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 that you'd like to bring up on the air that we can talk about, you may do that here during this hour. If you disagree with the host on any issues, feel free to call and we can have that disagreement on the air as well. The number to call is 844-484-5737. We have quite a few of our lines open at the moment, a great time to call in. If you want to get through today, the number is 844-484-5737.

Our first caller today is going to be Ron in Fort Worth, Texas. Ron, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ron: Yes, I called Monday. I had a follow-up question, but I think it blinked me out. I was asking about the Israelites, and I want to know why do people use the Israelites of today not believing in Jesus to justify they aren't the real Israelites when the Israelites didn't believe Jesus was God when he walked the earth? I've got another question if you can answer that one.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, let's do that one first. So you're questioning the fact that some people point out that Jewish people today are not really Israel because they're not believers in Christ. You're saying when Jesus was here, the Israelites weren't believers in Christ either. Well, that's true, except for some of them were. The ones who were were the ones that Jesus called "Israelites indeed."

For example, when he saw Nathanael coming to him, who was a Jewish man, one of his future disciples, he said, "Here comes an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit." In other words, this is an honest man. That's really what I'm looking for. That's what an Israelite really is, is this kind of man. Paul said in Romans 9:6, "They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel."

What he means by that is although everybody descended from Israel can be called Israel in a sense, but not in the sense that God counts a person an Israelite. Only not all of those who are descended from Israel are the true Israel. Paul indicated that God recognizes as the true Israel a remnant within the larger entity, the larger nation. That remnant are the ones who are faithful.

In Jesus' day, they were the faithful Jews who came to Christ and became his disciples. To this very day, all Jews who are faithful come to Christ because you can't really be faithful to God while you're rejecting the Messiah when God sends him.

Ron: Didn't he say they would come to Christ before his second coming? Isn't this just part of the play that they don't believe in Christ now to believe in him at the end, or will everybody not still believe in Christ even when he comes back for the second coming?

Steve Gregg: Well, that's a good question. Many people do read Romans 11 as if Paul is saying that God had a plan for Israel to be unbelievers throughout most of the age of the church, but that someday at the end of the age, the Jews will turn back to God in great numbers and the Israelites will all be saved. That is how Romans 11 is read and understood by most popular teachers today.

It wasn't always understood that way, and I don't understand it that way myself. I used to, but as I studied Paul's line of argument in Romans 9 through 11, I realized he's actually saying something quite different than that. He's saying that "all Israel will be saved" means all the true Israel will be saved. He's just illustrated that in the previous verses, so the statement is kind of a summary of what he's been saying for the previous ten verses.

In the previous ten verses, of course, his statement is in Romans 11:26, but beginning at verse 16 and leading up to that verse 26, Paul has introduced the idea of Israel being an olive tree. He didn't make that up; that comes from the Old Testament. The Old Testament refers to Israel as an olive tree. Paul says individual Jewish people are individual branches on the olive tree. He says some of the branches have been broken off because of their unbelief. This means that some Jews, the ones who don't believe in Christ, have been removed from the tree.

That's what Paul says. Now, that means, of course, that if the tree is indeed Israel, as the Old and New Testament both are suggesting, then those Jews who don't believe in Christ are no longer part of the tree, that is no longer part of Israel. Then he says, and believing Gentiles who have come to Christ have been grafted into the tree as new branches on the tree. So they are now part of Israel. The tree is Israel.

What has happened is that God has allowed people to make their own choice, Jews and Gentiles, about whether they will embrace Christ. The ones who have not embraced Christ are not part of the tree, and even Jews who might have been considered Israel under the Old Covenant cease to be regarded as such by God if they are in unbelief. Only believing Jews have remained a part of Israel.

That's what Paul throughout the whole argument from chapters 9 through 11 has been saying: only a remnant of Israel are the true Israel. That's the believing Jews, those who've come to Christ as thousands of them did, by the way, in Paul's day. In Paul's day there were many thousands of Jews who followed Christ, and they were the branches that remained on the Israel tree.

But he said that the Jews who did not receive Christ have been broken off the tree because of their unbelief, so they're not part of Israel anymore as far as God's concerned. Then Gentiles who do believe are now part of the tree, so the tree consists in branches that are believers, Jews and Gentiles. Jewish believers are still on the tree; Gentile believers have been added to the tree. And therefore the tree consists of Jewish and Gentile believers, and that's what the true Israel is.

