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, we welcome you to join us here. We'll be glad to take your calls if you have those questions or if you have a disagreement with the host, you can call with those, too. We'll talk to you about that as well. So the number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And I've got no announcements to make right now, so that's kind of good. I can just go directly to the phones and talk to Ron from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Ron. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ron: When I hear you talk, it's kind of like you're unsure if hell is eternal. But I'm here to tell people that hell is eternal because when God blew his breath into Adam and made him alive, Adam took on God's image through the breath that was blown into his lungs. Now, the outer part of Adam, which is the mud or clay, whatever you want to call it, that's the human side. The breath that's eternal, that God blew into him, it never dies. So I was just calling to make that point.

Steve Gregg: Well, but how do we know that? I haven't read that in the Bible. Where does it say that the breath he blew into his nostrils was eternal?

Ron: I'm just telling you. That's the side of God. That's the only side of God that we have because it's not the part that faded away. It's not the part—

Steve Gregg: But I'm asking a very simple question. How do we know this?

Ron: Holy Spirit told me. I mean, I can't tell you why it told me that, but if you think about it, the outer part of Adam is made of the earth. The inner part is the part that God blew into him. That's the eternal part. Now, that's what—

Steve Gregg: I understand you saying that. I don't understand why we think that that's eternal. You know, the Bible actually says in 1 Timothy 6:16 that God alone possesses immortality. But it sounds like you're suggesting that all people have immortality. Why did Paul say that God alone has it?

Ron: God alone has immortality, right. When he blew a part of himself inside of us, that's why our spirits, they don't die. Our souls and our spirits—that's why there's an eternal on the other side of earth. When we get finished with this, that's eternal. We can't say you're going to get 20 days in hell and then we're going to let you out because that's our chosen place to be for the rest of eternity. It's not going to be where—

Steve Gregg: I thought the Bible says that people will receive eternal life if they believe in Jesus.

Ron: No, what I'm saying is this. When you get your eternal life as far as in heaven, when you get your glorified body, you can go live with God. We're not going to live with God without the glorified bodies. The people who don't, they'll still exist, but they'll exist in hell. And so—

Steve Gregg: Okay, so but they'll exist alive?

Ron: They'll be conscious of what's going on, yeah.

Steve Gregg: So they'll be alive. Okay, so they do have eternal life? Well, the Bible says people have eternal life if they believe in Jesus. Otherwise, it says they perish.

Ron: Well, they account going to heaven life. They account going to hell death. So you'll be—it's like you'll be—

Steve Gregg: And how do we know that? I mean, I hear you saying it and I've been told that all my life. It's when I started looking in the Scriptures to find proof of what I was told that I realized the Bible doesn't say that anywhere.

Ron: So I'm going to ask you this. What does burning forever and ever mean when Jesus said people will burn forever and ever?

Steve Gregg: Jesus didn't say that. It says that in Revelation, but Revelation is written in symbolism.

Ron: So burning forever and ever—what does ever and ever mean?

Steve Gregg: Well, when it's used literally, it means without an end. But the only place it talks about anyone being tormented forever and ever is in Revelation 20:11, which says that the devil and the beast and the false prophet will be tormented forever and ever. There's no place in the Bible that talks about people burning forever and ever. But that sounds like the same thing, so we got that.

Ron: Tormented. That's what they're trying to say. The fire is something of torment. So tormented forever and ever, however you want to take it. I don't know if it's going to be fire, I don't know, but it's not going to be good forever and ever. That's all I know. So that's why I say to make people think that you're going to go for a little while and get out or you'll cease to exist and bypass everything and this, that, and the other is just not going to be true because people want to cease to exist because they don't want to deal with all these problems that we have to go through. But ceasing to exist is not just going to be the deal. But I understand what you're saying, but it just told me that when God blew his breath into Adam, he created an everlasting being. So what I mean—

Steve Gregg: I used to think that too. But again, I'm looking for some Scripture for that. To say the Holy Spirit told you that—I know people who tell me all kinds of things they say the Holy Spirit told them. But if there's no Scripture, I can't really be sure that it was the Holy Spirit telling them that or me, for that matter. I don't just trust what I think the Holy Spirit said, especially if it's theological.

Ron: So Revelation says you'll be tormented forever and ever. What does that mean? How do you get tormented for—

Steve Gregg: Jesus didn't say we'll be tormented forever and ever. The Bible says in Revelation that the beast and the false prophet and the dragon are thrown into the lake of fire and they're tormented forever and ever, day and night. Now, by the way, there's no day and night in the lake of fire because there's no sun, moon, or stars. So in other words, it's figurative language.

