The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live each weekday at this time for an hour of commercial-free interaction live with our audience. If you want to call in during this hour, we'd be glad to hear from you. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith that you'd like to raise for conversation, we'll be very happy to address whatever you bring up along those lines.

Likewise, if you have a difference of opinion from the host and want to bring that up for conversation, we always welcome that as well. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now just now the lines all lit up and it looks like all of our lines are now full, but you can try a little later and lines will be opening up throughout the hour. So keep trying. The number is 844-484-5737. And I don't suppose I have anything I need to announce, so we'll just go right to the phone lines and talk to Margaret in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Margaret, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Female): Thank you. I would like to ask about the passage that God does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance. What does that mean of repentance of deeds, what you're doing or how you're thinking? Or was it mostly to the Jews who had kept the law, and then would it also include surrendering all your time, things, life, and everything to God?

Steve Gregg: The Bible in the New Testament portrays a stark new reality that did not exist before Jesus came, namely that He is now the King of kings and Lord of lords. When He came out of the tomb, He announced to His disciples that all authority, which means the right to rule, has been given to Him. All authority in heaven and earth. So there's no realm in the universe over which He is not assigned the rightful ruler.

What that means, of course, is that every human being, as well as everything else in the universe, is under His authority, under His rule. Now, of course, that means that human beings as individuals can fall into one of two categories. There's not a category of those who are under His authority and those who are not, because He has authority over everything in heaven and earth. So everyone is under His rulership.

But there are two categories. There are those who embrace His rulership happily and serve Him and follow Him as their King, and there's those who rebel against His rulership and will not serve Him, will not follow Him, and do not respect His kingship over them. That's the two kinds of people there are.

In the New Testament, the church, the Christian body, is made up of those who have surrendered and embraced Christ as their King. And the rest of the world, anyone who's not done so, is a rebel against the crown. There's of course ultimate threats of judgment at the end of the world when the rebels are rounded up and judged for the deeds if they do not repent.

Now, you quoted from 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9, where it says that God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Repentance in the New Testament is essentially just a synonym for being converted, for coming to Christ. Repentance, the word itself in the Greek, means to change your mind.

Of course, what does one have to change his mind about? Well, about reality. The reality is that there is a King. There's another King, Jesus is the King of everyone. Now, if I have not acknowledged that, if I have been anything other than a rebel against that, then I need to change my mind and say, "Wait a minute. I've been against Him. I've been opposing His rule over my life. I can either keep doing that or I can turn around and change."

Repentance is where you change. You change your mind. You say, "Okay, it's no longer going to be that I serve my own agenda and pretend like I belong to myself. I don't belong to myself. The whole universe belongs to Jesus Christ and is subject to His rule and to His judgment ultimately. So I'm going to align my thinking and align my life with that reality."

So you turn around. You change your mind. That's what the word repent means. Now, sometimes the Bible talks about conversion in terms of believing. Sometimes the term repent is used, sometimes even being baptized is used as a synonym for being converted. But the point is all these things. In the early church, when somebody became a Christian, they did all these things. They believed, they repented, they were baptized, and so forth.

They obeyed. Sometimes those who are Christians are referred to as those who obey Him, as when Peter told the Sanhedrin that He has given His Holy Spirit to those who obey Him. Or when it says in Hebrews that He is the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him. Now, obeying Him, believing in Him, having turned from your old way and following Him, being baptized, these are all things that took place when a person became a Christian in the first century.

Now, the Gospel has been watered down so much in the intervening centuries. We went through the Catholic period in Western civilization, then the Reform period, and so forth. Now we're in the modern American evangelical era and obviously there's been a lot of messing around with the message that was in the New Testament.

When you go back to the New Testament, you find out what Jesus and the apostles said constitute salvation. It is when you have repented of your rebellion against King Jesus and redefined yourself as one who is subject to His kingship and taking that seriously. You are now in line with reality instead of under a delusion and ignorance.

So repent is simply a term that means to change your mind. That's the literal meaning. But it's a term that's used in the scripture as a synonym for being converted. And what it is you're changing your mind about is who's in charge. You see, before a person has become a real Christian, they still are thinking they're in charge.

