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 to take your calls. We can talk in real time if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you'd like to raise for conversation on the air. I'd be glad to discuss those with you.

If you see things differently and disagree with the host about anything, whether you're a Christian who sees Christian things differently or whether you're not a Christian and you see everything differently, feel free to give me a call. I'd be glad to dialogue with you about those kinds of things any day of the week.

We're doing this—I was just mentioning to somebody here in studio—that I've been doing this since 1997, and that's almost 30 years that we've been on the air. We've been doing it just the same as I'm doing it today, with an open mic. People call in. You have a question, feel free to give me a call. Here's the number: 844-484-5737. Again, that's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Ken, calling from Port Huron, Michigan. Hi, Ken. Good to hear from you.

Ken: Hi, Steve. I actually have two questions. I think I can be pretty quick with them. I've got them written out here. The first one is, I was asked this question last night and I wasn't sure how to answer it. When Esau sold his birthright in Genesis 25, did that not mean that he was selling the blessing also? Isn't the blessing a part of the birthright?

Steve Gregg: Normally it would be and it should have been. I suppose that would be at the discretion of the father. The birthright primarily was that whoever got the birthright, even if it was not the firstborn, would receive twice the economic advantages of any other children in the family.

So when Isaac died, he had two sons, Jacob and Esau. His possessions would have been divided three ways. Whoever had the birthright would get two-thirds and the other one would get one-third. So the double portion of the inheritance was the birthright. Now, generally speaking, the son who had the birthright would also receive the patriarchal blessing.

Probably that was understood between Jacob and Esau when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob. But many years had passed and Esau had probably had some regrets about the loss. I think he knew his father was on his side. Jacob was his mama's boy, worked in the kitchen with her most of the time, and Esau was a man's man out hunting and doing stuff like that, and he was his dad's favorite.

So his dad conspired with Esau to give him the blessing. Now the question would be, did Isaac know he was doing the wrong thing? Or did he just think it was within his discretionary authority to do that? I don't know, but obviously God intended for Jacob to get it and that's why things providentially worked out the way they did. But yeah, I think it would have been generally understood that the blessing does go with the birthright, but I don't know that it would have to.

It seems like the father—if a son had the birthright, let's say, but he turned out to be a bad kid—the father might reserve the blessing for a better son if he wished. I think it would be up to the father.

Ken: Okay. I have one more quick question. Hebrews 6:13-18. Two unchangeable things: the promise and the oath. The promise was given in Genesis 12 and the oath is given later in Genesis 22. It sounds as if the oath was needed in addition to the promise. There's two things there. Wouldn't the promise be good enough? What's the whole point of this when I'm reading it?

Steve Gregg: I think the point the writer of Hebrews is making is that the promise would have been good enough in itself. God's word is reliable, and if God said to Abram that through his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed and he'd be a blessing to all the nations, that would be good enough. God doesn't have to reaffirm that.

But God did actually reaffirm aspects of it several times in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's lives. The same promise was mentioned again and again. But you're right, in chapter 22, when Abraham offered Isaac, God was so pleased that He said, "By myself I have sworn that I will do this thing for you."

Now, God didn't have to swear an oath, but that is simply putting an exclamation point on it. Swearing an oath is saying, "I swear this is what I'm going to do." The writer of Hebrews said since God couldn't swear by anything greater than Himself, He swore by Himself. Generally, a man would swear by something greater than himself, but there's nothing greater than God, so He swore by Himself.

The writer of Hebrews is not saying that that oath had to be made in order for the promise to come true. He's just saying that we've got two immutable things now. We've got God's promise, which is immutable or unchanging in itself, then you've got this oath that God took, which in itself would make something immutable. We've got a double guarantee here. The point being that God is totally invested in this promise. I think the oath in a sense would be superfluous, that is to say, God would keep His promise with or without the oath, but He's just putting an exclamation point on it.

Ken: It's like we've got two witnesses there.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, kind of. At least two things that God has done that are different in some nature from each other but pointing the same direction.

Ken: Okay. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Ken. I'm hoping I'll see you when I'm in Michigan again.

Ken: Yeah, whenever that will be. Looking forward to it.

Steve Gregg: We'll be in touch. God bless. It's because of Ken that I went to Michigan last year. He set up the first appointments for me there. Let's talk to Michael in Inglewood, California. Hi, Michael, welcome.