Also, a couple verses later, it says that death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire as if they're beings. Death isn't a being and Hades isn't a being. This is figurative language. Revelation uses a lot of figurative language.

Ron: So you think humans—so where do humans go?

Steve Gregg: They go to hell. They go to the lake of fire.

Ron: That's what I'm saying. But how long—

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I know. But what you're saying is in the lake of fire, they stay alive forever and ever and ever. The Bible doesn't tell us that.

Ron: Oh, so you're saying they perish in the lake of fire?

Steve Gregg: I'm saying they go to the lake of fire and what happens to them there is not described in uncertain terms.

Ron: Right. And all I'm saying is this before I get out. All I'm saying is this is they'll be tormented forever and ever. How do I know that?

Steve Gregg: Well, the beast and the false prophet will and the dragon will. But of course, the beast and the false prophet and dragon are symbolic references. Satan is not really a dragon and the beast is not really an animal.

Ron: Right. It's the spirit. It's the evil spirit is what it's saying—the evil spirit. But I'm just saying, if I do good and you do good and somebody else comes along and don't do nothing that God says, what happens to them? I mean, they're punished.

Steve Gregg: They're punished. They're thrown in the lake of fire, yeah.

Ron: Okay, so in a lake of fire—I'm just asking because I'm trying to get it straight. When they get put into the lake of fire, what happens after the lake of fire? They perish in the lake of fire?

Steve Gregg: We're not told anything about the lake of fire. It does say in Revelation 21, I think it is, it says the lake of fire is the second death. So maybe they die there.

Ron: Okay, I'm going to go off what you said, but I'm saying we don't die. We don't die. I'm not claiming that we—the part that God breathed into us, that part doesn't die. It's eternal. It's what makes us like God. It's what—

Steve Gregg: I've heard that several times in this conversation. I'm just saying, if we don't have Scripture to tell us so, then we'll just have to, I guess, we can guess. We can speculate. And that's what you're doing. I could speculate that way too if I wanted to. But I'd rather have Scripture on my side before I insist upon it.

Ron: I was listening to what you said and then the Holy Spirit just told me, "Hey, yeah, when it says you'll be when you get thrown into the lake of fire and that's forever." It's always been that way. Some religions and some other places, they don't consider hell and all this stuff like that. But Jesus—Jesus spoke of hell. So if he's the—

Steve Gregg: Could I ask you a question? Yeah, Jesus spoke of Gehenna, you're right. But he didn't say those things about it you're saying. But the thing is that—okay, so God made hell. And you're saying he made it to torment people forever and ever and ever. Would he like for them to be relieved, but he just can't relieve them?

Ron: No, it's if I tell you and I'm a man of my word that these are the consequences for your actions and you have a fair chance—I gave you a fair chance to do what you need to do. You choose not to do it and it happens every day in our life. It happens every day in our life.

Steve Gregg: But Ron, when God said, "These are the consequences for sin," he said death is the consequence for sin. "If you eat that fruit, you'll die." "The wages of sin is death." "The soul that sins shall die." "This is the lake of fire is the second death." So you're saying God said that the consequence of sin is eternal conscious torment. I'm not seeing any threat like that stated in the Bible, but I do hear something else taught regularly.

Now, I'm not saying I know everything about what happens in the lake of fire. I'm saying I know less about it than I thought I did when I thought like you. Because when I thought like you, I was just repeating what I thought, and someone had told me—that's why I thought it. But I'm saying now, when I went looking for scriptural support, I found that much of what I had thought didn't have a biblical basis. But I have a question for you. So God made hell, right? And he made hell so that he could torment people forever and ever?

Ron: I mean, jail is here. Jail is a form of hell. So yeah, I would say that. You get life in jail and you—

Steve Gregg: Wait, but jail—is jail tormenting people forever and ever?

Ron: No, you can get life and you perish in jail. Yeah, you can.

Steve Gregg: Right, exactly. So you're saying that God made an exceptional kind of situation because he wanted people to suffer forever and ever. He didn't want them to escape by death, right?

Ron: This is what I mean. I mean, you have a choice whether you want to go to heaven or hell.

Steve Gregg: Yes, but God has a choice. God has a choice of what hell will be for you. You see, God has a choice. He can say, "Okay, these people died in rebellion against me. They certainly don't deserve to go be with me in heaven." Okay. But now I have a choice. I, God, have a choice about what I'm going to do to people who insult me and who reject me. I can snuff them, or I can give them more chances to repent, or I can just torture them forever and give them no chances to repent or snuff. Now, you're suggesting that God, who had that choice because no one takes choices from God—he's sovereign—he had that choice. So he chose making them suffer forever and ever of the options that were available to him.