So when he says in verse 25 and 26, partial blindness or hardness has happened to Israel till the fullness of the Gentiles have come in, and in this way, he says, all Israel will be saved, meaning the whole tree, the Jewish branches and the Gentile branches. That's all the Israel. If you follow Paul's argument from Romans 9 through that conclusion in chapter 11, he's not predicting anything at all particularly about unbelieving Jews coming to Christ.

Paul makes it very clear that unbelieving Jews can come to Christ just like unbelieving Gentiles can. Anyone can become a believer if they choose to, but he's not predicting that anyone in particular will. So Paul has not really argued that all the Jews will be saved. There's nothing in the Bible that teaches that. If it's taught anywhere, it would be in that verse, but that verse is saying something very different than what a lot of people are trying to make it say.

So, you know, you're right, most of the Jews in Jesus' day weren't believers, but they were still called Israel because they were nationally Israel. Israel is a national and racial term in much of the Bible. Though in the New Testament, there's also this discussion of the remnant or the Israel of God. These are the ones to whom the promises belong. Paul says this in Romans 9; he says it in Galatians 4. Both places, he said you've got to distinguish between different kinds of children of Abraham.

He said there are the children of Abraham according to the flesh, and that just means people whose only connection to Abraham is through the flesh, through genealogy. They're descended from him. That's a physical connection to Abraham. That's children of Abraham according to the flesh. Then he says, and then there's the children of Abraham according to promise. And that refers to people who are believers, actually.

So he points out that being descended from Abraham physically isn't a special thing, but being one of the promised ones is. So he's not saying that all the Jews are really part of Israel in any significant sense. Now, if we want to use the word Israel only to refer to a nation or a race, well yeah, then everyone who belongs to that nation or that race belongs to that nation or race. But if we're using the word Israel in the way that the Bible says is significant, we're talking about the believing remnant.

And so most Jews are not that. So I mean, if you say why would somebody say that the Jews in Israel are not Israel? Well, some people are actually saying something different than I would say. Some people are saying that they are not physically descended from Abraham, that they are descended from the Eastern European Khazars of the seventh century or something like that. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. That's not an affirmation I'm prepared to make. It may be true, I don't know if it's true or not, but it's not relevant to me. I don't care who their ancestors are.

God has never chosen anybody because of who their ancestors are to be his own. He chooses people whose hearts are right toward him. So you know, some people would say oh the Jews in Israel, they're not really Israel because they're ethnically not even related to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They came from some other stock in the Middle Ages. Well, that is a case that can be made, but I'm not going to affirm that it's necessarily true. I don't know. I'm not expert about such things, nor would it matter.

See, I don't usually become an expert on things that don't matter, and it doesn't really matter who their ancestors are. It matters if they are believers in Christ. And Jews and Gentiles, there's no distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Christ. So if I would say that I don't believe that the nation of Israel is Israel today, I would be meaning something different. They might very well be ethnically Jewish, but they're not the Israel to whom the promises have been made, as Paul points out. Not all who are descended from Abraham are Israel in that sense.

And Jesus made it very clear that an Israelite indeed is one whose heart is right toward God. And of course those who know the gospel and respond to the gospel are the ones whose hearts are right. So anyway, it's a little complicated, but if you'd like a more drawn-out analysis of the whole issue of Israel, at my website, thenarrowpath.com, there's a series under the topical lectures tab called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" And it's 12 lectures, but if you're really interested in studying the whole Bible about the whole subject of Israel, those are a pretty thorough treatment of the subject. That's at thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says topical lectures, and then there's the series called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" By the way, these are free; they cost nothing. So you can just go and listen to them or download them if you want. Ron, I appreciate your call, brother. I've got to take another call now.

Jeremy in Vancouver, BC. Welcome.

Jeremy: Oh, hi there. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate your time today. I am a little bit naive, so I will apologize in advance. I've returned to Christianity after quite some time, and I do believe that the signs are all there. The destruction of mankind is definitely happening. I can see that.

But I think the reason I called in today, I get a little bit confused because there's so many different denominations out there, but there's only one Christ. I've been listening to some lectures online, and my main question today was with the preface of Mother Mary. Apparently, when I'm reading lectures, Mother Mary is sort of like the rebirth of Adam and Eve, and just from a Catholic perspective, does that fall in line with most other Christian faiths?

Steve Gregg: Well, it would fall in line with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Most Protestants would not share that view. Now, do you have a Catholic background from your youth?