Michael: Hi, Steve. Hopefully I'll make this quick. In Acts 9:17, it looks like Ananias laid his hands on Saul, and the word kai for "and"—he received his sight and he received the Holy Spirit, but he didn't speak in tongues necessarily. In Acts 8:17, Peter and John laid their hands on the Samaritans and it says they laid their hands and they received the Holy Spirit, but it also doesn't say they spoke in tongues. It doesn't mean they didn't, but it doesn't say they did.

So my question is, because I heard a preacher preaching on Acts 2:4, and the word kai caught my attention because it says on the day of Pentecost they received the Holy Spirit and they spoke in other tongues. So that kind of seems like those are similar, as in the word "and," a conjunction, means they kind of did two different things at once. Is that correct in saying that?

Steve Gregg: Well, you may be making more of the use of "and" in that case than is necessary. It's listing the things that happened. They laid hands on them—okay, that's what happened—and they were filled with the Spirit. That happened too. And in at least one case or more, they spoke in tongues too.

So you could list a bunch of other things. You could say "and they got baptized in water" and "they did this," if these are all part of the sequence of events that happened. I don't know that there's anything unusual about the use of "and" in linking together things like that. So I'm not sure what the import is of your question. What is it you're wondering about it?

Michael: It's because of the initial evidence doctrine. So they're saying you have to speak in tongues to have the Holy Ghost, but the word "and" here kind of to me seems like it means they received the Holy Ghost and they spoke in tongues. It doesn't mean they received the Holy Ghost because they spoke in tongues.

Steve Gregg: Okay. What you're saying is speaking in tongues is not the necessary evidence that someone is filled with the Holy Spirit and so the wording there is not making a cause-and-effect connection. It doesn't say they spoke in tongues because they were filled with the Spirit, as if one was the cause of the other, but it just says both things happened.

Yeah, I'll agree with you on that. I don't know that it makes a point for or against the initial evidence doctrine. It doesn't affirm the initial evidence doctrine, and I don't believe the initial evidence doctrine myself. I obviously believe in speaking in tongues and I believe that in the Bible, as well as in modern times, it's very often the case that people speak in tongues when they're filled with the Spirit. But we don't see it to be the case in every instance in the book of Acts that people were filled with the Spirit and consequently spoke in tongues.

But when they do speak in tongues in the book of Acts, it's usually on the occasion that they also were filled with the Spirit. The initial evidence doctrine, for those who don't know that expression, is the doctrine of Pentecostal denominations that if you are filled with the Spirit, the initial evidence that this is so will be speaking in tongues. And the upshot of that is that if you don't speak in tongues, you really weren't filled with the Spirit.

Now charismatic people like myself don't necessarily assume that a person has to speak in tongues as the initial evidence of being filled with the Spirit. We believe that there is actually in the Bible more important evidences of being filled with the Spirit, like love—the fruit of the Spirit—walking like Jesus, walking in the power of the Spirit, a changed life and character.

Like Paul said, "If I speak in tongues"—and this is of course 1st Corinthians 13, which is in the midst of his discussion about tongues and prophecy and things like that which occupies the previous and the following chapters—he says, "If I speak in tongues of men and angels but don't have love, I'm just like a noisy gong." What he's saying is speaking in tongues doesn't prove anything about me being spiritual. It's not an initial evidence that I'm filled with the Spirit. I could be speaking in tongues and not be spiritual at all if I don't have love.

Love is the evidence. That's what Paul said in Galatians 5:22: "The fruit of the Spirit is love," and other things he lists there too. So yeah, I don't hold the initial evidence doctrine, though I certainly do believe speaking in tongues is a genuine gift of the Spirit and that it's very common for it to occur at the time a person is filled with the Spirit. But we don't have either from church history nor from the Bible itself any evidence that this would be universally true. But your observation there is saying that tongues was mentioned as an additional thing in some of these passages, but not necessarily as a necessary proof of anything. I agree with you about that. That is in fact the nature of the record. Thank you, Michael. Caleb in Washington State, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Caleb: Hi, Steve. I just had a quick question. I'd just like some clarity on this. If we're justified by faith and right in the sight of God through Jesus Christ, and all of our sins have been paid for, how do we reconcile that with the fact that we still sin? Are we still in good standing with God? I don't really know, I'm a little confused.

Steve Gregg: Are you a father? Do you have children?

Caleb: Yes sir, I am. I have a 10-month-old.

