth his glory, but we who are disobedient and imperfect, we don't always show forth the glory of God. But the goal of the Christian life is to, by submitting to Christ, following Christ, experiencing the life that he gives us, which is a new species of life through his Spirit, that we are changed from glory to glory into that image for the glory of God.

Now, in other words, the whole focus of Christianity is about God. Yes, do we benefit from it? Yes, we do. Does society benefit by our being good Christians? It should very much, yes. But those are like byproducts. Those are the whole focus of Buddhism. There is no God in Buddhism for you to be pleasing. You're simply trying to conform to dharma or whatever so that it's good for you.

You got bliss, the world is more blissed out because you're in bliss and so you don't hurt people, you're not toxic like you said. Yeah, that should be true of people who live the Christian life and that's the part you're seeing. That's where you're seeing there's not much difference between being a Christian and a Buddhist, you're saying, because kind of both of them are intended to bring peace, bring clearness of conscience, make us better people.

All religions are really intending to do that. There is, however, a very great difference between all of those and Christianity. Christianity is about God. This is something that I've always told you and it kind of goes over your head because you still think there's not much of a dime's worth of difference between Buddhism and Christianity. It's a hundred percent different.

Like I said, it's like the difference between being nice to a woman because you're devoted to her and want everything to go well in her life, you're doing it for her sake, or being kind to a woman because you want to seduce her or get something from her. It's the same behavior, very different motives.

Jesus said if anyone would come after him, they need to deny themselves. Now, every human being, until they come to Christ, is seeking their own advantage. It might be a selfish kind of hedonism or narcissism kind of a thing where you're using other people for yourself, or you might be seeking an advantage of a spiritual kind, spiritual peace, a clearness of conscience, whatever. But it's the natural way for human beings from the time of birth till death to want to please themselves, to want to get for themselves something better and that's what they will apply themselves to.

I think a good Buddhist is applying himself or herself toward getting Nirvana, getting peace, becoming invulnerable to pain and things like that. I can understand that, but that's just still one selfish goal among many that people have sought. To be a Christian, I realize Christians are selfish sometimes, too. I'm not sure how many people who call themselves Christians really are Christians or how much Jesus would call them Christians.

But he said that if anyone would come to him, the first step is to deny self, which means that instead of living as I always have with concerns about what I can get out of this—what can I get out of this person, what can I get out of this relationship, what can I get out of this religion, what can I get out of this discipline, what can I get out of this experience, what can I get out of God—if it's what can I get out of this, I haven't denied myself. Self is still making the call. It's still self looking out for itself.

We weren't made to look out for ourselves. We were made to glorify God. And so when a person becomes a Christian really—I'm not saying they jump through the hoops of American evangelicalism or whatever because people can do that without becoming real Christians. Jesus made that clear enough.

No, when a person really becomes clear, becomes a Christian, they have denied themselves and said, "Okay, I've lived for my own interests, for my own advantage. I now will live for God's interests and for his advantage to bring him pleasure and to bring him glory and if I perish, I perish." As a Christian, I came to this many decades ago, that even if I were to go to hell and suffer, still I'm going to live to glorify God. It's not what I get out of it, it's what God gets out of it because he deserves something. He created us.

I don't deserve anything but the consequences of my misbehavior. Fortunately, God is gracious and he forgives and he saves. And that is good for me. It's good for everybody. But that's because I've stopped being looking out for what's good for me. I'm looking out what's good for God. And that's where Buddhism and Christianity are in different universes. And that's why you're always surprised I don't see your point that they're the same thing. They're not.

I need to take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported. You can donate from the website if you want. We have a break at this point for 30 seconds and then we have another half hour. I'll be taking your calls. Please stay tuned.

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 have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, about anything that can be answered from a biblical perspective, I'd be glad to talk about it with you. You can call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Joe from Mena, Arkansas. Hi, Joe. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Joe: Hi, Steve. First of all, I want to apologize. I didn't say goodbye to you the last time I was on. It was my first call and I was a little nervous. It was a few weeks ago I called and that's been eating at me ever since.

Steve Gregg: That's been eating at me ever since, too, Joe. I'm glad you apologized.