Jeremy: No, mine's actually very different, actually. And I think that's where I have a struggle with it because I was indoctrinated as a Jehovah's Witness, actually. So I still have a hard time with that because it's ingrained in my mind, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. This I'm sure you've had that conversation before with others.

Steve Gregg: Well, let me jump in and try to get to your questions then so that I can hopefully be of help to you. Your first question was about denominations. Why are there so many denominations if there's only one Christ? And that is because Christians are immature. That's what Paul said. Paul said if the Christians are saying "I am of Paul" or "I am of Cephas" or "I am of Apollos" or "I am of Christ," he says it's because you're babes in Christ. You're carnal. He says you're carnal and you're babes in Christ.

So divisions like this where Christians identify with different subgroups of the followers of Christ, and they find their identity in some subgroup rather than in the whole body of Christ or in Christ himself, they're immature. They're just babes. It's infantile. They're spiritually infants, which is a shame because people have sometimes been Christians for a very long time, decades even, and they're still infants in this respect.

The truth is there would be no denominations at all in the sense that we think of them today if Christians were spiritually mature. For example, a denomination forms because somebody, usually the founder of that denomination, has usually been in a previous group and has had differences of opinion on some points, sometimes have had friction between themselves and the group that they're in. Eventually they find they want to just leave and start a group that meets only with people who agree with them.

And so they start a group that agrees with their specific points. It becomes their denomination, and then it gathers or manufactures followers to that particular set of distinctives, and it's distinct from the other denomination that it left. Well then, of course, in the new denomination, someone else comes along and says, "I see some things differently on another point," and if they can't get along there, they go off and start a third denomination. Eventually there's these chain reactions, so there's now thousands of denominations, none of them necessary.

In the early church, there were people who disagreed with each other on things, but they didn't start separate denominations over them. They realized that we're brothers and sisters in Christ and that disagreeing about certain things is not terminal. The truth is that we're all going to find things we disagree with other people about. However, if we're mature Christians, we're going to try to remain in good fellowship with the rest of the Christians and discuss those differences hopefully fruitfully so that we can all grow in our knowledge.

And that's what God intends for us to do is to help instruct each other. The Bible says iron sharpens iron. Now, it's the friction of iron sharpening iron improves both parts, the iron and the flint or whatever it's being sharpened against. I liken it to rough stones being put into a canister of a rock polisher, a rock tumbler, and they bounce around. They bump into each other because they can't escape the tumbler, but in the process, they smooth each other out.

Now, if they can escape the tumbler, they will, but they won't get any better. They won't change any. The change comes from being forced to interact with each other. And that's how it is in a marriage. The reason people get married instead of just live together, the reason God ordained marriage, is that people are held together by a covenant, and when they have friction, they can't just escape. They're bound by a covenant, so they have to improve.

Now, sometimes people do escape, they get divorced, and that's a sin. But the thing is, they're not supposed to. And by the way, in many cases because they do escape their marriage and enter a new one, they haven't improved. They make the same mistakes marriage after marriage after marriage because nothing is improving. It's when you're forced to interact as a Christian with other Christians that are difficult to get along with that you grow.

And if you can always escape and start another group so that you don't ever have to have that friction, well then you'll never grow. And that's why the modern church is so immature. Now, you can be a Christian and go to any church because a Christian doesn't mean you're a member of some particular organization. A Christian means you're born again, you're a follower of Christ, you're led by his Spirit, you love one another, and you're obedient to Jesus.

So I mean, you can do that and be in any church you want to. You could be in an Eastern Orthodox church, a Catholic church, a Protestant church of any denomination, and you could do that. And that's why there are in fact true followers of Christ in every church. And there's also in every church people who think they're Christians but they aren't true followers of Christ. And they think that being in that organization is what makes them a Christian. And that's a shame because Jesus never called anyone to join an organization to become a Christian.

It's following Jesus that makes you a Christian. So since you're now devoted to Christ, just follow him. And obviously you should try to find a church where they seem to be faithful to God, they love Christ, they're humble, they love one another. These are the issues that describe a more mature church. Now, different churches have different beliefs than each other. You don't have to follow the beliefs of the church you're in.

You should read the Bible and follow Christ and let the Holy Spirit guide you, and you can still be in fellowship with others, even if they don't see things the same way. You might find it for the sake of unity better not to discuss controversial issues with people who don't agree if they're not mature enough to learn and to love despite the differences of opinion. But the point is you should just find people who love Jesus and who want to follow Jesus, who encourage you to do so.