Steve Gregg: Great. Well, when your 10-month-old is older and starts to do things, some of the things your child will do will be delightful to you and some will be a disappointment to you, even a grief to you. When they get old enough, they can do some very serious harm or bad things. Now in your heart, you're always on your son's side because he's your son, and therefore you are inclined to forgive.

Now if you have a teenage son and he does something that is a betrayal of your trust or very much harmful to you or to your family or to someone else, you're going to be angry about that. You're not going to disown him about it, but you're going to be angry that that happened. And as soon as he's aware of that, you're going to expect him to apologize or to show some signs that he's not going to keep doing those kinds of things, that he repents.

And when he does come to you and apologize, then formally you let him know he's forgiven of that. Now there's a sense in which you kind of forgive him universally in your heart just because he's your son. But the relationship is marred when both sides are not on the same page. If he's on the page where he's betraying the family and hasn't changed his mind about that and isn't sorry about that, well then he's kind of in opposition to you.

Now I do believe a time can come when he could disown you and you would just kind of write him off. You'd write him out of the will or whatever because he wants nothing to do with you. But just because he does things that are displeasing to you doesn't automatically make you disown him, but it does put a wedge there that has to be resolved for the relationship to be smooth.

And that's what we want. We want smooth relationships with our children. We want no offenses between us and them. And I believe God is like that too. The Bible indicates that even the Prodigal Son who betrayed his father and brought shame on the family and so forth, his father's heart was to forgive him from the very beginning. He couldn't have a relationship with him in a sense that he wished until his son came home and repented.

But it's very clear his father was eager to hear his son do that. His father was on his side even when he was in a far country. His father apparently was still watching for him because he saw him coming far down the road and ran out to meet him. And that's before he even heard anything about repentance from the boy.

So this is the heart of God. The Father's heart is toward His children. He's not just looking for an opportunity to write you out of the will. I believe you can apostatize. I think you can depart from the living God as the Bible warns us not to do, and I think if you do that you do, you are kind of out of the will. You're not in a relationship with Him anymore as a son. But I do believe you can repent from that too.

But the point is in day-by-day living, our children may disappoint us, we may disappoint them. We certainly disappoint God, I'm sure, on occasions by our not doing as we should, by not trusting Him. Jesus expressed disappointment in His disciples on occasion. "How long must I bear with you guys? What, are you still without faith? Where's your faith?" Clearly, Jesus expressed some disappointment, but not rejection. They were still committed, they were still His disciples.

So sin is something we don't believe in anymore when we're Christians. That's what repentance means. We've changed our mind. The word metanoia means to change your mind. Before you repent, you obviously are in some measure approving of your sin or else you wouldn't do it. When you've sinned and you realize that it was the wrong thing and you don't approve of it anymore, that's when you repent. You've changed your mind. "I don't want to justify what I did. I don't want to pretend like nothing happened and it doesn't matter. I don't want to pretend like that's nothing." It is something. It's a betrayal of my King, it's a betrayal of my Father, and I'm sorry.

And when you come back to God and tell him so and it's very sincere, he can make it as if it never happened. That is between you and him. Obviously some of the things you do wrong might have consequences for the rest of your life between you and somebody else or you and the legal system or you and some ill-conceived child or something. There are consequences for certain sins that don't go away when God forgives you and they may complicate your life.

It's like when David sinned with Bathsheba and he repented. God forgave him, but he said, "Yeah, but you're going to have problems with your kids from now on. The sword's not going to depart from your house all the days of your life." And it was a mess. His family became a mess and that was a consequence of his deeds. But it wasn't because God was still holding it against him.

It's one thing to realize that if you steal from your parents and waste the money on gambling and lose it all, they may forgive you but the money's still gone. There's still consequences of what you did. But at least your relationship can be restored with the parent. And that's what our walk with God is understood to be. James said in chapter 3, "In many things we all stumble." Well we do, and James was an apostle and a brother of Jesus and he stumbled too apparently, he said.

But when we stumble we can repent, we can be restored. We're not written out of the family will because we stumbled. I think the only way that a person can cease to be a child of God, if at all, is by them deciding they don't want to be a child of God anymore. They don't want anything to do with Him. Now most Christians when they stumble or fall into sin, they're not choosing to renounce God. They're not choosing to depart from the living God and go follow a pagan system or something. They are momentarily making a stupid and evil and wrong decision, but God knows our frame. He remembers we're dust.