Joe: Anyway, I'm sorry about that. My question today is concerning tongues. I was raised Catholic and in my 20s I went to a Pentecostal church and I read the Bible then and I stayed with that church and I speak in tongues. But I do not believe that my tongue is the Acts chapter 2 tongue where it's an actual language where people understand. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 2, "For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries." That's what I believe I speak. It's a personal language. It comforts me and it brings me close to God. But I have had a few ministers say, "Oh no, it's you're actually speaking a language somewhere on some obscure island or something, somebody can understand that." Can you give me your thoughts on that?

Steve Gregg: Well, you are correct that Paul says that when you speak in tongues in the church, he's talking about the church tongues because there's two different settings for tongues. Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost was not in a church meeting for the benefit of the church. It was, true, the church was gathered, but it was for the benefit of unbelievers. Paul says tongues is a sign for unbelievers. If tongues is going to be a sign, it's a sign to unbelievers.

Among unbelievers, sometimes somebody supernaturally speaking their language although that speaker has never learned their language, but supernaturally knows and can speak to them in that language, that is a sign to the unbeliever. That's what happened on the day of Pentecost.

Paul also talks about tongues that are not for unbelievers but tongues for the edification of the church. Now, the church is made up of Christians, not unbelievers. So he says in the church, you really should be not speaking in tongues unless there's an interpretation. Now, Paul does not deny that such speaking in tongues is an actual language, but he does say no one present understands it.

Now, some Pentecostals talk about there being a heavenly language, like a language of angels, like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:1, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels and don't have love, I'm nothing." Some people think there are tongues that are heavenly languages, but languages nonetheless. I'm not going to go to the mat about that because Paul could be speaking hyperbolically when he says if I speak in the tongues of men or even angels and don't have love, I'm nothing.

I don't know if he's affirming that there are tongues of angels that people sometimes speak, but I do think the very word tongues does refer to languages. It may be, however, that it's a language that no one present knows. It doesn't mean that there aren't people somewhere in the world that would know it, but you're not in their part of the world and you're not among them, so it might as well have been to those who you're with, it might as well be gibberish.

But that doesn't mean it is gibberish. There's a lot of people who speak languages I've never learned around me and it sounds gibberishy to me, but I know it isn't. So but I don't know what the difference would be, to tell you the truth. Why that would make a difference. It's clear that even if when you're speaking in tongues in church or even privately in your prayer life, that you may or may not be speaking a language known somewhere.

Whether it is or not is a moot point because you don't understand it, no one present understands it. It could be interpreted by somebody who's got a supernatural gift of interpretation according to Paul. So if it can be interpreted, there must be information content because interpretation is taking the information and elucidating it to people present. If there's information content that can be interpreted, it probably is a language expressing something.

But I agree with you, it wouldn't necessarily be a language that anybody around would know or need to know. Now, if you're correct, I think what you're suggesting is not a language at all, just noise, but it means something to you or God. It means something to God. I can't argue that that's true or false. All I know is that the expression speaking in tongues does refer to languages. It's simply that Paul does acknowledge there are lots of languages we don't know and that nobody around us knows. When we speak in tongues, nobody knows what it is we're saying unless it's a sign to the unbelievers. But Paul's, of course, in 1 Corinthians 14, he's not talking about unbelievers. He's talking about Christians in the Christian assembly. So tongues can have different purposes in different venues. But to say that the tongues you speak in are not a language, I don't know how we'd prove that that's true or not. I guess we'd prove you're wrong if somebody came into the room who knew the language and told us, but that's not generally the case. So I'm not going to argue with you about that. You could be right or wrong. I don't know that it'd make a difference in the practice. Okay, let's talk to Paul in Mobile, Alabama. Hi, Paul. Welcome.

Paul: How are you doing, Steve? First-time caller and just started following you due to my—I was studying eschatology and things weren't matching up and what you're saying I feel like makes a lot of sense to me. I've got two questions. One of them is going to be really easy. One of them is: so your intro music, is there a story behind that? The whistle?

Steve Gregg: There is. That music was written by a student of mine in a school that I taught, a Bible school. It was inspired by one of the talks I gave about children called Vision for Children. That's one of the lectures at my website, Vision for Children. He was quite struck by that and he wrote that song. It's called "Like Arrows Do". By the way, if you want to hear the words to that song, you can go to thenarrowpath.com and go to the tab that says "Links and Resources" and there's a whole drop-down menu and one of the things that is the song "Like Arrows Do". Somebody has taken the whole song, words and all, and made a kind of a slideshow out of it. But he did that after hearing a lecture about children.