Ron: I'm saying this, Steve, and we're not arguing, we're just talking. When you leave here, your grace is over. When you—

Steve Gregg: No, wait. We're not talking about my grace. We're talking about God's grace.

Ron: Yeah, when you leave here, it's over. You've made your decision. Here is the grace of where you receive grace from Jesus. After Judgment Day, the grace is up. You get judged for everything you've done, if you didn't repent, if you didn't do whatever you needed to do while you—

Steve Gregg: Okay, so when your grace is over, God reverts to his real self, right? I mean, while we're alive, God pretends to be gracious. But when we die, God takes off the mask and says, "I really hate you and despise you and death is too good for you. I'm going to torture you forever and ever," right? Because there's no grace.

Ron: That's what you said. That's like signing a contract and saying, "Well, I didn't mean to sign it because I was thinking about something else when I signed the contract." This is the contract. The contract is—

Steve Gregg: Where is that written in the contract that torment forever and ever is the penalty? Where's the contract?

Ron: It just says forever and ever. I got to go back—I'm on my phone, I usually research it on my phone. I would pull it up, but I can't do it with you on the phone. But what I'm saying is this. This is the grace period. After the grace period, everybody goes eternally to either hell or heaven. If you did good, you're going to go with God for eternity.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Ron. I appreciate your opinion and certainly, I will tell you this. You are no doubt in the majority. I mean, there's a lot of people who disagree with you, but probably the majority agree with you. So if being in the majority is what we're looking for, you're safe. You're there. I'd rather be scriptural. In other words, if I'm going to say that God is the kind of God who, although he's made of grace and he's abundant in grace while we're alive, as soon as we're dead, suddenly he changes completely—it's like he doesn't have any grace left. I don't think God ever changes, tell you the truth. But let's just say he doesn't have any grace left. So he just wants you to be tortured forever and ever and ever and ever.

Some people think that. I don't. I mean, because frankly, if I were going to say that about God, I'd have to have Scripture saying it. Because without Scripture, I might be slandering God. Because after all, that does describe him as something different than what, say, Jesus is like and what Jesus said God is like. Remember, Jesus said to his disciples, "You need to love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, so you'll be like your Father in heaven." Okay. So Jesus said God loves his enemies, he does good to those who persecute him, he blesses those who curse him.

Now, certainly there's punishment. I mean, a good parent will always be ready to punish a child who needs it. But that doesn't mean the parent has no love for the child anymore. In fact, the Bible says you punish your child because you love them. The Bible says whoever spares the rod hates his son. And we're told that God is like that, too. We're told to receive the discipline of the Lord because he's like a father and whom the father loves, he chastens. But again, we don't have anything in the Bible that tells us that God changes after we die. And the moment before we died, his love and his grace were desperately hoping that we would turn to him so that we could be saved. But as soon as we die, God turns around and says, "No way, I don't want you saved. I want to torture you."

If God wanted to, he could snuff everyone out after they're dead, or after they've suffered—they could suffer for a while and then he could snuff. I don't know what God's going to do. But he certainly has better options than to be the kind of person that if any human did that to another person, we'd say they were a monster. And God would say they're a monster. God doesn't allow us to behave that way because that's not the way he is. That's what Jesus said. So I think that needs to be thought. I'm not unwilling to believe in eternal conscious torment if that's what I can find in the Bible. Just so you know, I used to think that I did find that in the Bible. But when I went really looking for it, I found there's four or five verses in the Bible that might be taken that way. And there's a whole bunch of other verses that seem to be taken a different way. So the question is, well, what is the solution?

Well, one thing we have to do—whenever there's two sides of the aisle or three sides of the aisle as in a case like this—the thing that's the tiebreaker has got to be which view is consistent with the character of God the way Jesus Christ and the Bible describes him? And then, you know, to me, there's some other options besides eternal conscious torment that the Bible seems to present evidence for. And two out of the three views are really consistent with everything Jesus said about God and his character. One of them does not seem to be. So that's why I'm asking you where you're getting the information. Because I don't think you're getting it from the Bible, although you may think you are, because I thought I was, too, back before I looked into it. Thanks for your call, brother.

Michael from Inglewood, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hey, Steve, thanks. I wanted to say the first caller almost seemed like he was putting emphasis on God breathing into Adam. But I was like, if God wanted to, he could also take his spirit out of whoever, like he did to Saul. But earlier this week, I was speaking to an SDA, and he was talking about Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 4:8. There remains a Sabbath. Some say Jesus, some translations say Jesus and some say Joshua. You wouldn't baptize in the name of Joshua, so why would some of the translations say Joshua or Jesus?