And even when Jesus told the disciples to stay awake and pray with him for an hour and they didn't—I mean that was disobedience, right?—three times he said stay awake with me and pray for an hour, three times they disobeyed. And what did he say? He said, "The flesh is weak." He said the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. He made a distinction between, for example, someone like Judas who chose to apostatize and Peter, James, and John who really wanted to be obedient but their flesh was just weak. He knows if your spirit is on His side or not.

Now justification by faith means that we have a relationship with God based on faith in Christ. And actually when we fall it might be a defect in our faith at that moment, but it doesn't have to be fatal. But it's simply that we're not saved by not falling. We're not saved by never sinning, although because we are saved it is our determined to never sin because a saved person has a heart that desires to be in sync with God, wants to be united with God, wants to please God. If a person doesn't have that in their heart, I don't think they have a Christian heart yet. I don't think they've been born again.

When you're born again your heart wants to obey God and if you fall it's because of weakness. But when the time comes you say, "I don't want to obey God anymore. I'm done with this. This is costing me too much. My friends don't like me anymore. People make fun of me on the internet because I had a sky daddy belief." Then I don't think they're saved anymore at that point. So that's how you see it. There are sins and then there is apostasy. A real Christian doesn't want to sin but out of weakness may sin sometimes and if they do they'll repent because sinning isn't what they want and they'll wish they hadn't done it. But of course it is possible to go all the way into apostasy. Unfortunately some people have done so. Let's talk to Anthony from Brookfield, Connecticut. Hi Anthony, welcome.

Anthony: Hey Steve, how are you?

Steve Gregg: I'm well, thanks.

Anthony: Just a quick question. It's more of an opinionated question. What do you think ever happened to the disciple Judas after he ended up committing suicide because he betrayed Jesus? Do you think he went to heaven and he was able to get forgiven or he went to hell?

Steve Gregg: Well, he is called the "son of perdition," which is a Hebraic expression that means one who's destined for perdition. Perdition means destruction. It's just an old English word that means—the Greek word means destruction. So he was destroyed. Now whether that destruction refers to eternal destruction in hell or simply the destruction he experienced in hanging himself and being a byword in the mouths of everybody forever for 2000 years since. He messed up his life.

He did. And I think if anyone goes to hell, I think he's one of them, obviously. And I do believe people go to hell. So I think that Judas did—well, the final judgment hasn't happened, but I do believe that when the final judgment occurs that he will probably be in the lake of fire. It seems to me. The Bible doesn't hold out any particular hope for Judas in any of its statements about him. So it's not a safe thing to betray Christ. That's for sure.

I know that some people think otherwise because it does say in Matthew 27 that when Judas saw that Jesus had been condemned, he tried to kind of repent. In fact, it says he repented. Though it's possible to have a repentance that isn't life-changing repentance. He did seek to give the money back. He did confess that he'd done the wrong thing. And then he hanged himself. So some people think that that confession and that attempt to undo the damage is a mark that he maybe did get saved.

But the thing is, it's like when John the Baptist was talking to the Pharisees, they wanted to be baptized in the baptism for of repentance. He said, "Well, first show me signs that you've repented." We could say, well, Judas showed signs of repentance that he went and confessed and gave the money back, but usually committing suicide isn't a sign of repentance. It's a sign of despair. And so that's not quite the same thing as repentance.

So I'll let God be the judge. I don't think it's impossible for Judas to have truly repented, but whether he really repented in a way that would be a saving sense, the Bible doesn't give us any real encouragement about that. And therefore we'll just have to wait and see. But I know this, that we think, "Well of course he'll go to hell because he did the most horrible thing. He betrayed Jesus to death and so forth." Yeah, that would make us pretty angry at someone if they did that to us. Jesus is pretty calm though about it.

In fact, when Judas came in the act of betraying him, Jesus said, "Friend, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" That's interesting, he called him friend. In other words, Jesus was still extending the olive branch to Judas even while Judas was in the act of turning him into the authority so he died. So we know that we sometimes think God is an angry God. He doesn't look very angry if we look at Jesus and say that's what God is like. He looks like a loving God.