Paul: Fantastic. I like it. I just thought I would ask. My primary question I would say is about Hebrews 6:4-6. I've listened to some really intelligent, well-meaning, I believe, pastors speak on both sides of those verses of whether they show a person can lose their salvation or vice versa on the other side that it's not, it's just pointing to the fact that he's talking to the Hebrews that have kind of gone astray and going back to the Old Covenant and I just would like to hear how you feel about that particular passage. I can hang up and just listen.

Steve Gregg: All right, that's great. Thanks for your call, Paul. Bye now.

Let me just say this. There are many passages that people frequently ask about and I do give somewhat thorough answers to them. Just for the sake of anyone who's got questions like this, there is a website called matthew713.com and it's got a topical index of calls that have come into this show over the past 20-something years. There's like 25,000 calls that have been topically indexed there.

You can go there and look up a question—there's over 2,000 questions—and you can find this passage and you can find the scores of times I've spoken on it before to callers. Or you can also go to my website, thenarrowpath.com, where I have verse-by-verse teachings through every book of the Bible, including Hebrews, and you can go to the Hebrews 6 for this.

This is a question that comes up a lot. It's confusing the way it's written. The writer says, "For it's impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and have fallen away, to renew them," that is, it's impossible to renew them again to repentance since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame.

Now, it talks about people who have had several experiences, which all in the Bible relate to being a Christian. They were enlightened, they've tasted the heavenly gift, which is of course salvation. They've become partakers of the Holy Spirit—only Christians have the Holy Spirit. They've tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. These five things all point in the direction that he's talking about Christians.

He says it's impossible if somebody's had all these experiences and have fallen away. Now, falling away means you've given up on the faith. You've given up on Christ. You've walked away. You're an apostate. It's impossible to restore that person to repentance because they're crucifying Christ afresh.

Lots of different views have been taken on this. There are, of course, Christians who think you cannot lose your salvation and this passage is a troublesome one for them because it basically talks about people who were saved and have fallen away and they can't come back. It doesn't say they can't come back, it says it's impossible to renew them to repentance, whatever that means. But it certainly sounds like they're lost.

So those who believe you cannot lose your salvation have come up with different ways of understanding this. Some of them say he is speaking hypothetically about something that cannot happen. That somebody who's had all these experiences of conversion obviously they can't fall away. He's saying that they can't because frankly if they did, they'd be crucifying Christ afresh and Christ can't be crucified again, so they say this is arguing that it would be hypothetically impossible for someone to fall away.

That's not the point he's making. In fact, he's not saying it's impossible. He's talking about people who have fallen away after this. That's the language. The King James version says "if they fall away" and it makes it sound hypothetical. In the Greek, there's no "if". It just says they've tasted the good word of God, the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away. So he's not talking about a hypothetical situation. He's talking about some things that have happened to some people.

Another way it is argued by those who think you cannot lose your salvation is to say, well, all these things can happen to a person without them really getting saved. Maybe they're not really saved in the first place. So they take the view either that if you really are saved you can't fall away, or these people aren't really saved anyway and they can fall away because they're not really saved.

But the description of them: they were enlightened, they tasted the heavenly gift, they've become partakers of the Holy Spirit. To suggest that this is describing someone who's not a Christian is pretty wild. They're saying, well, they got close. They've tasted at it. They've kind of been interested. No, the writer doesn't say they've been interested. He says they have partaken. They've eaten. they've taken in the Holy Spirit and the heavenly gift and that's salvation.

So there's no possibility that these things would be describing a non-Christian. And if someone says, "Well, it could be if he doesn't mean they've absolutely entered into all these experiences," well, he should probably say that then because everything he says describes them in terms that all readers would say, "Oh, he's describing Christians." And if he's saying, "Well, no, you can get close to it. You can have all these things and not really get saved," well, that's the point he should have made because he certainly hides it well by giving this list of things they've done which elsewhere in scripture are only attributable to being a Christian. Okay?