Steve Gregg: Because he's talking about Joshua. In the previous verse, he's pointing out that in the days of David, a long time after Joshua's time, David was still exhorting people to come into God's rest. And the writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95, where David says that, "Today, if you will hear his voice, don't harden your hearts," because he had said to those who did harden their hearts they wouldn't enter his rest. Now, Moses and Joshua both spoke of the entrance into Canaan as entering into rest because the Israelites had been wandering for 40 years, not resting, and they were going to come into the land and settle down and rest there. And so the Bible in the Old Testament talks about the entrance into Canaan as entering into rest.

Since David in Psalm 95 talks to a generation long afterwards, after Israel had settled into the land, and he's saying, "You still need to enter into the rest," what the writer is saying is there must be a different rest besides entering into Canaan. Because if Joshua, who brought them into Canaan, had given them the rest that is ultimate, then why would David afterwards speak of the need for people to enter the rest? So he is referring to Joshua there. And the name Jesus and Joshua are the same name. In Greek, Yeshua is the name. In English, we say Jesus. In Hebrew, they say Joshua. But it's the same name.

So the question here—you're right, King James says, "If Jesus had given them rest." And no doubt the statement is true. If Jesus had given them rest, he would not afterward have spoken of another day because they'd already have it. But he's talking about the entering into rest in the days of Joshua when the Israelites came into the Promised Land and rested there. And so the author's saying, "Well, if the rest that they received under Joshua had been ultimate—well, that happened a long time before David's time—why would David be talking then to his generation and saying, 'Hey, make sure you don't neglect to enter into his rest'?"

Guest (Male): So do you see why an SDA would use that argument?

Steve Gregg: No. I mean, what they like is verse 9, where it says in the Greek, "There remains therefore a keeping of Sabbath to the people of God." Now, the SDA—and for those who don't know, we're talking about Seventh-day Adventist—the Seventh-day Adventists believe that it's saying we should be keeping the Sabbath, namely the Saturday Sabbath, just like the Jews did, because it says, "There remains for us a keeping of the Sabbath for the people of God."

But he goes on to explain what he means in the next verse. He says, "For he who has entered into God's rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his." Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience. Now, the Seventh-day Adventists say entering that rest is keeping the Sabbath on Saturday. The writer of Hebrews is saying, "No, there's a different kind of rest that comes from the finished work." The Jews had to stop working one day a week and we have come to the end of our works as a means of trying to earn our way with God. So we rest in Christ. We rest in the finished work of Christ. That's a spiritual rest we have, which is a Sabbath for us.

You see, the Sabbath in the Old Testament, like so many of the rituals—the Passover and the sacrifices—they were all types and shadows of spiritual things. And he's saying, "Yeah, that's a Sabbath for us. We keep a Sabbath, too, but it's a spiritual Sabbath. We've reached the end of our own works, so we're now resting in what Christ has done." It's not really very different than Paul talking about in 1 Corinthians 5:7. He says, "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us." Then he says, "Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

So he's saying the Jews kept a Passover and a week-long feast of unleavened bread. Christ is our Passover and we keep a feast of unleavened bread, not in the sense of literally keeping the ritual the Jews kept, but that which it foreshadowed, which is a life unleavened. We live our whole life as unleavened bread. We don't have the leaven of malice and wickedness in us. We live a life of sincerity and truth. That's keeping the feast, Paul says.

In other words, the Jews kept feasts. These are rituals. Sabbath was one of them. And they were types and shadows of spiritual things introduced by Christ. We keep a Sabbath of a sort, that is we keep the spiritual Sabbath that Christ introduced, not the weekly ritual Sabbath. Likewise, we keep a Passover and unleavened bread. We recognize Christ as our Passover and the way we keep the unleavened bread feast is by living a life of sincerity and truth, he said. So in other words, to say we keep a feast or we have a Sabbath or we have unleavened bread or Passover, he's talking about we have the spiritual counterparts of those things. Those things were the type and the shadow of what we do now and our unleavened bread is spiritual. Our Sabbath is spiritual. Our circumcision is spiritual. Our sacrifices are spiritual. Our inheritance is spiritual. So all the things that were physical and ritual in the Old Testament to the Jews are now spiritual in Christ. That's what he's saying.