He does get angry, just like I mentioned earlier to someone else, we get angry at our children when they do self-destructive things. It's because we love them we get angry, but it's not an anger of rejection. Now God, like I said, if someone rejects God, He's got to reject them. Jesus said if you deny me before men, I'll deny you before my Father in heaven. But on the other hand, we don't know that God is emotionally angry at Judas. And if Judas had any repentance in him of a genuine type, only God knows at this point and we will know someday when we see God and I suppose maybe Judas again. I need to take a break. We have another half hour coming, so don't go away. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds, so stay tuned.

The Narrow Path is on the air due to the generous donations of appreciative listeners like you. We pay the radio stations to purchase the time to allow audiences around the nation and around the world by way of internet to hear and participate in the program. All contributions are used to purchase such airtime. No one associated with the Narrow Path is paid for their service. Thank you for your continued support. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls.

Seeking to address whatever questions you may raise about the Bible or the Christian faith or any disagreement you may have with the host. We welcome you to call. Right now I'm looking at a full switchboard. If you call right now you will not get through, but if you call in a few minutes you might. Here's the number to call: 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Jose from Miami Beach, Florida. Hi Jose, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Jose: Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm having issues coming to grip with this. The most beautiful principles for Christianity, like the Holy Trinity, the resurrection, and the immaculate conception that are pivotal for Christianity, apparently have been used in other religions and cultures before Christianity.

Steve Gregg: I know what you're talking about. The "Jesus myth theory," which was very much popularized about 25 years ago or so by a video on YouTube called Zeitgeist, which went through some of the things that the Bible teaches about Jesus and then compared it with what pagan religions that existed before the time of Christ said about their gods. And they, for example, talked about Osiris of the Egyptians and Mithras and Bacchus and Krishna and a number of other pagan deities from pagan religions.

And they went through each one and they said, "Now this one was called the son of God, he was born of a virgin, he had 12 disciples, he did miracles, he walked on water, he turned water into wine, he was crucified, he rose on the third day, he's called the savior of the world." And they would make lists like that of each of these fake gods and say look, all these religions are older than Christianity and they had all these same features.

So what they're trying to convince you of is that Jesus in the Gospels is simply just an amalgam of features that were stolen or borrowed from myths of pagan gods and so forth. It was just a different myth, same features, different myth, different God. And therefore what they're suggesting is Jesus didn't exist anymore than Mithras or Osiris or Bacchus existed. He's just a myth. And that's called the Jesus myth theory.

This was popular in some circles at the end of the 19th century. C.S. Lewis, for example, when he was an atheist was quite taken by it. He had read a famous book at the time called The Golden Bough, which goes into this. And he makes reference to The Golden Bough a lot of times in his writings. But he thought—and I think he lived and wrote before the facts came out—he thought these things really were true and he thought that these are evidences that God gave pagans what he called "good dreams."

That God was in fact going to send Jesus to do these very things as a real historical character, but in the mythologies of the pagans, God had given them some of these ideas, these concepts, sort of like he used the law to prepare the Jews for Christ. He thought these myths were perhaps some of the things that God allowed pagans to hold so it would kind of prepare them for Christ. Now that was C.S. Lewis's best effort, but he never really apparently lived long enough to know how these alleged myths shake out when you look them up.

And there have been many, many books written to debunk this view. I myself, when I first saw Zeitgeist, I didn't know much about these pagan myths, so I looked them up in the encyclopedias and I looked them up in source after source, online and hard copy books. And I couldn't find one instance where any of these gods were said to be born of a virgin, where any of them walked on water, where any of them had 12 disciples, where any of them were crucified, or any of them rose on the third day.

There simply were no myths about these gods that had those features, which is kind of interesting because it means that whoever came up with that video either made them up out of whole cloth or else borrowed them uncritically from someone else who made them up out of whole cloth. In other words, those things aren't true. There were no such myths about those deities. You can look it up yourself, you don't have to trust me. There's a two-part YouTube video I made back in the early 2000s about Zeitgeist.

It's spelled Z-E-I-T-G-E-I-S-T, it's the German word for time spirit, spirit of the day, Zeitgeist. And I go through all the details of the video, all the things they claimed and what the true facts were about the official mythologies. One thing also is that although these religions—now they didn't have these features by the way—but although these religions did predate Christianity, we don't have actual records of these religions dating from the time before Christianity.

In other words, what we know about Mithraism—we know Mithraism existed in the Roman Empire before Jesus came, but the oldest records we have of any Mithraic mythology are dated like from the second or third century after Christ. And this is true of almost all of these gods. They are very ancient religions, but we don't have very ancient records of them and virtually all the records we have of them come from a time after the time of the writing of the Gospels and at a time when Christianity had become very significant in the 4th century especially in Europe.