So those who say you can't lose your salvation really have trouble with this passage, I would say. Now, what about those who say you can lose your salvation? Well, most of us who believe that it is possible to apostatize and depart from Christ after you're saved, we also believe that you could come back. But this seems to say they can't come back. If they've done it, it's impossible to renew them to repentance for they crucify Christ again.

Now, the question then is: is it impossible for them to repent or is it impossible for them to be brought to repentance? In other words, that's a passive. If I could bring you to repentance, of course you're repenting, but I'm the one who's bringing you in that sentence. The action of that verb is me. I'm bringing you to repentance. He says it's impossible to bring them, to restore them to repentance. For who? Who's doing the restoring? Who's doing the attempt?

The readers are doing the attempt. He's saying that they're babes. They only drink milk. They're not skilled in the word of righteousness. That's what he says about them in the closing verses of the previous chapter. These people are not skilled in their Christian life. He said there are people who've had more experience than you in the life and they've fallen away and you're not going to be able to do anything for them. Not in your condition.

So he could be just saying that these people need to grow up and become useful so that they can be useful to helping these people who've fallen away. There were people who had fallen away. He mentions that elsewhere in Hebrews chapter 10. He talks about many have forsaken the assembling of the church to go back to Judaism in other words.

So there's that. And then there's also the statement while they—it says they are crucifying Christ afresh. The language in the Greek allows for the possibility that he's saying while they are crucifying Christ afresh, they can't be restored to repentance. In other words, while they're in the process of this apostasy, you're not going to be able to do anything to bring them back because they're dead set against it. They're crucifying Christ afresh.

Presumably, if they would stop doing that, maybe they could be brought to repentance. So there's a lot of ways to go with this. It's a very strangely worded passage. And there are those who are devoted to the idea that a Christian cannot lose their salvation. And there are others who simply take passages at their face value and say the Bible does warn many times about the danger of losing your salvation, of apostasy. So we'll just go with what the Bible says instead of just trying to cover it over with crazy explanations because we've adopted a doctrine that we don't want to lose.

Anyway, I would suggest for a more in-depth teaching on that, you can go to my website thenarrowpath.com, look under verse-by-verse teaching and look up Hebrews chapter 6 and you'll find a more thorough discussion there. Bill in Port Townsend, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Bill: Hi, Steve. Maybe you can shed some light on something that I find rather confusing. In Leviticus 20 it says that the penalty for adultery was death. I think in Leviticus 24 it says if you take someone's life, that is also a penalty of death. But King David was guilty of both counts. He was a Jew, he was under the law, but why was he spared? And then also it says that a man will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and they will be one flesh. Then he has seven wives and several concubines and that never seems to be addressed. I've always been a little confused about that because it does seem to be a little bit contradictory to what we know about scripture and I'd like to hear what your view is on that.

Steve Gregg: Well, what we know about scripture is that doing those kinds of things are worthy of death. David himself admitted that. In fact, when Nathan the prophet came to him to confront him about that very thing, how he had committed adultery and murder, he couched the confrontation in a fictional story where a man in the story represented David but David didn't know it.

The story was told of this atrocity that a man had done and David was asked to make a judgment on it and he said, "The man shall die." So David admitted that the death penalty really should apply to him, but he didn't know he's talking about himself. Nathan said, "You're the man." But then David repented and this is what we know about scripture too: that when people repent, God can forgive.

There's a thing called grace. There's a thing called law and there's a thing called grace. Now, some people think that under the Old Testament, God had to act strictly according to the law. No, he didn't have to. People had to. People were required to. God is not bound by his own law. It's true that a magistrate or judge would have had to condemn David to death.

But God said, "Okay, because you repent, I'm not going to do that." There will be penalties. David did suffer penalties. His house was a disaster, his family was a disaster, his children killed each other off and things like that. That's what he said: the sword will never depart from your house because you've done this thing. But I'm not going to make you die.

God gave a special thing like he does for many people. Many of us have sinned things that are—the wages of sin is death. We've all sinned, so we're all worthy of death. But the Bible teaches that God is gracious to those who repent. He can forgive. That's what we see there.

As far as the many wives, the Bible does not actually command that a person not have more than one wife. There was polygamy practiced in Israel before David's time and afterward. It's just not God's ideal and Jesus made it very clear that God's ideal is for there to be a man and a woman faithfully joined to each other for life.