Now, as far as Mary is concerned, there is nothing in the Bible that encourages us to make much of Mary. It is true, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics have certain traditions they've adopted about Mary, some of which make her almost like a goddess. We have to realize Mary was just a godly woman, of which there were many godly women and godly men in her generation and in every generation. She was a godly woman; she's in heaven with Christ now, I believe.

But she's not a mediator between us and Christ. She's not a goddess of any kind. We have to remember that it says in the book of Acts when the church began on the day of Pentecost, it was among 120 people who were in an upper room in Jerusalem praying and fasting and waiting. And Mary was one of them. Mary is mentioned as being there, although she's not mentioned as being special.

It mentions her 120 people, Jesus' brothers, his mother, the disciples, and some others were there. She's just mentioned as one when the roll was taken; she was in the roll call. But we never read at any point of the disciples treating her with special deference or asking her to pray for them or to mediate between God and them. They just—this is just not a position that Mary held in the early church. In fact, she didn't hold that status in the church at all until the church began to, I'd say, evolve.

It evolved in the Roman Empire to a point where some of the things that the Romans worshiped in their religion, including a virgin mother and child, they came to identify that with Mary and Jesus, and then that became part of the traditions of the church. It's a tradition I don't agree with, and that no Christian is obligated to agree with. The Bible does not tell us to look to Mary in any way other than the way we'd look to any other human being.

And so a church that places much weight on her is following traditions that developed after the apostles were dead and that do not, in my opinion, represent primitive Christianity. Now, they say Eve, Mary is like the new Eve. This is not true. The Bible doesn't say she's like the new Eve. It is true that Jesus is compared with the new Adam, but Mary was his mother. Eve was not Adam's mother.

So if we say Christ is the new Adam, and Adam is a type of Christ, well then who would Eve be a type of? Certainly she wasn't Adam's mother, so she wouldn't represent Christ's mother. But the Bible says Christ has a bride, the Church. In fact, Paul quotes from Genesis chapter 2, the story about Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:24, quotes, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." And Paul quotes that in Ephesians 5 and says, "This verse is talking about Christ and the church."

The church is the bride of Christ, and therefore the parallel, if we say Adam is a picture of Christ, true, in that respect he is. And in that respect, Eve is a type of the church. In no passage of scripture is Eve a picture of or a foreshadowing of Mary. Mary has simply been brought into positions in the thinking of many in the early church and the church today that she did not hold in biblical times and which to my mind it's not healthy to pretend that she holds them.

Because there are some people who put her on such a high pinnacle that they pray to her or at least they pray to her to pray to Jesus for them, as if they can't talk to Jesus or God themselves. So in other words, the beliefs they have about Mary sometimes put a wedge, as it were, between their direct access to Christ because they're not so sure Jesus will listen to them or God, but they're pretty sure Mary will. So they'll talk to her instead.

Now, the purpose that Jesus came for is to bring us to the Father. Jesus said no one comes to the Father except through me. And therefore through Christ we go to the Father, and that's what Jesus said, "You will ask the Father in my name," that is with Christ's authorization and approval, in his name you act and approach the Father. There's no point at any time in the Bible where the Bible suggests that anyone approaches the Father or Jesus through his mother or through saints or anyone else. That was simply not part of biblical Christianity. Anyway, I hope that helps. We have to take a break and God bless you. I'm glad you've come back to the faith. We're going to take a 30-second break and then be back for another half hour. You're listening to the Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener-supported. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. All the resources are free at the website, or you can donate if you want to. thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned.

Steve Gregg: Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or you want to disagree with the host about anything on the air, feel free to do so. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

Our next caller is Carrie calling from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Carrie. Welcome.

Carrie: Hi, Steve. Steve, I've been listening to your lecture or your teaching on the Tabernacle in Genesis. That's brought up some questions: the Ark and the Mercy Seat being a central piece of the temple, and it's my understanding that the Ark was lost sometime in history. It's never been seen since the Babylonian exile.

And so even in Hebrews, it talks about the temple and the Mercy Seat and things like that. And I was just—and I guess the writer of Hebrews must have been talking to his contemporaries, not to ancient Israelites, of course. So it just brought up the question about how could the Jewish person really worship without the Mercy Seat being in the temple?