Now, sometimes people who have gone forward at an altar call, said a sinner's prayer, even been baptized, go to church, they're still living as though they think they're the ones in charge. So they haven't changed their mind yet. They have jumped through hoops, religious hoops, but they haven't changed their mind. Their minds are still opposed to God, which means they're not converted.

This is when Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 9 that God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. He means that God wants all people to be converted because the opposite of being converted is perishing. Those are the two options. John contrasts these things too, using a slightly different word than repent. He uses the word believe in John 3:16. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him would not perish.

So perishing is what happens when a person's not converted. Believing, repenting, these are the things that the Bible uses those terms to convey the idea of having come to Christ and basically acknowledged who He is in your life and done so seriously. So that's what I believe Peter is saying. He's just saying kind of the same thing that many other passages of scripture say. The main thing He's saying in this particular passage is that God really wants everyone to be saved, and that is also stated in other places in the Bible.

Guest (Female): I see. So when somebody just says that they want Jesus to be my savior, that would not be the same, right, as repenting?

Steve Gregg: Well, it depends on what they mean by Savior. If they mean, and I think a lot of American evangelicals, when they say "Jesus is my Savior," what they mean is when I stand before God after I die, Jesus is going to stand up for me and say "Let him come on through, let her come on through, Father. They said a sinner's prayer. They believed in me. Therefore they're saved from the alternative," which in their mind would be hell.

Now, there is a hell and there is a heaven, and indeed people who are saved end up in heaven and not in hell. But the Bible doesn't usually, actually never, uses the word saved to be contrasted with going to hell. There's no reference to the word salvation in connection to going to heaven instead of going to hell.

Instead, salvation is salvation from, and depending on which passage you look at, there's lots of passages that talk about salvation. In Matthew chapter 1, a person is saved from their sins. Okay, so I'm a slave of my sins until I'm rescued from that slavery. But once I have been rescued from the slavery of sins, I don't serve sin anymore. I serve my rescuer.

If we say "I believe Jesus is my Savior, I'm trusting Jesus as my Savior," if I only mean "I'm not going to change anything about my life at all, but I'm trusting that at the day of judgment He's going to get me through," there's no biblical passage that conveys that concept and there's no thought like that in the Bible that we know of that the early church would have ever considered to be relative to their preaching.

But rather, I'm in trouble with God because I'm a slave of sin. You have to either be a slave of God or a slave of sin. And if I repent, it means I'm choosing to be a slave of God, not a slave of sin, because I've been bought with a price and I'm not my own. If I think I'm my own, I'm deluded and I'm still a slave of sin.

So salvation, if Jesus is my Savior, He's going to save me from my sins. Paul says we've also been saved from our aimless course of life and that's another thing we're saved from. But the idea is if Jesus is my Savior, that means He's going to save me from the lifestyle of self-centered rebellion against God that I had before. I'm saved out of that lifestyle, not just the consequences of it. It's a salvation from the enemy itself, not from what God's planning to do to me because of what the enemy does to me.

Anyway, I realize people have a very different idea than this of salvation. Sometimes they just think being saved means I've got a ticket now that means on the day of judgment I'll flash that ticket out. I've got the stamp on my hand that says I paid my fees, or Jesus paid them, so I'm going to have admittance through the gates. The Bible does not talk about salvation that way anywhere that I'm aware of, and I've read it a lot of times.

So believing that Jesus is your Savior, if you mean by that He's saving me from my sins by becoming my new master instead of sin being my master, that's good as long as you mean it. Now, the Bible doesn't ever talk about accepting Jesus as your personal savior. That's an American evangelical talking point cliché. Accept Jesus as your personal savior. Jesus is never referred to in the Bible as a personal Savior. He's called the Savior, of course, and many other things He's called as well. But the idea of a personal Savior, "I accept Jesus as my personal Savior," that kind of language is absolutely foreign from scripture. Very common in American evangelicalism, but absolutely absent from scripture.

Now, you become a Christian when you embrace Christ as your Lord and your King. And that's what Paul said in Romans 10:9. He said, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved," which means He'll be your Savior then. He becomes your Savior at the same time that you confess Him and acknowledge Him as your Lord.