But I don't see how a Seventh-day Adventist would get more or less mileage by choosing to see Joshua as Joshua in verse 8 and not Jesus. To my mind, the statement in verse 8 would have the same legitimacy whether it's Jesus or Joshua he's talking about. But I think in the context, when he's talking about entering the Promised Land, he's thinking of Joshua. He's saying Joshua didn't give them the ultimate rest, so there must be another rest, namely a spiritual one, like the spiritual Sabbath he's talking about.

I need to take a break. I appreciate your call. We have another half hour coming up, so don't go away. We only got two calls in, but they were good ones. And we've got a switchboard almost full of people waiting to go on in our second half hour, which will be in just a moment. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We buy radio time at a very high price from 80-plus radio stations across the nation. We have no advertisements because we sell nothing. We have no sponsors. We just let you know once in a while that we're listener-supported and you can help us stay on the air if you want to. You can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website; you can donate there or take anything free at thenarrowpath.com. I'll be right back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We have another half hour ahead of us to take your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you disagree with the host—you know, if you disagree with the host, there's a good chance you'll get a longer segment of our program because I do go longer on those kind of calls usually, unless there's not much to say about them. If you'd like to be on the program, the number to call is 844-484-5737. There's one line open right now. You can grab it if you go to 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Ty from Central Indiana. Hi, Ty. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hello, Steve. Thank you so much for taking my call. My question is, what are your thoughts on the doctrine of entire sanctification as taught by the Wesleyan Holiness movement, but's also known as second work of grace or second blessing, entire consecration? I don't know if you're familiar with it.

Steve Gregg: And it's called—yes, I am. It's also called perfect love. They have a number of ways that it's usually called "entire sanctification." The doctrine is also called "eradicationism," though they don't use that term as often. But yeah, the Wesleys—John and Charles—introduced a doctrine of holiness which interpreted holiness as the actual eradication of the sin nature. And this is accomplished, they felt, in a single moment of a second work of grace. That when you're converted, that's the first work of grace that you're saved through, but then you're still kind of in bondage to sin until you have this entire sanctification where the sin nature is defeated, eradicated, whatever. And that it's something that, you know, could happen, I suppose, right after you're saved or it might be something delayed a little bit, like the way that Pentecostals talk about the baptism in the Spirit.

And by the way, I talk about it that way too. I think the baptism of the Spirit is something additional to conversion. But although it could happen at the same time, two things can happen simultaneously or it could happen subsequently if somebody for some reason didn't get baptized in the Spirit when they're born again. Wesleys had probably a very similar idea, but the word "entire sanctification" was used. Now, I've got a lot of sympathy with Wesley. I'm a great fan of John Wesley. And probably my theology is very close to Wesleyan theology in many respects, not particularly in this respect. I do not see the Bible teaching sanctification as an instantaneous result of a second work of grace. Frankly, I would love to believe it. I mean, if there's any doctrine that I would accept because I'd want to, it would be this one, because I would love to have all my sin removed from me and never sin again, really, is pretty much what we're talking about.

And I think any true devoted Christian would love for that to be true. But what we really find is that life is a warfare. That the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary to one another so that you don't do what you want. Now, the flesh there, I think the Wesleyans would consider to be the sinful nature. So I guess they would feel that Paul is describing a struggle that exists prior to entire sanctification. I can't speak for Wesley in this because I have to say, the Wesleyan doctrine I did not get from reading Wesley himself but Wesleyan theologians. So I can't really—I'm not an expert on this. But as I would understand it, once a person has had this second work of grace, this entire sanctification, they just don't sin anymore. It's not in them to do it, you know?

And like I said, who wouldn't want that to be true? I certainly would. But I don't find anybody in the Bible described as having this second work of grace. I don't find any of the Apostles claiming that they've become sinless. And so that being so, I just don't have a scriptural basis for it. Now, what I do believe is that we are to be sanctified and I do believe that that's the result of a lifelong battle. Paul says, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual wickedness in high places," so that we really don't—we don't have a peaceful walk about it. This is a war zone for us and we are fighting against the desires of the flesh that are against God. We're fighting against spiritual powers. And Paul said he'd fought the good warfare at the end of his life. He didn't indicate that he had come to a point prior to the end of his life, like years earlier, where he had gotten over and wasn't fighting any war about it anymore.