Steve Gregg: Well, they couldn't follow, of course, to the letter what Moses had said with a Tabernacle that doesn't have the Mercy Seat in it. But we have to remember that people can worship God with or without a temple. I mean, before Moses came and before Israel built a Tabernacle, there were a lot of worshipers of God who didn't have temples: Noah, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they didn't have temples either.

You could worship God without it. It's just that when God gave the law to Israel, he described and ordained the Tabernacle a certain way as an object lesson. He showed them a pattern; he showed Moses a pattern of the Tabernacle in heaven, apparently, because God kept telling Moses, "Make sure when you make this, make it according to the pattern that you saw when you were on the mount with me."

And so the Tabernacle was a teaching device. It didn't make it possible to worship God for people who had no option of doing so previously. And once the Tabernacle was replaced by the temple, once the Jews went into captivity in Babylon and didn't have temple or Tabernacle, they could still worship God, but they weren't able to do it according to the Mosaic pattern.

Now, I don't know if they ever made a replacement Ark. I don't think they did. I don't think scholars believe there was ever a second Ark of the Covenant that was made to replace the one that was lost in the Babylonian exile. But whether they did or not, whether the Jews in the writer of Hebrews' day, whether they had a Tabernacle that was strictly or a temple that was strictly like the one described in the Old Testament or not, it doesn't matter.

The writer of Hebrews is using his object lessons he's taking from the Tabernacle itself. He's not arguing necessarily that everything in his day and age, which was probably just before 70 AD, resembled that. In fact, the truth is the Tabernacle he's describing in Hebrews was replaced back in the days of David with, or in Solomon's day actually, with the temple that Solomon built.

And there hasn't been a Tabernacle since then. The temple existed for hundreds of years after that, but it kind of replaced the Tabernacle. Yet the author of Hebrews doesn't describe the temple; he describes the Tabernacle. So he's not necessarily saying everything that's going on in Judaism is the way that it was described in biblical times, that is in Old Testament times.

But he is saying that the way God described things to be, the way they were practiced when Moses set it up, those were a shadow. Those were a type of heavenly things. And that would be true. It doesn't matter if there's a temple today or not; the Tabernacle is a historic event, is a historic item, and when it was built, it was built to convey spiritual truths.

Those spiritual truths exist whether the Tabernacle and temple are present or not. In fact, I think the suggestion is because those spiritual truths have been realized, there's no need for a Tabernacle or temple. But yeah, in the days when the writer of Hebrews was writing, and he mentioned the holy place, holy of holies, and the Mercy Seat, and the Ark, it is true that things weren't exactly that way at the time he was writing. But they were originally, and he's not referring to the way things were at his time so much as the way they were when Moses was received the instructions. So that's the point he's actually making.

Carrie: Did Solomon receive any type of instruction for building the temple, or did he just try to copy the Tabernacle?

Steve Gregg: Actually, David received instructions about how to build the temple and he passed them on to Solomon. So we don't read of God speaking to David—it's not described him coming to David and saying, "Here, build it this way, here's the plans," but we do read that when David died, he had plans for the temple which had been revealed to him by God, it says. And he passed them along to Solomon. So apparently, just like the Tabernacle had been ordained by God a certain way, we would have to assume that the temple that Solomon built also had been described by God, but to David originally.

Carrie: All right, thanks again, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Carrie, thanks for your call. Let's see, we're going to talk to Matt in Unity, Maine. Hi, Matt. Welcome.

Matt: Thank you, Steve, and thank you for your ministry. I have an apologetics-related question as the majority of my family over the years has walked away from the Lord. But specifically, I have a sibling that lives overseas that's been sharing a lot of videos related to deconstruction, the old argument that the Bible's changed, there's different versions rather than translations. So I was simply—I know we're supposed to have an answer for the hope that we have within us. Some topics, though, such as this can be very difficult. I was simply looking for any advice, resources, approaches to share an argument for this to show that I know where I stand with God's word, but to convey it to a loved one.

Steve Gregg: Well, I think people sometimes get the wrong impression about the nature of the Bible. Even evangelical Christians sometimes think of it as a book that came down to us without flaws from heaven, maybe fell to earth bound in leather covers and that every word in it is directly spoken and written by God. Now, most knowledgeable Christians have never thought this. This has never been the position of the church.

But it is sometimes there are some superstitious Christians who look at it like, "Okay, if there's any word in there that's not directly spoken by God, just throw the whole thing out." No, we have to understand what the Bible is and what it isn't. The Bible claims to be a collection of the writings of faithful Jews, particularly the writings of the law given to them by Moses and of inspired history writers like some of the prophets who wrote history and of prophecies.