And so He's both. He's Lord and Savior. And thank God, we need a Savior. We also need a better Lord than ourselves. And so God has provided both for us in Christ. And you don't accept Him as your Savior at one point and then as your Lord another time. There's only one Jesus. There's not two Jesuses. There's not a Jesus who's a Savior who you can accept today and later consider whether you're going to accept this other Jesus who's the Lord. No, there's one Jesus, Lord and Savior. You get one Jesus, you get a Lord and a Savior. If you don't have a Lord and Savior, you don't have Jesus.

So anyway, I realize churches have talked differently about it than this, and I do believe some people have truly gotten saved. I believe I did when I was a child. I heard the language, "accept Jesus into your heart as your personal savior." And although that language doesn't convey anything I know of in the Bible, I realized that I did have to come to Christ. I did have to take Jesus seriously in my life.

So sometimes when the Gospel is preached in words that are very inadequate to express the idea, God still works in the heart of the recipient to surrender to Christ in a real way that saves. So I know a lot of people out there listening right now, when somebody led them to Christ, they just said "here, say this prayer, accept Jesus into your heart." And they might think, "Oh, now Steve, you're saying that doesn't save you." Well, no, nothing saves you except Jesus. If when you came to Christ, you did business with God seriously and said, "Okay, I've been a rebel against you. I'm now your servant. I've been purchased, I've been bought with a price. I gladly serve you and love you for the rest of my eternity," then that's then you were converted. And it doesn't really matter whether people gave you all those words or not, if that's what you were doing, if that's what was happening in you, and if your life since then has shown that you meant it. Then I have no doubts that you're a Christian regardless how badly somebody worded the thing or how unbiblically they did. Sister, I hope that's helpful to you and I do appreciate your call. It's a very sincere call, I'm sure. Let's talk to Jim from Hayward, California next. Jim, welcome.

Guest (Male): Yes, Steve, good to talk to you again. As you may guess from my location, I'm once again somewhat hospitalized.

Steve Gregg: I think you've been hospitalized for the last several years that you've been calling me. Well, I'm glad you're still alive.

Guest (Male): Yes, I have. By the way, your producer will be sending you my new telephone number so you'll have it. Okay, what I'm going to ask you is, I don't know if you're familiar with my late Uncle Paul who was chair of evangelism and professor of hermeneutics and homiletics at Liberty University?

Steve Gregg: No, but what's your question, brother?

Guest (Male): Okay, what I'm going to ask you is, he taught that—I'm quoting him now—"all means all, that's all all means" in terms of interpreting scripture. So then my question goes to what the previous caller was talking about. What do you believe Peter's meaning when he says "God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance"?

Steve Gregg: Yeah, that's a good point because certainly it strikes at the very core of a division in Protestant thinking, and Protestant versus Catholic thinking as well. And that is, of course, in the Reformation, especially the theology of John Calvin, it was argued that God really isn't interested in saving everybody because He is sovereign and He chooses who He's going to save, and man has no free choice in the matter because man is dead in trespasses and sins and therefore has no way of responding to God, Calvin said.

And therefore, God has to unilaterally and unconditionally elect to save some people. And therefore, due to the outworking of the sovereign purposes of God, those who get saved are simply the ones that God elected to be saved. And those who are lost in the end are the ones that God elected to be lost. In other words, it has very little or nothing to do with the free will of man. This was determined for every person before the world began.

In other words, before you were born or I was born, according to Calvinists, God already had decided whether you or I would get saved. And if He didn't decide that we would, we can't. And if He did decide that we would, we can't not. In other words, it's all set. Our fate and our decisions about this are set in stone before we're born. That's Calvinism. That's their doctrine of predestination.

Now, what would they do with a passage like 2 Peter 3:9 that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance? Well, according to them, nobody can come to repentance unless God makes them do it and has predetermined that they would do it, and predetermined this before they were born. Okay, so that would mean that God really doesn't want all to repent because if He wanted all to repent, they would, according to Calvinism.

God's will is the only will in the universe apparently, and man's will has no role to play. So if someone doesn't get saved, it's because God didn't want them to be saved. But Peter says God wants all to be saved. So what do we do with that "all"? Well, Calvinists will say that He means all the elect. God's not willing that any of the elect would perish, but that all of the elect would be saved.