But that didn't in itself clarify whether a man could be joined to more than one woman devoted for life and that's what polygamy was. David had multiple wives. Solomon had even a lot more than that. But most Jews didn't and most people didn't want more than one. Why would you want more than one? You've got enough trouble just making one marriage work with your kids and all that stuff. Why would you want to have more responsibilities than that?

But anyway, the Bible teaches in the New Testament that God's purpose for marriage is to reflect a picture of Christ and the church. Now, that would have to be monogamous since Christ only has one bride, the church, not many. Therefore, a man who's intending to reflect Christ in the church in his marriage is going to have to be monogamous. And that is the Christian goal. Because Christianity influenced culture for so long after the time of Christ, polygamy just basically stopped being practiced in Christian countries because of the desire to fit the biblical norm.

Even in the Garden of Eden, God made it very clear that a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh. He didn't make it clear whether the man could do the same thing with multiple women or not, but Jesus indicates it's a monogamous thing. David didn't violate a law about that, although he did fall short of perfection.

Bill: What about the concubines?

Steve Gregg: Concubines were wives, too. They were just wives who had a status of slaves. Everybody had slaves in those days. We sometimes think, "Oh, how could the Bible allow slavery?" Frankly, it wasn't until about 200 years ago that anyone came up with the idea that slavery shouldn't be practiced. Slavery was a universal practice in all societies and David and other people had slaves.

If they fell in love with a slave and wanted to marry her, they could do that. She'd be a slave wife, a wife who was not a concubine was not a slave, but was a wife. If a man could have more than one wife, it would be not forbidden for some of them to be taken from among his slave women. Of course, having many wives is obnoxious to us and Christians should not practice it.

But when we read about the Old Testament, there's nothing more objectionable about having actually elevating one of your slave girls to be that of a concubine and one of your wives than marrying anybody else multiple wives.

Bill: So under the New Testament, is it a sin to have more than one wife under the New Testament now?

Steve Gregg: There's not a statement in the New Testament that says, "Thou shalt not have more than one wife," but there is a teaching in the New Testament of what God wants marriage to be. In other words, there's not a negative forbidding of it, but there's a standard. There's an ideal. Christians are supposed to seek the ideal.

The ideal is for your marriage to resemble Christ in the church. Not only that it's monogamous, but also the way you treat each other is the way that resembles Christ in the church. The New Testament isn't made up primarily of prohibitions, but a lot of things would be inconsistent with being a Christian if we're looking at the positive ideals and goals that God has in mind. That's what Christians should be aiming at.

Bill: Thank you very much, Steve. That does help. I appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: All right, Bill. Good talking to you, man. God bless. Derek in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Do you have a minute or two? That's all we got.

Derek: Real quick, could I drop the name of a book to one of your other callers who called about asking about tongues? I had a good book for him. It was just *Living in the Spirit*. It was a Pentecostal guy who wrote it, I don't remember his name, I think it was George Wood. But it was a quick read and I thought maybe your other caller might get something out of that.

But my question for you today is I have a friend who he's struggling with pride. He was born into a very Christian family and because of that he feels that he doesn't need to be born again, he doesn't need to repent. To top it off, his mom is a preterist who believes that Jesus is here now sitting on an island in the Pacific somewhere. Where would you start with trying to talk to somebody who is struggling with those types of things?

Steve Gregg: Well, is he struggling with them or he's just disagreeing?

Derek: No, he's struggling with it. He knows that he's very prideful and when we talk about it, he admits that he is, but then he's real quick to point—he and his brother are both in this.

Steve Gregg: The music started. I have only a minute before I'm done here, so I can't hear more of the story. I'm sorry to say. All I can say is if somebody knows he's proud, then he needs to also know that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

It says that in the Old Testament, it says it twice in the New Testament. So it's a repeated concept. God resists the proud, he gives grace to the humble. Humbling yourself in the sight of God is a pretty important thing to do unless you want to live with God resisting you. Life is hard enough when God's not resisting you. If you're living your life with God resisting you because you're proud, your life's going to be a lot worse than it needs to be and displeasing to God too.

I'm sorry I'm out of time. I wish we could have gone longer on this one, but the clock is a tyrant. You're listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.