The New Testament claims to be accurate historical accounts in the first five books of Jesus and the apostles' lives and actions, and then the epistles are personal letters written by apostles to various churches and individuals. Now, these are different kinds of books from each other, but they make up a sacred library that the Jews first and then the Christians eventually recognized as the authoritative books that they're going to base their policies on and beliefs on, and rightly so.

Because they're following what Jesus said and what—if they are—if you accept the Bible, you have the teachings of Jesus, you have the life of Jesus, you have the writings of the apostles. These are the things that define what God wants us to know as Christians and to follow. Now, it is true that through the years, these documents did not exist in English originally. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and some portions of it in Aramaic.

The New Testament was written entirely in Greek, and these manuscripts, I should say the original autographs written by the hands of the authors, have perished. They don't exist. But that's not a serious problem. That's true of every ancient book. Until printing presses were invented in the 1500s, you didn't have mass-produced books; you had hand-copied scrolls on perishable material, and it was a laborious thing to make a whole copy of the Bible.

It was a very expensive proposition, and most people didn't have Bibles, and there were relatively few around, although there were monasteries where biblical manuscripts were being copied again and again by groups of scholars and so forth because they wanted to keep it around. Eventually the printing press invented made it possible to mass-produce Bibles and then it was also translated into modern languages like German and English and French and so forth, Spanish.

And now it exists in thousands of translations—over a hundred New Testament translations have been made since the invention of the printing press. Now, that means we've got a lot of different translations out there. And if someone says, "Well then, you know, it's no good then, how do we know which one to follow?" It really doesn't matter very much because 97% of the material in the Bible is agreeable in all the manuscripts and all the translations.

In other words, there are some little differences in the manuscripts and that's partly because some people when they were copying an older manuscript made a mistake, left a word out, punctuated it wrong, spelled a word wrong, put the right sentence in but put the word order a little differently. These are what we call variants in the manuscripts. There's lots of these.

As Bart Ehrman loves to point out, there's thousands of these variants, but they're of almost zero consequence, as Bart Ehrman also points out. It's interesting people like to quote him on how many there are, and they fail to quote him when he says, "Yeah, but they're not very important," because they aren't, unless you want a magic book that came down to us without ever being miscopied by anybody, which is what I'm afraid some people look at the Bible as.

But that's not what the Bible claims to be; it's not what the church believed the Bible to be. The Bible is simply a library of books that have been well copied and in eventually translated into many languages, and the competence of the copyists and of the translators determines the quality of the product. Now, the thing I'm saying is even though there's many variants in the manuscripts, say of the New Testament, thousands of variants, that's only because there's thousands of copies.

There's over 5,000 copies of the Greek New Testament that have come down to us through the ages, and there's like I think something like 3,000 early Latin versions. And you can look at all of them, and some people do. There's a whole science called textual criticism. And a textual critic is a scholar who looks at all the manuscripts and compares them and sees how much they are alike and how much they differ and where the likely changes may have come in at what point in time.

But the interesting thing is textual critics point out that the things that are different in one manuscript from another are extremely minuscule and of very little importance. Like I said, one manuscript might spell a word one way, one might misspell that word, so that's a variant. Okay, there's thousands of those kinds of mistakes that have been made, but as far as the content, it has not really changed in any appreciable way.

So if somebody's saying "I want a magic book that came down without any mistakes," well we don't have one of those for you, but why should you need one? If you're looking for history that's accurately recorded and preserved, especially the history of Jesus and the apostles, you've got it. The New Testament is a very, very accurate history, that is by all means that we can test. And so there's no reason to be discouraged about it.

If somebody says, "Yeah, but there's a whole section at the end of Mark that isn't in some of the manuscripts and it's in other manuscripts," that's true. And so I guess, you know, I don't have any problem with that fact, but if you have doubts about that section being genuine, then don't—then you don't have to read it. You don't lose the story of Jesus by not having those verses.

You see, the point is the Bible—this is a hard thing to point out to Christians. Although the Bible is true and authoritative and we get our understanding of what Jesus said and did and the apostles said from the Bible, and we have good authority for believing that those are the things Jesus and the apostles said, Christianity's not based strictly speaking on having a perfect Bible.