Now, that's obviously sticking words into a passage that doesn't contain them. And this is a bit problematic because if we're dealing with a theological controversy like this, we shouldn't be doing eisegesis where we stick words into the Bible that we wish were there because it would help us out. No, exegesis is what we should be doing. We should be looking at the passage, what does it say and in the context and so forth, what does it mean?

Now, the context of the Bible often says that Jesus died for everybody. In Hebrews it says that He tasted death for every man. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, it says that Jesus desires all men to be saved and that He gave Himself a ransom for all. So very clearly the Bible teaches, and we just referred to three different authors now, that God wants everyone to be saved. And that's what Peter says.

So that would really raise some problems, I would think, for the Calvinist idea that God doesn't want everyone to be saved. Because they say everybody that God wants to save, He does save, and nothing can stop Him because He's sovereign. Now, the Bible doesn't teach that. But that's the starting, underlying proposition of Calvinism.

God's sovereignty means He does everything He wants to and nothing prevents it, and everything He wants to, to them, means meticulous providence, that God wants to be involved micromanaging everything. And so every decision a person makes is something He preordained for them to make, which means that nobody is really playing this game except Him. It's like He's playing a game of chess against Himself and He's already decided what pieces are going down, which pieces are going to be surviving, who's going to win and so forth.

Which is possible. I mean, if a guy is very lonely and sets up a chess set, He can play both parts if He wants to. God is sovereign. He can do whatever He wants to. But the point is that God says in the Bible there's things He doesn't want that do happen and things that He does want that don't happen. He doesn't want anyone to perish, but some do. He does want all people to repent, but some don't.

So the Calvinist idea about this, I think, falls short. The other view, of course, is usually called Arminianism, which teaches that God's will is to save all who will come to Him, all who will repent and believe, all who will embrace Christ. And He has already predetermined that those who do so—He didn't predetermine who would, but He predetermined that whoever does will be conformed to the image of His Son, it says in Romans 8:29.

It's predestined for believers to become eventually like Jesus. But the Bible doesn't anywhere say that God predestined who would become a believer. That's not in the Bible. And so this is where the difference is. And the word "all," your uncle said "all means all." The word "all" does mean all, but it's used hyperbolically and it's also used within certain contexts.

The Calvinists, of course, don't believe that "all" means all in the passage we're talking about because it says that God wants all to come to repentance, but Calvinists don't believe that God really wants everyone to come to repentance, only all the elect. So they would add a restrictive context for that. Now, sometimes that can be done. Sometimes that has to be done.

In this case, it doesn't. But I mean, there are cases where like one of the plagues of Egypt wiped out all the cattle in Egypt and then one of the later plagues wiped out some more of them. Well, wait a minute, they all got wiped out in one plague. How did some more of them get wiped out later if they were all wiped out? Well, all is often a hyperbole. That is, it just means a very, very large percentage, a very large number with very few exceptions. We sometimes use hyperboles that way too.

So I mean, "all," when we say does all mean all like every last one? I think we'd have to say let's take that case by case in context because for example it says in John chapter 3 it says "no one receives Christ's testimony." And then the next verse says, "but those who do receive his testimony have confirmed that God is true." Now, okay, so it said "no one," meaning all people reject His testimony. But then says, "but the ones who don't reject it, they have set to their seal that God is true."

So a lot of times there's these sweeping hyperboles in scripture as well as elsewhere. We use them frequently ourselves. So in understanding when "all" means literally every last one and when it doesn't, we pretty much have to look at the context. But a clear writer will give enough in the context to let you know when he's using the word in an absolute literal sense and when he's not.

Jim, I appreciate your call very much. I'm glad you're still in the land of living, though you've been in the hospital for so many years. I guess my producer will give me your phone number. Thanks for calling, Jim. God bless you. You're listening to the Narrow Path. We are going to take a brief break, then we have another half hour to come. So don't go away. We'll be taking phone calls all the next half hour as well on the air.

But at this point, I just want to tell you that the Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. If you'd like to help us out, probably the best way, easiest way, is to go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com. There's a tab that says "donations." Everything's free there, so you can take anything you want without donating. But if you want to donate, go there. thenarrowpath.com at the donate box. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

The Narrow Path is one feature of the teaching ministry of Steve Gregg. Steve's philosophy of teaching is to educate, not indoctrinate his listeners. He believes that Christians should learn to think for themselves about the Bible and not be dependent on him or any other teacher for their convictions. We hope to teach Christians how to think, not what to think about the Bible.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We've had a half hour behind us, we have another half hour ahead of us. We're taking calls. Our lines are full, but if you want to try a little later, you might get through because lines do open up. The number is 844-484-5737. If you want to get through, we'd love to talk to you. Brad in Vancouver, British Columbia, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I just have a couple passages that I'm just having trouble seeing how they relate to each other. It's Philippians 1:15-18 and Matthew 7:13-23. So Philippians is where he's speaking about people preaching the Gospel with bad motives, and yet Paul is still happy about that. And then Matthew 7, talking about "narrow is the path and broad is the path that leads to destruction." Just in my experience, when a preacher has some difficulty with their character or their integrity, when people find that out, it actually leads people away from the Gospel. It causes them to reject the message of Christ. And also, could it be that in preaching in not good faith, are they leading them down a wider path than that that leads to the kingdom of Christ?

Steve Gregg: Paul doesn't tell us exactly what the features were of the message that these people in Philippi were preaching. He said that because of his imprisonment at that time, many others who were not imprisoned, Christians, were emboldened to preach the Gospel. He said many of them do it out of goodwill, though some of them are doing it for less than admirable motives. They do it out of strife and envy or something.

And so in other words, he said there are people preaching the Gospel, but they're not all doing it for the right reasons. However, he says, "However, I can rejoice that the Gospel is preached even if it's not being preached by for the best motives." Now, that doesn't change the fact that the way is narrow. Paul is not saying that these people who are preaching for bad motives are real Christians or that they're going to heaven or anything like that. They might be, because unfortunately Christians have been known to have poor motives at times. I mean, they could be real Christians, but it may be that they're immature and their motives and their hearts aren't as pure as they should be.

Perhaps the fact that they are preaching the Gospel anyway indicates that they still have a bit of a heart for God. Or it may mean that they don't. Because you mention Matthew 7, Jesus talks about people who say, "We prophesied in your name," and he's going to say, "I never knew you." So in other words, there are people who speak for Christ in his name who aren't really Christians.

Now, Paul when he's in Philippians, when he mentions that some people were preaching the Gospel for bad motives, he doesn't say whether he thinks they're saved or not. They may not be. But if they're preaching the same Gospel he preached, well, the word will get out even if it should have gotten out by better people. I mean, I think he's just saying, I'm not glad about these people's motivation. He's not even saying that he believes they're saved. But he says I'm glad the Gospel's being preached. I'm glad that even though I'm locked up, the Gospel's not locked up. There's still people preaching.

Obviously I think it goes without saying these people who are preaching with poor motives, it'd be much better if they preached with proper motives. But he's not getting into that. He's not making a personal judgment of those people about their souls or their salvation. He's just saying at least they're preaching the Gospel. Now, again, he's not saying that salvation is a broad gate. It may very well be that in Paul's own mind, these people who are preaching the Gospel for wrong motives are going to be among those people who on the day of judgment will say, "Lord, we prophesied in your name," and he'll say, "I never knew you," and they didn't enter the narrow gate.

So he's not pronouncing on their own spiritual conditions. It may very well be that Paul doesn't know these people personally, or maybe he does. But he's not putting himself in the position to be the judge of whether they're saved or not. Remember in Romans chapter 14, he says, "Who am I to judge another man's servant? To his own lord, to his own master he stands or falls." And of course he's saying that there are people who are serving God who will probably fall in the judgment because they weren't doing it for the right reasons or they didn't really love the Lord or whatever.

But Paul says, "That's not mine to judge. I'm not here to judge what their souls are like. I'm just here to say at least they're preaching the Gospel." Now, I'm going to have to think that they are probably preaching the Gospel rightly in a way. I mean, their motives may have been bad, but I doubt that they were preaching another gospel because Paul on two other occasions, in Galatians chapter 1 and in 2 Corinthians 11, he said that there's such a thing as another gospel.

In Galatians 1, he said that the Galatians have received another gospel different than the one he preached. And in 2 Corinthians 11, he says, "I'm afraid for you that if someone brings another gospel, you might accept it." So Paul would not be tolerant of a wrong gospel, and he wouldn't rejoice that it was being preached. So I'm going to have to say that the people preaching were apparently preaching the true Gospel, but they weren't the best people to be preaching it.

You know, there are people who have learned how to enunciate the Gospel, but their lives are not the best testimony to it. But he believes in the power of the Gospel itself. He's in Romans 1, he says the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. And he's not saying that that fails to be true if it's got a very unworthy preacher preaching it. There's power in the Gospel itself. So I'm not—I don't see him contradicting because he's not saying something different than what Jesus said. Jesus said there'd be false prophets who speak in his name and Paul might even be identifying some of them. He said I'm glad the Gospel's being preached, but he's not saying I have confidence that these people are good Christians and they're going to be saved. So there's not a contradiction. Those are two different statements in the Bible that might round out the picture. Okay, Brad? Thanks for your call. All right, let's talk to Fred from Alameda, California. Fred, welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi, yes. In the book of Job, Job was infected with a skin disease and it says that the Lord allowed Satan to do that. So I don't really understand that. Does the devil—because I kind of doubt this—does the devil really have power over a human body to cause illness? Because that's like a lot of power, but does he really have the power to do that?

Steve Gregg: Well, yeah, I mean, there's people in the Bible who had demons and the demons made them blind and mute. Now, being blind and mute are physical conditions, we would call them disabilities, and yet there are demons that are able to inflict people with that. There was a woman, a woman was apparently severe scoliosis and couldn't stand up straight, and Jesus said she'd been bound by Satan and he set her free from it.

In Acts chapter 10, Peter is preaching in the household of Cornelius and summarizing Jesus' ministry for him and he says that Jesus was a man who went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, he said. So the people Jesus healed were oppressed by the devil. So yeah, I believe that physical sickness is within the realm of things the devil can inflict people with.

Now, the story of Job indicates that Satan couldn't do that without God's permission. That's the point. It, you know, in Job chapter 1, verse 10, before any afflictions were brought on Job, Satan was trying to bargain with God to let him get at him and hurt Job. And in Job 1:10, Satan says, "Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side?" In other words, I can't get at him. You've surrounded him with a protective hedge, not only him, his kids, everything he has. It's all protected.

But then Satan asked God to give him, Satan, access to test Job with these—he basically said if you let me take these things from him, then he'll curse you to your face. And so the test was on and God allowed Satan to do some limited damage to Job. I mean, it was very great damage, but still limited it. He said, "You can take his stuff but you can't touch his body." And then secondarily the devil came in chapter 2 and asked for more access and so God said, "Okay, you can touch his body, that is you can make him sick, but you can't kill him."

So the book of Job makes it very clear that the devil can do all kinds of harm, but he can't do any harm to God's people unless God sees fit to allow it. Yeah, okay, yeah. That makes sense. All right, brother, thanks for your call. Let's talk to Robert in Sacramento, California. Robert, welcome.

Guest (Male): Yes sir, I have two questions. One is regarding tithing and the other one is, I'm not going to a church right now because they have a woman pastor and the word of God says that a woman should not lead the church and I'm torn in my spirit because they're good people but they're not lined up with the word of God right now.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well that's sad. Well, tell me what your question is about tithing first of all. What would your question be?

Guest (Male): Tithing is—you know, I heard from a Miles Munroe, you know, he gave me the scripture prescription to prove that tithing is not a part of our obligation in the new covenant. And I just need to know where that stands. I mean, not that I wouldn't give the Lord what's due to him, but you know, if it's man's mandate, I want to be able to give what I can afford to give.

Steve Gregg: Right, yeah. Well, I have many differences from Miles Munroe, the late Miles Munroe, God rest his soul, but I agree with him on that one statement. I agree that tithing is an Old Testament obligation that is never imposed in the New Testament. Which means that Christians—there's no biblical obligation imposed on Christians to tithe.

Now, for those who, I want to make sure people aren't confused because I've heard people say, "Oh, well then I don't have to give anything to God, right?" Well, no, that's not what I'm saying. The word tithe is an Old English word that really refers to a tenth, 10%, a tenth. And in the Old Testament, God imposed a tax, a religious tax, on the people of Israel which would be a 10% of their gross national product of grain which they would then bring to the temple and it would be used to keep alive the Levites.

So it's just like in our—we have a secular government. In the Bible, Israel was a religious one. But in a secular government, there's people who work full-time in the administration of the government and there's taxes and those taxes, their salaries come out of those taxes. Israel didn't have quite that same situation, but they had a temple which was at the center of their identity as a nation and they had temple staff who were priests and Levites and these were full-time workers keeping the temple going and so the rest of the tribes of Israel had to give a tenth of what they produced to keep these people alive and keep the temple running.

Now, we don't have that happening here now. I mean, we do have a temple in the sense that we are living stones built up into a spiritual temple. That is all people. This temple in the New Testament is people and it's comprised of everyone who's a Christian, the whole body of Christ worldwide is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So if we were to give money let's say to the counterpart of the Old Testament temple, that would mean giving money to support any Christian who's part of that temple.

And of course, one should wisely, if you're going to give, give to actual needs, you know, not just frivolous things because what the New Testament teaches is that everything we own belongs to God and we are stewards of what He has entrusted to us. So someday when He comes back, He's going to ask us how we managed His goods, whether we used the things He entrusted with us in the ways that He wanted them used, specifically helping the poor and spreading the Gospel.

Those are the two things the Bible says He wants the money used for. And so it's going to be very important when we stand before God to be able to point out, "Yeah, I mean, you gave me a lot but I used as much as I could to help the poor. I used as much as I could to spread the Gospel. I lived on the amount that I felt was reasonable to support my family and so forth because that's reasonable. But beyond that, I didn't feather my nest, I didn't live luxuriously, I basically took your money, God, and used it on things that you say are important to you and to spread your kingdom."

So that's what stewardship means. That nothing we have really belongs to us. It all belongs to God and we've been entrusted in this lifetime to use it for what He would have it used for. So when He comes back, according to a couple of parables Jesus taught, He's going to say, "Okay, what'd you do with my stuff?" And the servants who can say, "Oh, I used your stuff to profit you more," are going to be—He'll say "Well done, good and faithful servant" and He'll entrust them with more responsibility in the next life.

So tithing isn't really part of that. Now, many churches because they many times assume that their church, their organization, their 501(c)(3) is the temple, I suppose, and that the employees of the church are like the Levites, they would say "Well, today we need to give a tithe of our income to the church to support the building and the staff and all that stuff."

Well, I mean, I will say this: as a steward of what God has given me, I do believe I should not take advantage—for example, if I go to church regularly and I don't give anything to that church, then I'm benefiting from the ministries of the people there. I'm sitting in their air-conditioned building at their expense, you know, repairs and stuff have to be done. I mean, if I'm going to the church and benefiting from it, it's—there's nothing wrong with my participating in its upkeep and in its expenses. But there's nothing in the Bible that says 10% of what I have should go there.

In fact, God might in some cases, because the church is very poor, lead me to give 50% of my income to them. If the church is very wealthy and, you know, I'm not as impressed as I would like to be with what they're doing with the money, I might give them less than 10%. The point is there's no percentage that the Bible dictates for us to give to the church. We are stewards.

If you know some working poor people, godly people, who simply are having a hard time making ends meet—maybe there's a health crisis in their family, a financial crisis, they've lost their job, they're homeless or whatever—for you to use your money, or I should say God's money which you possess, to help them out is helping God. Jesus said, "Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you've done it to me."

So our stewardship should be actually the helping of actual people. The church, after all, is people. It's not a building. The church is made of living stones, not bricks and mortar. So to give to God's work is to give to people. And giving to people should be to people who have need. And we should, of course, be wise about that because sometimes you give to people who have needs and their needs, they're in need because they're irresponsible. You're just enabling them to live in an irresponsible lifestyle. You shouldn't give there because the Bible says whoever doesn't work shouldn't eat.

But the point is there are people who are really genuinely in need. Helping them out is giving to God. And also, of course, giving to missionaries or ministries or whatever that preach the Gospel, that's also giving to God. That's what I would regard as good stewardship. That's how, that's where my giving goes. My giving goes to ministries that help the poor and that preach the Gospel.

Now, as far as woman pastor, yeah, I can't disagree with you. The Bible does say that women should not be in that role. I don't know if it's the very worst thing a church can do, because by the way, I know churches that have men in the pastorate and they're no more qualified than women are because they don't meet the qualifications for eldership. Paul's very exacting about eldership qualifications in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and in Titus chapter 1.

In fact, those are the passages from which we get the idea that women shouldn't be pastors. But we also find there that most of the men in the church don't qualify to be pastors either. And so I don't know if it's any better to have an unqualified man or a woman in the pastorate. Both are sub-ideal, both are sub-normal. I think churches should be led by groups of male elders because that's how Paul set things up, that's how Paul said it should be. There are no doubt are places where there isn't enough qualified people to do that. In which case, suppose a church doesn't have qualified elders, then maybe they should break up and join another church that has them or just ask God to somehow provide them.

But yeah, I agree with you. I would probably never join a church or regularly attend a church where they allow women to be pastors, not because I have anything against women. I've actually sat under women preaching on many occasions and sometimes thought they did a pretty good job. But it's not that I would have trouble sitting under a woman, it's that I wouldn't want to be part of a church that took the Bible so lightly.

Because the Bible is very clear that women should not be in that role. And a church that says, "Well, we're going to put a woman in that role anyway," isn't the kind of church I want to be in, only not because I don't care for women—I do, I like women a lot—but because I want to be in a church that really is conscience-bound to obey scripture and doesn't want to twist scripture. See, a lot of churches say, "Well, we follow the scripture, but we interpret Paul to say that women can be elders today." Well, they're not exegeting Paul. They're imposing modern cultural norms. They're wearing the glasses of a modern American and reading the Bible through those glasses. If you're going to do that, I want to be in another church. I'd rather be in a church that read the scripture through scriptural glasses. So I hear the problem, brother, and I can understand why that's problematic. To be sure. All right, let's see. We're going to next speak to Taylor in Atlanta, Georgia. Taylor, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I heard you yesterday answer a question about second filling of the Holy Spirit and you had mentioned that you sought out someone to lay hands on you to receive that. I did. And my question was, if time permitting and all resources were available, a normative means of being born again, would that include having hands laid upon you?

Steve Gregg: No, I don't—I wouldn't put it that way. I think people could be born again if there's nobody who lays hands on them, certainly. In fact, I believe people could be born again if there's no one there to baptize them in water. Now, I believe baptism in water is mandatory. I believe that being filled with the Spirit is mandatory, if by that we mean is it optional. No, it's not optional. But that which is not optional may sometimes be unavailable.

That is to say, if a person were starving to death and dying in the desert in the middle of the Sahara and they remembered in their last day of life what their mother had told them about Christ and they surrendered to Christ truly and put their faith in Him and no one was available to baptize them and they died, I think they go to heaven. I think they'd be saved. I honestly don't think that God's going to bust them on that technicality.

Now, there are people who disagree with me. There's people who say, "Well, if you're not baptized, you're not saved. That's all there is to it." I don't see the Bible saying that. I do see the Bible talking about baptism being a part of role in salvation. But I don't see it saying that if that particular ritual is not possible to observe in the situation you're in, I don't think that God says, "Okay, well sorry, I'm going to just send you to hell even though you wanted to be my child, even though I was not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance, and you repented, but I'm still going to send you to hell anyway because you didn't get wet. You didn't get wet properly."

And I think the same thing is true with the laying on of hands. I think that being born again happens when we truly surrender our lives to Jesus Christ and trust in Him and ask Him to give us His life and His Spirit in place of our own sinful lives. We then, of course, should get baptized in water and I believe it was normal in biblical times also to have hands laid on one to be baptized with the Spirit. But if for some reason nobody's available to do those things, I believe a person can look to God Himself and be filled with the Spirit without that. And there's instances in the Bible of that happening.

Listen, I have some lectures on that. If you—we're out of time for today's show, but if you—we didn't get too deep into it right now. If you go to thenarrowpath.com, my website, look under topical lectures and find the lecture series called Charisma and Character. You'll see there's a lecture on the baptism with the Holy Spirit which I hope would be helpful to you. I'm out of time for today's program, sorry to say. You've been listening to the Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. Our address is the Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. The website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.