Christianity became a rather dominant religion and it's if you found any similarities between these records of these religions and the Gospels, it's more likely they stole them from the Gospels than vice versa. But I don't think—I have not been able to find these parallels. So just realize that when you hear things on the internet, there's not the slightest reason to assume they are true. You realize anybody can say anything on the internet.

And so, of course anybody can say just about anything in books too, but if you read scholarly books or encyclopedias, at least you're reading material from somebody who was selected to write about it because he really is an expert on the subject. And he's writing for peer review, which means other people who are experts on the subject can review it and critique it. And generally speaking that's why something in an encyclopedia is more likely to be—it's less likely to be just some kind of a podcaster who has something he wants to get clicks on.

And I really think the younger generation needs to be wary of this. That the internet you can find everything true and everything false on the same internet in a half hour's search of the whole subject. So anyway, the truth is no, that's not the case. These myths did not—at least there are no records, no historical records that would suggest that these myths really did have these features which people sometimes say they have which would make them like similar to Jesus.

There's no one similar to Jesus. And one thing I would say that's very different is that in these mythologies, none of them claimed that the gods they're talking about, Osiris or Horus or any of these gods, none of them claimed that any people in history saw these gods. They're myths. They are not connected to any particular time or place in history. They're kind of transcendent mythologies, sort of like fairy tales that don't really connect with anything in history.

Where the Gospels from the very beginning point out what year it was that Jesus came, where he came to, who was ruling in Galilee, who was ruling in Judea, who's ruling in Syria at that time. It connects with all kinds of known historical characters. In other words, quite unlike any of these mythologies which are not even—they don't even pretend to be connected with history at all. The story of Jesus is connected very closely with geography and history and known people whose secular history we know the time that they reigned and did—so there's just no parallels.

People who say that are rather unintelligent or at least not very informed anti-Christian people. And while there are people who are anti-Christian who are well informed, they're not the ones who are saying those things because you have to be very uninformed to say that or else very dishonest. I appreciate your call, brother. Alan from Grass Valley, California, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Alan: Hi Steve. First like a quick comment. When you teach on the show, I see two things. One is you teach how to exegete the words, but also I think you teach how to have a discussion with other people in a loving way. I see you asking people what do you think of this passage or this is what I think of this passage. I never remember you saying something like, "Oh you're wrong," or—I just think it's a wonderful example. My question is about 2 Timothy 2:15 where it talks about rightly handling the word of truth. I'm just wondering if you could speak on that.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, the King James Version says "study to show yourself approved unto God," a worker who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now the word "study" at the beginning of that is an old English word that means be diligent. In modern English, the word "study" means like do research, study something out, go to the sources, get the information. That's what "study" means to us.

And so that verse has, in the hundreds of years that the King James dominated the English-speaking Christian world, it was always used to mean we need to study the Bible. We need to study the Bible, "study to show yourself approved." In fact, modern translations actually don't use the word "study" there because they realize that the Greek word doesn't mean study, it means be diligent. And that it simply is the case that the English word "study" back in 1611 meant the same thing that our English word today "be diligent" means.

So Paul is saying be diligent in the handling of the scriptures. Now we have to realize too that in those days not many people had Bibles. There weren't printing presses yet and you'd have to be very wealthy to pay somebody to make a handwritten copy of the Bible for you. So very few people had actual handwritten copies of the Bible, and there weren't any other kind in existence. But it is nonetheless the case that they heard the Bible read in synagogues or in church meetings and then they were supposed to meditate on it.

So if he's telling Timothy to actually "study" the Bible, he'd have to have a copy in front of him, which I don't know if Timothy did or not. Yeah, the New King James, which is very close to the King James but modernizes some words, says "be diligent" rather than "study." It says be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed.

Now it says "rightly dividing" the word of truth. I think you had a translation that used a different word than "dividing." Maybe "applying" or something.

Alan: Rightly handling.

Steve Gregg: Handling. Right. And maybe that's correct. That could be a better representative of what he's saying. The Dispensationalists, back from Darby's day onward, loved this verse. It was like a key verse for them. In fact, Scofield wrote a book called Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth based on this verse. And what they thought Paul was saying—though they mistakenly thought Paul was a Dispensationalist like themselves, he had never heard of it, no one did until 1830—but the point is they thought Paul was saying you have to realize that some scriptures are directed to the Jews, some are directed to Gentiles, and some are directed to the church, Jews and Gentiles.