It's Christianity's based on Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus is the same thing today as it was for Christians before there was a Bible. There was no New Testament when the apostles walked with Jesus, nor for the centuries after it until about the end of the fourth century, we didn't have a decision even made about what all the books were that belonged in the New Testament, although all those books were around, but there were disagreements as to which belonged.

But before there was a New Testament put together for those 400 years, there were still people who followed Jesus. And there were people following Jesus before one letter or one word of the New Testament was written because Jesus is Jesus. The New Testament just gives us information about him. Now, if we say, "But this statement in Mark reads a little differently than the same statement in Luke," okay, true.

That means we may not know which of them records the actual words of Jesus, but is there a difference in the meaning? If you're looking to be anal about the books, well then you're going to get caught in the weeds. If you're looking to follow Jesus, which is the only thing that Christianity is concerned with, following Jesus, you can certainly find out what he taught even if in one record of his sermon, let's say in Matthew, a statement is made in slightly different words than it's recorded in Luke.

Okay, fine. If I want to get all tied up in knots about that, I won't be following Jesus. I just want to know what did Jesus say, what did he mean, what did he stand for, what did he do, how can I follow him, and we have in the Bible more than enough there. Now, if someone says, "Yeah, but there's problems in the Bible," okay, there's problems in the Bible, but there's no problems in Jesus.

I'm not asking you specifically to sign your life over to the canon of scripture. I do believe in the canon of scripture; I accept it just fine. But if you can't do that, then you still have to deal with Jesus. And Jesus is historically recorded accurately for us in those books, even about any parts that might be questionable as to which was the original reading of a passage, and that's the only issues that come up.

But let's just say there might be some points where we're not sure what the original reading of the passage was. So what? It doesn't prevent us from knowing what Jesus stood for, what he commanded, certainly 97% at least of the New Testament scholars tell us is pretty much the same in all the versions. And that's true even in all the English versions. There's very little difference in the meanings; it's just that some translators want to word it a little differently to make it clearer, they think.

And I'm not saying all the English versions are equally good; I don't think they all are, but they're all good enough. You can, if you want to follow Jesus, you can certainly find out who he is and what he taught from any Bible out there. And so if the unbeliever is saying, "Well, I can't be a Christian because Christians have to think that the Bible came down to us without any errors," well where did Christianity ever teach that?

I don't remember Christianity ever teaching anything about how the Bible came down to us. And being a Christian isn't adhering to some theory about how the Bible came down to us. Being a Christian is following Jesus, the real guy, the real Jesus who really died and rose again and is reigning in heaven right now and who commands all men to repent and be his followers.

That is established in every manuscript, that is established in every translation, that is a fact and a historical fact. And so if I deal with that fact, I'll be less concerned about the word order of a sentence in one manuscript or another; I'll be much more interested in what Jesus wants me to do and believe, and that's not hard to determine with any of the Bibles that we have, whatever differences they may have from each other. All right, I appreciate Matt, thanks for your call.

Alan from Reading, Pennsylvania, welcome.

Alan: Hey, Steve, thank you for taking my call. Yes, it's Reading, Pennsylvania. I have a question for you regarding a couple I introduced about 12 years ago. They've been believers for over 30 years, and since they became a couple 12 years ago, they're living separately, but they're obviously involved in sex outside the bonds of marriage. If the subject comes up, they pretty much believe that while they're born again so they're forgiven. What would you say the Bible says about that response or that behavior?

Steve Gregg: Okay, if a person says "I know I'm sinning, but God will forgive me so I'm not going to stop sinning," they haven't been born again. When you're born again, God changes your heart. And that change is from a disobedient heart to an obedient heart. It doesn't mean you're perfect, but it means that you are determined to live for Christ. You're determined to live for God, and you're not going to be living in sin if you know better.

Now, there are Christians who don't know much and they probably live in some measure of sin without even knowing they're doing it, and I guess in times of ignorance, God winks. But people who are in ignorance don't talk that way. They don't say, "We know we're doing the wrong thing, but God will forgive us." See, they're saying, "We're going to do what's wrong and what we know is wrong and just count on the grace of God to be real sloppy here about righteousness and holiness."

God's grace is not sloppy; it's not greasy. He commands all men everywhere to repent, to be followers of Christ, and Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord and you don't do what I say?" Now, obviously having sex in a relationship outside of marriage is contrary to the teaching of Christ and of God in the Bible. And if they don't know that, then they need to be told that.

But apparently they do know that, because if they didn't know that they wouldn't talk that way. You see, if you said, "Hey, it's a sin for you to live in the way you're living," and they said, "We're not sure that's true, we've been reading the Bible, we don't really—that's not how we understand it." Well, they may be in the wrong, but they're not maybe in rebellion. But if they say, "Yeah, yeah, we know the Bible forbids this, but we just count God will forgive us," yeah, then they're just like a pagan. They're just like a pagan; they're just living in sin and hoping they can get away with it.

In their case, unlike a pagan, the pagan hopes they can get away with it because they figure there's no God. In the case of these people, they know there's a God, but they hope he's going to be real lenient toward people who thumb their nose at him and who say, "I don't care what you think, God, we're going to do what we want and you just better forgive me."

So that, yeah, I really have no reason to believe these people are really born again, because as I say, the Bible talks about being born again and God puts writes his laws on your heart. He takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh, and he says he gives his Spirit so that and makes you walk in his ways. That's what it says in Ezekiel 36:25-27. That's of course what Jeremiah said about the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-34. These are the things the Bible says.

The church sometimes preaches a greasy grace message, but those pastors who teach it will answer to God for the souls that are lost under their teaching because of their errors and they should really rethink that. I appreciate your call, brother. Let's talk quickly to Anthony in Monroe, Connecticut. Hi, Anthony. Welcome.

Anthony: Hey, Steve. My question today is why do you think the religious leaders who turned Jesus Christ into the authorities—why do you think they just simply didn't believe that he was the Son of God, the Messiah? I mean after all the miracles he has done and performed and all the followers he had, why didn't they just simply believe him?

Steve Gregg: Well, they were able to convince themselves that he was not the Messiah for two reasons. One was they expected the Messiah to do things he didn't do. And the other was they didn't want him to be the Messiah. They were looking for a Messiah that would behave differently than Jesus was acting. They wanted a militant Messiah that would drive out the Romans, that would liberate Israel, and one that would be on their side.

Jesus came and he was critical of the leaders. He was critical of the Pharisees and the chief priests; in fact, he condemned them. So they weren't really happy about that kind of a Messiah. And Jesus made no effort to rout the Romans, so they weren't happy about that either. So he wasn't what they were hoping the Messiah would be, and so they could convince themselves that he wasn't the Messiah.

Because they had expectations for the Messiah, namely that he'd bring all the diaspora of Israel back to the land and that they'd be an independent people, they wouldn't be under the heel of the Romans. In fact, rather, all the nations would be under Israel's heel, under the Messiah, and Jesus just didn't conduct himself that way and he was highly critical of those in leadership—not of the Romans, he wasn't highly critical of the Romans; he was highly critical of the Jewish leaders.

So he didn't make many friends among them. And largely the people who did follow Christ were those who had less to lose. The chief priests and scribes and Pharisees had a lot to lose if Jesus had become universally acclaimed king in Israel. They knew that he wouldn't pick them to be his cabinet. They were in charge; they had political power at the moment. But if he was recognized as Messiah and king, they would no doubt be ousted. They could tell he wasn't on their side.

And so it was a political thing for them; it was a power grab. And also, of course, for many of them, it's probably just a moral rejection of his ways. I mean, just like anyone else, even if there's no power to be gained by rejecting him, sometimes people just don't want to do what he said because they want to do something else. And that would be the majority of people, I would think.

So there are reasons why they chose not to believe he was the Messiah and to try to kill the messenger instead of submitting to the message. That's how I understand their motivation. Of course, I'm not in their shoes. We are told that at one point they recognized who he was, but they just blanked it out. They just didn't want him to be.

It's like in the story that you read in—Jesus told the story at the end of Matthew 21 about the vinedressers who saw the son of the owner coming and they knew it was the son, and said, "Let's kill him so we can keep our position here." It says when Jesus told that story, says the Pharisees and scribes, they knew he was speaking about them. So they recognized themselves in these corrupt tenants of the vineyard who actually knew when they saw the son, they knew he was the son, but didn't want him to be and didn't want to surrender to him, didn't want to give up their position, so they killed him.

That would appear to be Jesus' way of revealing their motivation in that very point you're asking about. That's in the final paragraphs of Matthew 21, the parable of the vinedressers. All right, I'm sorry, I'm out of time for the day. I wish I was not; we have more people waiting. Perhaps we can talk to you tomorrow if you call in. You're listening to the Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to help us pay for the radio time, that's how we stay on the air. You can write to the Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593 or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.