I think that the struggles are lifelong, but I do believe that if we are focused on Christ, as which to my mind is normal Christianity—that's not exceptional Christianity, that's just normal Christianity—you focus on Christ for everything. The focus on Christ draws you into his own likeness. You become changed. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, that as we behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are transformed from glory to glory into that same image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. So I do believe the Holy Spirit changes us so that we are less desirous to sin and less inclined to sin and less foolish about it and much more like Jesus was, that is, so absorbed with God that sin kind of sounds tawdry and less attractive. Not that we're beyond temptation or even beyond falling into temptation, but we become more and more holy in general in our patterns and in our inner man as we draw closer to God through life. What I find is that many Christians probably don't have this idea. They feel like, "Well, I'm never going to be perfect, so why bother? Why bother trying to be perfect? I'm just going to go to heaven when I die, so I guess I can compromise in many ways in this life because I'm going to be saved by grace and it'd be silly to try to be perfect because that's impossible." That's like a married couple saying, "It's impossible to have a perfect marriage, so why try to improve it? Why try to make it better?"

Guest (Male): A lot of times they'll use verses like Matthew 5, where Jesus said, "Be ye perfect." 1 Peter, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." Hebrews 6, it says to go on unto perfection, follow peace and holiness.

Steve Gregg: Right. They use the word perfection differently than I would expect that Wesley knew this. Some people who aren't—maybe don't read the Bible or know much about the Greek wouldn't know this. The word perfection can mean a number of things and it is used various ways, the same Greek word in the Bible. Sometimes it means maturity. For example, Hebrews 6: "Let us go on to perfection." In the context, he's just complained that they were babes and they were not mature and that they were drinking only milk and couldn't eat solid food. He says, "Let's go on to maturity" is clearly what he means. Let's grow up. And the word perfection is an ordinary word in the Greek for maturity and it means that there.

Now, it also means completeness. And when Jesus said in Matthew 5, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," well, I believe that means perfect without exception in terms of your love. Because that's what he's concluding. He's—that's the last line of a paragraph where he's saying, "You need to love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you. If you only love your friends, you're no better than a publican. But if you love your enemies, you're like your Father. And be perfect—that is, complete in your love as your Father is." And this is confirmed if you look at the parallel in Luke chapter 6, because the parallel section in Luke 6 is verses 34 through 36. It says, "And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive back as much. But love your enemies, do good, lend, hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, you'll be the sons of the Highest, for he is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful just as your Father also is merciful."

This is the same teaching found at the end of Matthew 5, but instead of saying "be perfect as your Father is perfect," it says "be merciful as your Father is merciful." Which means, don't just be merciful to people who are merciful to you, be merciful to people who aren't. Your Father is merciful to the unkind and to the unthankful and the evil. Be like him. Love everybody. Be as universal in your love even toward your enemies as God is. And that's what perfect means. I mean, it's very clear because Jesus taught it using different terminology in Luke 6, but it's the same teaching and at the end of the same instructions.

So the idea is "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" really means be comprehensive in your love. Be complete in your love, not just dishing out a little bit to friends and not to others. Be like your Father's love, love universally, is what that perfect means. Now, when Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 1, "Be holy as he who has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of behavior," I agree. First of all, we are holy, which means set apart by God. All Christians are holy. That's why the Bible calls all of us saints. The word saint in the Greek means holy ones. So everyone who is a Christian has been set apart from God. We're a holy priesthood. We're set apart for God. So Peter says, "Since you're set apart from God, act like it." As he who's called you is holy, so you be holy in your behavior. So I mean, that's reasonable enough.

It's like Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 6, "You're not your own, you've been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body." So okay, God has set you apart, he's purchased you, you're not your own, it's not appropriate for you to do anything except please him. Therefore glorify him. Therefore be holy in your behavior. It's a command, an obligation, and that's what we will be if we walk in the Spirit. Because Paul said if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So again, walking is a process. It's not a crisis. It's not a second work. It's an ongoing work. Walking is consisting of steps. It's our whole Christian life is a walk. It's a walk in faith, a walk in holiness, a walk in love, a walk in the Spirit. Walk, walk, walk—these are the metaphors for living. And that's it. We should walk in holiness.

But that requires individual steps, not just a sudden blast that blows us out of the area of warfare with the flesh into some land where holiness just comes naturally. I would say holiness is objective. God has set us apart for himself. He's set us all apart for himself. And we are therefore all holy because that's what holy means. It means set apart for God. But Peter's saying, "Therefore act like it." And that's what I believe we should do. And we can if we walk in the Spirit.

Guest (Male): A lot of times John chapter 8 verse 11, where Jesus commands the woman, "Go and sin no more," as well as 1 Thessalonians, when Paul references, "I pray that God will sanctify you wholly," those are very key proof texts that's often leveraged in addition with the Greek word teleios, which you mentioned, which is translated perfection. Those two verses combined with teleios are used to develop this doctrine. How would you reconcile those two proof texts?