And they said you really won't apply the scripture properly unless you recognize which parts apply to the Jews. You have to divide it properly into the right categories. Some parts apply to the Jews, some apply to the Christians, and some to the Gentiles. And I'll agree in this much, in so far as that we do best to recognize who a passage is addressing. Obviously if we read 1st Corinthians, we know he's writing to the Corinthians and some of the things he says to them may not apply to someone in another church.

I mean when he says, "Eat a meal before you take communion." Well does everyone have to do that or was it just because the Corinthians weren't governing their appetites well enough, so he said listen, you better take an edge off your appetite before you take communion or you're going to go home drunk like some people are doing. So we have to understand the scripture properly. We have to recognize who it's addressing and to what degree it applies to our situation.

But it's not like there's whole blocks of scripture that we say, "Oh this is for the church and this block is for the Jews and this block is for someone else." And so whenever I hear "rightly dividing the word of truth," I not only think of the King James which I was raised reading, but I think of the Dispensationalists for whom that's a really important verse. I don't see it the way they do and maybe if someone has quoted it to you they would, but I think he's just saying you need to be diligent.

You just when he says "be diligent" means don't be lazy. Don't be lackluster in your study and application and meditation on the scripture. Make it a diligent matter in your life to give it priority because then you will not need to be ashamed. I've heard a lot of people teach scripture who I think they should be ashamed because they missed the context or they missed some obvious cues that it was talking about something they hadn't thought about.

So we need to be careful because whoever teaches the word of God, James says, is going to have a stricter judgment. And while we who do teach don't know everything and therefore we are prone to make mistakes, it's wise for us to do as what you mentioned. You mentioned you just say, "Hey well this is how I see it." There are other ways to see it. Here's what I see, here's why, but since other people see it in other way it's possible they may be right, so do your own research and reach your own conclusion.

It's a shame that we have to teach that way. It'd be nice if we could just say this is what it is and that's where it's at, and some teachers do teach that way, but I don't have much respect for them usually. It means they don't know very much outside of their own echo chamber, the only place they've ever heard anything.

Alan: Thank you very much, sir.

Steve Gregg: All right, Alan. Good talking to you. Thanks for your call. Okay, let's see. We've got Brian from Vallejo, California. Brian, welcome.

Brian: Hey, thanks Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Really quick, I know you've touched on this—you actually spoke on it a few calls earlier—but about a person losing their salvation. And I always looked at that as a way for us to gain salvation is by accepting Christ, confessing Christ as our Lord and Savior. And as Jesus told Nicodemus, that we must be born again and regenerated with the Holy Spirit. So I always looked at it as if a person who are truly saved to lose their salvation, wouldn't God have to remove His Holy Spirit from us? And we would have to become unregenerated in a sense? And if we did lose our salvation, then how would we know? Because I don't see anything in the New Testament that speaks to that if we're saved and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Steve Gregg: Well there's—oh yeah, let me answer that because that's an important question. I appreciate you asking that. First of all, we need to avoid speaking of salvation as if it's a product that is obtained like a Christmas present or something like that. Once you've got it you own it and God's not an "Indian giver" as some people say. He's not going to take it back. Well no, He's not going to take it back.

But the Bible says that salvation is in Christ. In other words, you don't get it like a package apart from Him. You have it in Him. When you are in Christ you have it. It says in 1st John 5:11 and 12, "This is the message that God has given to us: eternal life. This life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life. He that does not have the Son of God does not have life." Now Jesus told His disciples speaking of being in Him in John chapter 15.

He said, "I'm the vine, you're the branches. You need to remain in me. If you remain in me you'll be fruitful." Why? Because His life is in you if you're a branch in that vine. You remain in Him and His life produces fruit through you. And he says, "But if any man does not remain in me," he says in verse 6, "then he's cast forth as a branch and withered and they gather them and burn them." Now here's the deal. The vine is Christ, he said.

Those who remain in Him share in His life. His life is eternal life. This life is in His Son. Right. Okay. So if we abide in Him, that's where the eternal life is. It's in Him. It doesn't leave Him. If we leave Him, we can't leave Him and take the eternal life with us. It's in Him. It doesn't leave Him. If we leave Him, we leave it. It's by remaining in Christ that we remain in the realm of eternal life.

Now you mentioned being born again. I do believe that being born again is essential to understand, but it's also an analogy that doesn't—there's no analogies that are perfect in the natural world for things spiritual. Some take us pretty far in the direction of understanding the concepts, some only a little distance. But when people are born, they come into a new life in Earth. They come to a new world. They have a new life, a new family and all that. And being born again spiritually is true of all those things spiritually.

But even a child that's born naturally doesn't necessarily live forever. If they climb into an old refrigerator in the garage and suffocate, they're dead. That doesn't mean they were unborn. They were born, but they did something that killed them. They cut themselves off from the air supply that keeps them alive. Now when you're born again, Christ is the air supply that keeps you alive and you remain in Christ and that life you got is forever.

You leave Christ—well, what are you going to breathe? Where are you going to get eternal life if you're not in Him? The fact that you were born doesn't mean you can't die. Now you said, "Does God take His Spirit away?" It's not that God takes His Spirit away. The Spirit is given to us in Christ. And as we leave Christ, the Spirit remains there in Christ and everybody who's in Christ participates in the Spirit and has the Spirit.

But if you depart from God, you're departing from His Spirit too. And so it's not that God takes His Spirit away; you take yourself away. Now I'm not suggesting that every time someone does a wrong thing that they've done that. I'm not saying every time a Christian sins they've left God. No, I think that like you said, you get saved by making a commitment to Christ. Now you don't get saved by just saying a prayer and while every head is bowed and every eye is closed and raising your hand while no one's looking and then you're saved.

No, you're saved when you commit yourself to Christ. Some people have done that by saying a sinner's prayer, some have said a sinner's prayer and haven't done that at all. It's not a prayer that's uttered, it's a life that is rerouted. Instead of going your own way you're now embracing Christ as your King, as your Lord, and that looks like something. It looks like you're following Him now instead of your own lusts and your own agendas and your own dreams.

And that's what all the apostles did. People got saved in the Bible by doing just that. They changed direction, they repented, they became followers of Christ instead of of self. Jesus said if anyone come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. So that's a different direction and it's a different guiding principle. It's no longer self, no longer I but Christ, Paul said. So when a person has made that commitment they are in Christ.

And as long as they don't renege on that commitment, they remain in Christ forever. But that means that we live our lives committed to Him. Now you say, "How would I know if I have lost my salvation?" Well it would seem like it'd be very possible to know. Are you committed to Christ still? If you're committed to Christ and not yourself, if you're following Christ as your King and your Lord, you're living for His kingdom and not for your own agendas. Well then that sounds to me like that's what being a Christian is.

It's when you decide that you don't care what Christ thinks about what you're going to do. You're going to do what you want to do. That you're thinking like a person who's never been converted. Now I believe a person who has been converted can fall back into a place where they used to be in thinking. I don't believe it's the easiest thing in the world because if you're really converted the Holy Spirit's going to be convicting you. I think your heart's going to be directed differently and so forth.

But the Bible does say that we have to—in Hebrews especially—talks about how we need to beware of having an evil heart of unbelief in us so that we depart from the living God. There's obviously a danger of that or else he wouldn't warn of it. And so departing from the faith—Paul said in the last days many will depart from the faith. Now this is not talking about people who didn't get saved because you can't depart from a faith if you've never been in the faith. You can't leave some place you've never stood. You can only leave places where you've been.

And so if you're in the faith you can depart from the faith. I'm not saying that every time you slip and stumble you've departed from the faith. That's not the case. But some people do and we're told many will. And we're told we must be warned against that. So if you wonder—you said you can't find anything at my website about it—I would suggest that you go to thenarrowpath.com, click on the tab that says topical lectures, and find the series "How Can I Know That I'm Really Saved?"

It's a Bible study in First John which gives you four ways to test if you are in Christ or not. And it's a series I think of four lectures. So at thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says topical lectures, there's a series called "How Can I Know That I'm Really Saved?" and that will answer your questions more completely. I appreciate your call. And I apologize to all who have not been able to get on today. Got a lot of people waiting. Hopefully you can call tomorrow and we can talk to you then. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. We pay a lot to the radio station to stay on. If you want to help us out you can go to our website thenarrowpath.com. There's I think a tab that says donate there. Let's talk again tomorrow.