Steve Gregg: Well, he's basically saying this is the way the Christian is supposed to walk. Do not keep sinning. Okay, I take that as an instruction to me, too, even though that story about the woman in John 8 is not found in the older manuscripts. I still think it's a true story. And I think that's a good instruction to give anyone: "Don't sin anymore." And it says in 1 John 2:1, "My little children, I write these things to you so you don't sin." But then he says, "But if any of you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." So he's saying not sinning is your assignment. "I'm writing to you so you will not sin."

And in Thessalonians, when Paul says, "the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, body, soul, and spirit," he says, "Yeah, this is what God's going to do." What's it mean in 1 Thessalonians for God to do that? Well, it's what he does when we are taking seriously what Paul has said in the verses before that. What did he say in the verses before that? Well, he made it very clear, we have an assignment and if we do that assignment, God will sanctify us wholly while we're doing it. Here's how it reads in 1 Thessalonians 5, beginning at verse 16: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, test all things, hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Okay, so what do you have to do? Well, you're going to have to always rejoice, pray without ceasing, give thanks in everything, don't quench the Spirit, test all things, hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil. That's not something you do one time. That's what you do as a habit. All these things are habits. Pray without ceasing, abstain from evil—that's not a one-time thing. And the result of it is, I believe, "now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely." Now, not instantaneously, probably. At least there's nothing in the Bible that tells us it's instantaneous. See, all of these verses, they're favorite verses of mine. They describe the assignment. We're supposed to live a holy life. We're supposed to not sin. We're supposed to love everybody. We're supposed to be like Jesus.

What I don't see is a promise that, if you pray and fast enough, you're going to get suddenly, boom, a second work of grace is going to make that all happen for you. I think that these are giving instructions to Christians how to live so that sanctification is the result and from glory to glory into the image of Christ is a process worked by the Holy Spirit, Paul said. So that's what I think. I would never claim that I have obtained entire sanctification. But at my age, after walking with God for 60-some odd years, I'd have to say sin holds much less allure to me than when I was a younger man. There's still temptation. I can still do bad things. But it's not as natural for me to do bad things because my nature is being transformed. And I think that's true of every Christian. I'm not making some kind of boast; I think this is just normal Christian maturing. You become more and more like Jesus and less and less interested in what the world has to say or what the flesh is trying to demand. So it's not a boom, a second work of grace, and now you've got no sinful nature. I think it's a gradual transformation. And it is, in fact, God sanctifying you wholly, both body, spirit, and soul.

So this is a promise. As we walk in this way, God is sanctifying us, that is, making us holier. Now, we are once and for all sanctified at conversion. When we're converted, we belong to God. We've been set apart for God. But our—like Peter says, "be holy in your behavior"—those habits, I think, happen gradually. And like I said, I'd love it. I'd love it if there's some you could flip a switch and suddenly you have no more sinful nature. That'd be wonderful. But John Wesley wrote a letter to Charles and said he didn't think he had experienced it himself. He taught it. He taught that it was a right thing. But he claimed he hadn't received it himself and he wasn't sure if he'd met anyone in the whole Methodist movement who had. Now, I've met people in the Methodist movement who do say they haven't sinned for seven years or whatever since they were sanctified. Wesley himself didn't claim to have had it and he said he's not sure he'd met anyone who had. So why did he teach it then? Because he thought it was biblical. But he thought it was biblical because he was understanding these things as something instantaneous. But what we don't find—I mean, that's just the element of it we don't find in Scripture—the instantaneous element. We do find the call to holiness, the obligation to quit sinning, the promise that we will become like Christ. What we don't find anywhere is anything that says that happens instantaneously with some second work of grace.

Guest (Male): Since God does command holiness, do you believe at any point then it is possible to attain to a point of sinless perfection?

Steve Gregg: Moment by moment, yes. In other words, I don't think—I have to say, I'm not aware of any sin I'm committing right now, okay? I'm not sure of any sin I've committed today. Maybe God knows of some I don't. But generally speaking, as a Christian, as a mature Christian, you don't just live in sin. You live in holiness. Now, I can't say I haven't sinned in the past week. I don't know. But I don't know of any sin I've committed in recent times. But I could sin tomorrow. I could sin badly tomorrow. I don't think anyone gets to the point where sinning is not something that they have to be aware of. But it is something that you become stronger about, you know? So anyway, that's my understanding.

Guest (Male): Okay, thank you very much for taking my call. I appreciate your information.

Steve Gregg: All right, bro. I appreciate your call. Good talking to you. Let's talk to Ron in Cleveland, Ohio. Ron, welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Thanks for your ministry. My wife and I have been attending a church for several months now and it seems like we're sensing a concentration or an emphasis on becoming members of the local church. And we're wondering if there's any biblical basis for any Christian to become the join as member a local church that they're attending.

Steve Gregg: You know, when I've gone to churches that have membership—now, I've been in a lot of churches that don't have written membership down, but when I've gone to churches that do and I go there for a while, they begin to ask when are you going to become a member? And I wonder why that would be important. The answers are not very good.

First of all, there's nothing like what we call the local church today in the Bible. Because in the Bible, every Christian in your town was part of the church in your town. You're in Cleveland, Ohio; every Christian in Cleveland was part of the church in Cleveland. You didn't join it. The Holy Spirit inserted you into it. When you're born again, the Holy Spirit makes you part of his church and in every city or location where there's a footprint of that universal church, all people who are born again are in it.

Now, what happened after the Reformation and denominationalism began, now in your town in Cleveland, Ohio, there's probably a thousand churches, literally. And probably several hundred denominations. And they don't see each other as one church. I mean, maybe theoretically, but they don't act like it. They are loyal to their denomination. They're not loyal to the whole body of Christ in town. In other words, for example, suppose one of the churches in your town was having some financial struggles. And there's a very huge mega-church that's got a lot of money. But they don't help them because they're not part of their association. They're not part of their denomination. So in other words, they've got more loyalty to their denomination than they have to the local Christians of a different denomination.

This idea of joining and being loyal to one group as opposed to the whole body of Christ in town is new. There's no concept of it in the New Testament. I would just say, if a church is trying to pressure you to become a member, I'd ask what does it mean to be a member? Can I be a member of this church and a member of all the other churches in town too? They would probably say no because the way they understand membership is you're being loyal to that group. Well, why is that important? I asked a pastor once when he was trying to get me to join his church. I was attending all the time, but he wanted me to become a member. I said, "Why should I do that? I mean, I'm here. I worship with you guys. I'm certainly in your midst. But I also belong to God and his body and if someone wants me to go to another church and teach there, I'll do it. Or even just I could go to another one to worship there if I want to."

Well, he said, "Well, then if you don't have membership, how does a pastor know who he can count on?" I said, "Give me a break. You know who you can count on in this church. And it isn't the people on your membership rolls." You know, every church I know of has twice the number of people on their membership rolls as they have people who actually attend the church. That means you can be on the membership rolls and there's still a 50% chance you don't even attend that church. And if you do, you might not be someone the pastor can lean on. But the pastor certainly knows who he can because there are people who God puts on their heart to approach the pastor and say, "I'm available to do this for you. I'm here to serve. This is my gifting. This is my offering to God. I'm here for you." And every pastor knows who it is in the church that he can count on to help him out with whatever the ministry of that local congregation is. And it does not necessarily have anything to do with who's on the membership rolls.

So why have membership rolls? Well, maybe for one of two reasons. One is to control people. You know, if they're members, then I guess you can require things of them that they wouldn't do otherwise. In which case it's kind of a legalistic thing, not somebody who's heart God has moved of volunteer. Or if the membership rolls are big, that's an official thing you can show to the denomination and say, "I've got a big church now," which means next time a slightly bigger church comes up available, maybe you can assign me the pastor to be that one. A little bigger salary, more prestige in the movement. You know, it's like David numbering the people. Why? Why do you have to do that? Why do the pastors have to know the number of names of the people that are attending their church? Every church I've been in, I've been available to them. I've never been a member. But I've been available to serve if the pastor wanted me to and sometimes they did have me do so. And it had nothing to do with membership.

So you've got to wonder where this idea of membership come from. Certainly not the Bible. The Bible says that when we are born again, the Holy Spirit places us in the body of Christ. Now, the body of Christ is not the congregation you're going to. The body of Christ is the global family of God. And there's people in all the churches in your town who are part of that global family of God. So if I'm loyal to God and his family, then that's not going to be just to one little group. However, if God is leading me to be regular and loyal—or let's just say a servant—of a particular group of people, I'll be there. And I'll serve. And that's better than having my name on the membership rolls. If my name's on the membership roll but I'm not available to serve, what good did that do? You know, I think membership is more of an ego trip sometimes or a controlling thing. And the Bible doesn't talk about it because it doesn't talk about organizations like we have today called local churches that exist in competition with other local churches in the same town. That's just carnality. Paul said, "I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas," that's carnality and immaturity. So I'm loyal to God and I'll serve in a church. I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. Our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining.