The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast for the beginning of another week of broadcasting. We're on Monday through Friday at this same time, an hour a day live. Live so that we can take your phone calls and we can talk to you and you can talk to us. And you can call in with questions you have about the Bible, about Christianity, any of those kinds of issues.

You can call in if you're not a Christian and want to discuss why you're not a Christian. I'm always glad to talk to people about that. You can call if you are a Christian and you disagree with the host about something and want to talk about that. So there's wide range here. If you want to join us, we have right now one line unoccupied on our switchboard. That number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

And I just want to say that in about a week, a little more than a week from right now, I'm going to be speaking at a series of gatherings in places like Fresno, California, Clovis, Oakhurst, that area up near Yosemite. If you live in that area and you're interested in coming to any of the meetings, feel free to go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Under announcements, you'll find that information.

You can join us. By the way, if you live up that way and you want to organize a meeting or set up a meeting while I'm up there, feel free to get in touch with us. We might be able to work that out. In any case, anytime I'm speaking in an area, we post it at thenarrowpath.com under announcements. So if you want to see if I'm speaking in your area and where and when, just go to there at thenarrowpath.com under announcements.

All right. Enough on that. We're going to go to the phones and talk to Rob in Merrimack, Massachusetts. Rob, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. My question is, I was in the army. My military background has taught me that there's no standard higher or lower, that there's no commands that are higher or lower. Am I wrong to apply this to Scripture? For example, John 3:16 says whoever believes has eternal life, while Matthew 6:15 says if I don't forgive others, God won't forgive me. While Matthew 7:21 says who calls me Lord enters the kingdom. Is there a hierarchy to Scripture?

Steve Gregg: Actually, in Matthew 7, it doesn't say whoever calls me Lord enters the kingdom. It says not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven. Now, none of these scriptures are in tension with each other or in contrast with each other. If you're saying, is there some kind of hierarchy of ranking of these scriptures, some are more important than others.

And by the way, I'm surprised you said that in the army you learned that there isn't. I would imagine there's a lot of hierarchy in the military, but that's not directly relevant to this question because it's not as if there's different writers of the Bible and they are in conflict with each other and you have to know who ranks highest and who to listen to and who to ignore. All the scriptures are agreeable with each other.

Of course, you're going to find contrast between the Old Covenant and the New because the New Covenant has basically superseded the Old Covenant. So many of the things that were said in the Old Covenant, it's not that they aren't high-ranking, they're just obsolete now and something newer has come, which is what is more contemporary to our duties there. So that would be the main issue.

Now in the New, everything you quoted is in the New Testament. John 3:16 says whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. That's true, but what does believing in him mean? I realize that lots of people have never given that much thought, and even those who may have given it some may not realize that believing in Jesus doesn't just mean that you heard somewhere that there was a man named Jesus and you believe it, or that you even heard that Jesus died and rose from the dead and you believe that too. That's simply mentally accepting a proposition.

In the Bible, faith in God, believing in Christ, is believing what is said about him, not just believing he existed, and what he said about himself. Certainly, what the New Testament tells us about him is that he's the Lord. He's the King. He's the final authority. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. That's his own statement in Matthew 28:18, and other statements agree throughout Scripture.

Even when Paul and Silas were asked by the Philippian jailer, "What must I do to be saved?" they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Now, Christ literally means the anointed one or the anointed King of Israel, actually the King of all things, initially of Israel, now of all things because all authority in heaven and earth is his. So you have to believe that Jesus is the anointed King. You have to believe he's the Lord, and a Lord is somebody who owns servants and who is obeyed by his servants. So if you believe those things, then it shows up in the way you live.

If somebody says, "Yeah, I believe Jesus is the King," or "I believe he's the Lord," but they don't do what he said, then they don't believe it in the way the Bible's talking about. The devils do believe those things too, but they aren't saved because they don't obey. They believe them as facts, that Jesus is the Son of God, they have no doubt about that. They even confessed it. The demons said, "We know who you are, you're the son of the Holy One, you're the Messiah." And yet they weren't saved. So believing those things as facts or as propositions isn't at all what's meant by whoever believes in him.

Believing in him is a holistic thing. It means you've become aware that Jesus is declared by God to be King and Lord, and you believe that. And that doesn't just mean you believe it in your head, it means you embrace that reality. You realize that if he is in fact King or Lord, there's only two possibilities with reference to what your relationship is with the King. If he's your King, you're either submitted to that King and living as if he's your King and if you're his subject, or you're in rebellion against the King.

Now, if you believe Jesus is the King, you're doing one of those two things. You're either subject to him, obeying him, realizing that there's no authority above him and that you're not your own, you're following a King, or you rebel. Now people in rebellion against the King, that's the other option, are rebels, they're enemies. And there's a lot of people who are enemies of Jesus, like the demons, who know he's the son of God. They even know he's the King. They don't embrace that as something significant to their behavior.

So when the Bible says whoever believes in him, it's not just a standalone verse without any context. It's in the context of what John's gospel says about Jesus and what the rest of the New Testament says and what Jesus himself said about himself. So the idea that, if you don't love one another, if you don't forgive one another, then you're not going to be forgiven, that's because if you don't forgive each other, you're not believing in Jesus because he said to do that. And if you believe he's the King and Lord, if you really believe that, that's your assignment. You accept that. You choose to obey.

And obeying him means he tells you to love. He said, "This is the great commandment I give you, love one another." And he said many times we're obligated to forgive each other. So I think maybe where you're seeing a conflict, and I probably would have seen it too when I was younger because I was in a kind of a church that didn't really explicate these things very clearly. I was raised in an evangelical church where John 3:16 was the whole story. The only answer to how do you get saved is believe in Jesus.

Yeah, but it was never really emphasized what it was about Jesus that you're supposed to believe, what it looks like to believe that. And of course, in studying the whole New Testament, it became clear it's all harmonious. There's not tension between these verses. The message of the New Testament is you need to believe on Christ as King and Lord. And the instructions in the New Testament tell us what the King and Lord commands you to do. And if you believe he's your King, you do it, or at least you endeavor to do it.

You make it your project. You make it your assignment. Now nobody obeys Christ perfectly, and God knows our flesh. He knows that the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, as Jesus said, or as it says in Psalm 103, he knows our frame, he remembers we're dust. He does know that we're not perfect, but he also knows our heart. And every person listening to me right now, their heart is in one of two possible places.

One is they have decided that their entire life and actions and choices are going to be determined by the conviction that Jesus is the King and the Lord, that they've been bought with a price, he owns them, and they've got nothing really to do in this world except to do what pleases him. And then there's the other group who don't believe that. They're still thinking, "My project in life is to find happiness for myself, do what I want to do, maybe if there's some religion in my life, maybe I'll just get a little bit of religion enough to make me feel like I'm ready for the next world but still pursue my own ways day by day." Those people are not the ones who believe in Jesus. They might say they do, but they don't believe in Jesus in the sense that the Bible's talking about.

And when you stand before God and you say, "Okay, my plea before God is that I believed in Jesus, so it'll be okay." You better make sure that believing in Jesus means the same thing to him that it means when you say it, because you don't get to make up the definitions and say, "God, you have to judge me by my definitions." No, that's why we have the New Testament, it gives us God's definitions of things. So being a Christian isn't just accepting academically that certain propositions are true. These are propositions which if they are true, they have significance, they have ramifications, there are responsibilities attached to believing these are true. And the person who takes those responsibilities seriously is the only person who really believes them.

So those verses you mentioned are all part of the whole panoply of what the Bible says about our relationship with Jesus. It is at root, at base, a relationship based on faith as opposed to based on doing religious things and rituals and things like Judaism was and like all other religions. All religions are based on rituals and stuff like that. Following Christ is not based on rituals, it's based on Jesus. He's the King, you're surrendered to him, you love him, you follow him, that's how you define your purpose for existence. And that's what every person in the Bible who was called a Christian had done. They'd made that commitment. So it's not like you have to say, "Well, which of these verses is more true or which one carries more weight?" As far as I see it, they all carry equal weight. They're all true.

Guest (Male): Yeah, see, I was concerned that if I was, since I'm new to this and if I'm following, that if I fell short in one area but I was abiding in and submitting in the other area, that I would be okay, because sometimes I get into a tailspin and other Christians will be like, "Hey, hey, relax, relax. You don't have to literally sell all your stuff. You're doing this and you're doing this and that's fine." But in a military black-and-white thinking, I'm like, no, this is clear orders right here. Like the thief on the cross wasn't asked, "Hey, did you forgive others too?"

Steve Gregg: Well, he didn't have much time after he came to faith. He didn't have much time to get things right, but we have to assume had he not died in the next hour and a half, if he had been not on a cross and had was at liberty to go clean up his affairs, he no doubt would have done it because that's what people do once they realize they're not in their hour left, hopefully, hopefully not. Well, let me just say, as far as selling all your stuff, you don't have to do that unless Jesus tells you to.

When you read that Jesus told the rich young ruler, "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor," you'll find that the guy didn't do it. If the guy had done it, that was because he was obeying what Jesus said to do. Now, he didn't tell Lazarus and his two sisters, who were also disciples, to sell everything and give to the poor. Instead, their house was offered up for hospitality to the disciples and so forth and used for other purposes. Different people have different callings. And so, yeah, everyone who's a Christian had better be ready to sell everything they have and give to the poor if that's what Jesus tells them to do. But relatively few Christians, even in biblical times, were told to do that.

When Jesus called the twelve from their fishing and from their tax collection and so forth, he just said, "Follow me." He didn't even tell them to sell everything, and apparently they didn't, because later on Peter and James and John and Andrew, they still had fishing boats. They still had nets. Their boats became transport for Jesus on the water and sometimes a pulpit for him on the water. Fishing nets they used after Jesus rose from the dead and they pulled their nets out of the mothballs and went fishing again on the sea of Galilee, so they still had them.

So we don't even find them being told to sell everything they have. And yet when the rich young ruler refused to do so and went away sorrowful, Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, we have forsaken everything. What shall we have?" And Jesus took it at face value that they had indeed forsaken everything, but they hadn't sold it. Because forsaking all, which is required of everybody, does not mean liquidating all.

It means that you are no longer claiming ownership, you now recognize it is owned by the same person who owns you, Jesus. And so your stuff is his, just like you are his. And therefore that dictates a lot to what you're going to do with the rest of your life. You're going to use whatever he gives you in his service, and if he tells you, "Hey, get rid of this," you're going to get rid of it. If he tells you that this is inappropriate for you to own, you'll get rid of it. If he tells you, "You should give this to that person or to this ministry," then you'll do it. It's just everything is his. It doesn't mean you sell everything and live on the street because now you're a really sold-out Christian, literally sold out. But it does mean that you're living your life as if you're managing somebody else's property, which is his. And so that's, again, so you say, "Well, when I read Jesus says sell all you have and give to the poor, what if I don't do that?" Well, if he doesn't call you to do that, there's no obligation to do that.

But you do have to do what all Christians are called to do, and that is transfer your whole life and everything you are and have to his ownership. Now, this is something that may not look like a religious life. You may not be called to go be a missionary or a monk or something or a pastor, but you are called to be a representative of Christ all the time. And that's the thing. But as far as what your lifestyle looks like, it's going to look like whatever God has in mind for your own personal calling, whatever he calls you to do. I appreciate your call, brother. Hope that helps a little bit.

Damian in Boise, Idaho. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for joining us. Damian, are you there? Go ahead.

Guest (Male): Yeah, appreciate your time and your ministry. It's been a blessing. I have a question on 1 Timothy chapter 5. Paul tells Timothy to not lay hands hastily. Does that apply to like altar calls? I was just thinking, "Hey, it's time for an altar call and you pray for people," does that apply to that?

Steve Gregg: No, no it doesn't. Timothy is being left in Ephesus among other things to ordain overseers in the church there. That's why Paul spends a whole chapter in that book to what are the qualifications for the overseers, who do you put in a position like that, who do you not put in a position like that, and likewise for deacons. So the church is there, Timothy's there as Paul's representative. He's not a normal pastor of a church. Actually the persons that he appoints as overseers, they're more like the pastors of the church, but he's more like Paul. He's an extension of Paul's apostolic ministry doing what Paul himself would do if he were there.

And when they did ordain people to be in leadership, they laid hands on them. You see this for example in Acts chapter 6, that when the seven servants including Stephen and Philip were chosen to distribute the goods and the food to the widows in Jerusalem, once they were chosen for that task the apostles laid hands on them, which meant they were now ordained. The laying on of hands suggests just like a transfer of authorization or of authority to do this in the name of the church or in the name of the apostles in this case. When Paul and Barnabas were sent out as missionaries, the church in Antioch in Acts 13 laid hands on them and sent them out.

In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas ordained elders in every city, almost certainly by the laying on of hands. Laying on of hands was used for a number of things. For example, Jesus and the apostles laid hands on the sick on occasion for them to be healed. The laying on of hands was also used for administering the baptism in the Holy Spirit to people in at least three different places in the New Testament. And then it was also used for ordaining or instituting church leaders or people in special ministries.

Now when Paul tells Timothy, "Do not lay hands hastily on anyone, neither be a partaker in other men's sins," what he's saying is I've already told you what the qualifications are for leaders. It's a given that you're going to lay hands on them. In fact, Paul mentions in that book that Timothy himself had received his ministry through the laying on of hands of Paul and a presbytery, probably in Lystra. But anyway, the laying on of hands in this case is referring to the commissioning of people as leaders.

And so he says don't do that hastily, neither be a partaker of other men's sins. He suggests that if you are too premature in releasing somebody into the authority of ministry, you may end up becoming responsible for the things he does wrong because you may be choosing someone who's not really qualified. The idea is make sure you know what these people are doing.

Even the deacons in 1 Timothy 3, Paul says, "Let these men be tested first and then let them serve as deacons." You don't just release somebody to be a pastor or an elder or a deacon because you've got a position to fill and these people are the only ones who haven't wheezed their way out of the pressure you put under them to take the spot. No, they have to be tested, they have to qualify. If they don't qualify you don't put them in that position, and Paul says if you do lay hands on someone too hastily, meaning they aren't well-tested, they haven't been vetted, you may be putting somebody in an authoritative position to minister in the name of Christ and the church who isn't really going to be trustworthy and they're going to end up stumbling. They may even do some serious damage to people, and then you're a partaker of their sins because you released them, you're the one who authorized them.

What they do after you've laid hands on them kind of goes back to you. I see the laying on of hands almost in this case like saying once my hands are on this person and they take off, they are an extension of my own hands. They're the extensions of my own fingers. What they do is I'm doing or I'm releasing them to do, I'm responsible for them. And that's why Paul says don't be hasty to lay hands on someone because you may end up participating in or taking on responsibility for someone else's bad behavior if you did it. So that's the meaning of that command he gives him. It's not talking about when you lay hands on somebody for healing or for the baptism of the spirit or something.

Guest (Male): Okay, thanks for that clarification. And then Steve, I just have a follow-up with that is have you ever heard of the idea, and I kind of come from more of a charismatic background, have you ever heard of the idea where like you got to be careful who you pray for because you don't know like what they've been through or they might have an evil spirit and it can maybe come oppress you? Any thoughts on that, have you heard anything like that?

Steve Gregg: I've heard people suggest that if you lay hands on a demon-possessed person, that the demon may get into you. Well, I don't think that is possible unless you're yourself pretty compromised. I don't think a demon can get mastery over a Christian unless that Christian is giving it permission somehow in their behavior, there's some kind of compromise that's opening a way for the demons to get a foothold. I believe that an uncompromised spirit-filled Christian never has to worry about being demon possessed or even losing ground to demons. But you see, you've got to be walking in faith. You've got to be walking in the authority of Christ. It's not as if now I'm a Christian, I just always have the authority of Christ.

Well, you have the authority of Christ to act in his place when you're doing what he's authorizing you to do, but that also that authority has to be accompanied with faith on your part. When Jesus sent the disciples out two by two and gave them authority to cast out demons on a short-term outreach, but later on there was a demon they couldn't cast out of a boy and they asked Jesus later after he succeeded where they failed, they said, "Why couldn't we cast it out?" and he said, "Because of your unbelief."

So, you know, not all Christians are walking in the holiness and the spirit and in the authority that Christ gives us. And, if let's just say some pastor's really compromised, maybe he's secretly a porn addict or he's got something going on with the church secretary or something that's inappropriate and then he lays hands on someone to cast demons out, I wouldn't guarantee that he won't be taken advantage of by the demon in that situation. I don't know. We don't have any record of that happening in the Bible.

But compromise in certain areas could certainly make one vulnerable, I would think. But if you're walking in holiness, if you're walking in the spirit, if you're trusting God, you should never have any doubts about confronting demons. Now frankly, in the Bible most exorcisms were not conducted by the laying on of hands, they were just by a spoken word, a confrontation. But there are, I know there's at least one place in the Bible, I don't remember the spot because there's so many references to demons being cast out the Bible. I do remember I read somewhere there is a reference to laying hands on people to cast demons out of them, which was done somewhere.

But that's not normally necessary. But if you're not compromised in your walk and someone needs prayer for healing or for baptism of spirit, you don't have to worry about if you lay hands on them, even if they're not qualified to receive the blessing, it's not going to come back on you. That's, there's not that danger except when there is, and when there is is when you're not really walking as a Christian should. That's my understanding.

Guest (Male): Awesome. Thank you, brother. God bless you.

Steve Gregg: All right, Damian. Thanks for your call. God bless you. Boy, the half hour has gone quickly. Most of our lines are full. We have one line open. We take a brief break at this point. You can call if you want, the number is 844-484-5737.

And my dear wife just gave me a note. Apparently the passage that talks about laying on of hands casting out demons is Luke 13:11 through 13. My wife is on these things much better than I am. Luke 13:11 through 13 apparently mentions the laying on of hands. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. Maybe Mark 16, well, no, Mark 16 I wouldn't use that one, verses 17-18, but the laying on of hands is there for healing and casting out demons is mentioned.

Anyway, all right, let's take a break here in about 30 seconds. We'll come back, have another half hour, don't go away. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. It's loaded with resources, they're all free. You can donate there if you want, thenarrowpath.com. Hang on for 30 seconds. We'll take more calls.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour. We've got our lines, I was going to say we had our lines full but one of them just hung up so now there's an open line at this number: 844-484-5737. A line just opened up. We're going to talk next to a Michael from Inglewood, California. Michael, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, thank you Steve. I saw another one was Luke 4:40 where Jesus laid hands and some demons came out. Good. Luke 4:40. Your last call, that was interesting because that's kind of what my question is about, and I didn't think about 1 Timothy 5:22. But I'm trying to start a church or a Bible study and one person called me Pastor Mike. And then another person asked me if I'm a pastor and I told them no, I'm not officially and I'm not an elder or a minister or anything like that. And so that kind of made me think of, I wanted to ask you, because I don't want to pay for a title. Like in my old denomination, they would basically make you pay for a title, and I don't believe in that. Pay for a title, good heavens. Go ahead.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how would you reconcile Matthew 23:8 and Philippians 2:3 with 1 Timothy 3:1?

Steve Gregg: Okay, hang on just a minute. The second is 1 Timothy 3:1, you said, right? And Matthew 23:8, call no one Rabbi. Okay. And what was the one in between? Philippians chapter 2, verses 2 and 3. Okay, got you, got you.

Okay. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in a lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. That's the verse in Philippians. Yeah, well, that certainly speaks of an attitude. What Matthew 23:8 says, and Jesus actually in the context, Jesus says to the disciples the scribes and the Pharisees in verse 6, they love the best places at the feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, the greetings in the marketplace and to be called by men "Rabbi, Rabbi." Do you know what Rabbi means? Often the meaning of the word Rabbi is said to be teacher because that's essentially what they did, they taught.

But actually the word Rabbi means "my great one." It's Aramaic for "my great one." So they love to be called "my great one, my great one." And then he says, "But you do not be called Rabbi, for one is your teacher, the Christ, and you're all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth your father." And he means by that in the sense of a religious title. He doesn't mean you can't call your dad father. He's talking about religious titles here. "Don't call anyone on earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers, for one is your teacher, the Christ."

Now by the way, that doesn't mean you can't be a teacher. It just says don't have people calling you teacher because teacher, a student of a teacher often was reverenced, and the idea was they're giving you differential title and things like that. And that's the whole teaching of Jesus. The Rabbis love to be called Rabbi. Don't have people call you Rabbi. Don't be calling religious leaders father or teacher. God is your Father, Christ is your teacher, why do you need to be giving titles to people or having them yourself?

Now, this of course becomes a stumbling block sometimes for people in dealing with Roman Catholics who call the priests father and call the Pope father and so forth. And that would seem to be the very kind of thing that Jesus is saying not to do. But then a Catholic would say, "Well don't you call your pastor pastor, or some call someone teacher or whatever?" I generally don't. I mean, a person may be a teacher, may be a pastor, might even be a father, but to have to call them titles like that, that's what Jesus saying "why? Why do that?"

People do like titles. I was teaching in Africa a few years ago to fifty or so black pastors from Nigeria and Cameroon, and in the black Pentecostal churches they have a cultural thing where their pastors are sometimes called Bishop So-and-So or Apostle So-and-So. It's kind of just something they've been taught to do. It definitely is a cultural thing. And I'm white, for those who don't know me, and I was teaching these pastors and after a few days they came and said, "Well, what should we call you?" I said, "Well, call me Steve. My friends call me Steve. That's my name."

They said, "But really are you a bishop, are you elder, what are you?" I said, "I don't know. I'm just Steve. Let's go with that." And they couldn't understand how it was that somebody could be in the ministry without wanting a title of some kind. Jesus says get that out of your head. Now what you mentioned, Philippians 2:3, where Paul said don't be proud basically. Well, that's sort of the same thing.

Now in 1 Timothy 3:1 you mentioned, Paul says if anyone wants to be an overseer, some translations say a bishop, but the Greek word means overseer, it says he desires a good work. Notice he doesn't say he desires a good position or good title. Being an overseer is a good work. It's a good thing to do. Church needs overseers, and a person who wants to do that work, good for them. That's great. But you see, I think in the early church because Jesus said don't call anyone father, don't call anyone teacher, Jesus also elsewhere in chapter 20 of Matthew said whoever would be great among you, chief among you, must be the slave of all.

Jesus put the whole authority structure on its head. The teachers and the pastors wherever they exist in the church, they're not the boss. They're providing a service to the sheep. They're servants. They're servants of God and because of God's call, they're servants to the sheep. Where churches are set up more like earthly corporations now, so that the pastor's like the CEO, the elders are like the board of directors and they are the bosses, that's an absolute disobedience of what Jesus said. It's the opposite. Jesus said no, the rulers of the Gentiles do that, don't let that be so among you, he said.

And so the church since the time of Christ and the apostles has gone down that road. And it is true, if you're leading a church, probably someone's going to call you Pastor Michael. Now they mean nothing, no harm by it, and I don't think there's any reason you have to correct them necessarily. I mean, sometimes people who call the show call me "Pastor Steve." If they give me a break, I'll say I'm not a pastor, but I'm not going to nail them on it. I mean, that's how they think of me as a pastor, that's up to them. I don't pastor a congregation, so I'm not a pastor. But usually they go onto their question, I'd rather concern myself with their question than the little triviality that they call me pastor.

You don't need to be legalistic about this. Some people do call somebody pastor. Most people don't call me pastor and they shouldn't because I'm not. And maybe when you're leading a church, they shouldn't either. But if they do, I wouldn't be too upset about it because they mean no harm. The real issue is do you require it? Are you expected to be called that?

There was a guy who had a radio show sort of like this one, and just so people don't suspect I'm not talking about Hank Hanegraaff, it's a different show that was on back in the 70s I used to listen to. There was a guy who had eight earned degrees. He's a famous Christian apologist, and he had a show like this. And people would call in, and I'm just going to use his name, his first name was John. And I remember listening once, a caller called in and said, "Hello, Brother John, I have a question." And Brother John said, "What's with this smarmy familiarity here? I've got eight earned degrees. I deserve to be called Doctor So-and-So." I thought, well okay, if he wants that, I'm not going to listen to him anymore. That tells me all I need to know about the man.

And that tells you that the man had not paid attention or processed what Jesus said in Matthew 23. On the other hand, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a doctor and having a doctorate. And if somebody calls you doctor, it's always awkward if people call me doctor, but I don't want them to. But I'm not going to embarrass them for doing it, shame on you for doing that. It's just that I don't want to be called that. And if you do want to be called that, then maybe you should look at your heart. What's there in me that wants people to give me an honorific title like that, even if it's true, why do I need it? Obviously, the answer can hardly be anything else but my ego.

And if a pastor or somebody in leadership has such an ego that he's offended when people don't give him his honorific title, he ought to find another line of work, not Christian work, at least until he becomes able to follow what Jesus said on this. So, if you lead a church and people call you pastor, I wouldn't make an issue of it, but in another situation where they won't be embarrassed by you saying so, you can just say, "Yeah, I don't prefer to be called pastor, just call me Michael." All right, brother?

Guest (Male): Thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: All right, good talking to you. Roger in Bakersfield, California. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Yes, thank you. I have been having a discussion with a friend on the issue of whether God has a gender. His position is we call him Father, we use male pronouns, he created man Adam in his image, so he must be a male. And he says same thing about the Holy Spirit. I think God is just as much male or female, and therefore he's really not either one. He certainly doesn't need the sex aspect of it because he's not going to reproduce. So I imagine that...

Steve Gregg: All right, I hear you. So your question then is, does he have a gender? Is God male or not? All right. Well, when we think of gender, you know, the word gender's a funny thing because it never referred to males and females until fairly recently in history. Gender was a grammatical term in European languages where some words were masculine, some were feminine, some were neuter, and that was the term gender referred to words that were in one of those categories. It wasn't really referring to men, women, or animals that were male and female. It transferred of course because male animals and men are masculine just like some words are, and females are feminine, so it became, I think it was even before we had all this discussion about gender confusion and stuff like that, that gender kind of spilled over into our language to refer to what we properly should call sex. What sex is a person? What sex is an animal?

And maybe because sex is a word that's, I don't know, has other connotations, some people feel better using the word gender. God does not have, in my opinion, gender, nor sex. But when he made male and female, it says in Genesis chapter 1 in verse 27, he made man in his own image, male and female he created them, which means that both men and women are made in God's image. Now, that doesn't mean that femininity and masculinity are somehow parts of God, although they may well be. I mean, femininity is very different than masculinity, and both kinds of characters may exist in God, but that doesn't make him either male or female. It doesn't speak of him having gender or sex because he's a spirit, he doesn't have a physical body.

We don't actually know any way to determine the sex or gender of an organism, human or animal, or even a plant, without addressing its biology, its anatomy, its chromosomes and so forth, its genetics. Now, God has neither anatomy nor biology nor genetics, so there'd be no way to speak of him having gender or sex in the sense that we know of. We could say that there are characteristics of God that are expressed in females, and there are other characteristics of God that are expressed in males, and he's neither male or female, but these characteristics have tended to inhere in biological sexes for the most part.

But still, sex is determined by biology. I'm not saying that the psychology of women isn't different than that of men. In many cases it is, but that's not, we don't determine whether a person's a male or female by their psychology. Once we know someone's a male or female, we might be able to predict some things about their psychology, but that's not how we determine it. There are very effeminate men, there are very masculine women, but men and women are determined by their anatomy and by their, what's in their cells and their genetics. So God doesn't have those. So there's no sense even talking about God as male or female.

Now, it is true that God is often referred to as Father. Jesus is the son. The Holy Spirit is spoken of with a masculine pronoun when Jesus speaks of him. He's called Lord. Lord is a masculine thing in society, as opposed to a mistress. The owner of slaves is a Lord or a mistress depending on whether male or female. And so these kinds of words, they do convey in our, in our analogies, gender.

But they're not saying that because God is a Father and Jesus is a son and so forth, that God has gender or sex. These are relational terms. A father doesn't exist unless it's in relationship to children. And a Lord doesn't exist unless it's in relationship to his household and his servants and things like that. So these terms are speaking of a relationship that we have to God, and that the analogy of our relationship with God is conformable more to the analogy of children to their father or servants to their master than to say children to their mother or children to their mistress, servants to their mistress.

So it's analogous to human relationships. And when such hierarchical relationships, because these are top-down relationships, a father's over his household, a Lord is over his household, a King, God's never called a Queen but often a King, a King is over his domain. These are hierarchical terms. It's saying that we relate to God as one who holds a hierarchical position above us, and much more like a King than a Queen, much more like a father than a mother.

Though it's not as if there's nothing like a mother in God. I mean, in Isaiah it says, "Can a mother forget her nursing child or fail to have compassion on it?" He said, "Well, she may forget, but I won't forget you, Israel, I've engraved you on the palms of my hands." So he's saying, actually he's contrasting himself with a mother. He said a mother might forget her children, but I won't forget you. But he is calling to mind the maternal affection for children to be sort of an analogy of his for Israel. In another place in Deuteronomy it says that God compares himself to like a mother eagle hovering over the nest over her young and bearing them up in his wings and so forth. Jesus said, "How many times I would have gathered you like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings." These are of course references to animals, but they are motherly instincts in animals.

So it's not saying that God is both male and female. It's rather he's neither a male or a female. But for the most part, our relationship with him is analogous to a relationship with a father or a King or a Lord. His love for us is like that of a father for his children because Jesus said, "You earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to your children. If your children ask for a fish, you're not going to give them a snake. If they ask for a egg, you're not going to give them a scorpion." He says, "So also our heavenly Father will only give good things to us."

So the love of a father for his children and the love of a mother for her children are both analogies that are not inappropriate. But they don't transfer gender to God in recognizing that. This has much more to do with God's relationship with us and ours to him than with his existential existence. He's a spirit, and spirit I don't believe is either male or female. But it's not insignificant that when God visited us himself as a human, since he had to take on a real human form and that would have to be either male or female, it was a male that he chose because again, he came as King and Lord. So people should not object to the male terms for God. It's not saying that males are better. There are some things about women that are similar to God in some respects in the Bible.

So there's no gender there and to me it's a fruitless thing even to bring that up. Sometimes people say God is binary or God is male and it's nonsense. Nonsense to make God out to have biological gender identity and talking like that is just a symptom of the confusion of our age about God in general and about gender too. So I just like to avoid the confusion and say let's just talk about God the way he talks about himself to us because that's the way he wants us to think of him or else he would have used other terms. All right?

All right, let's say next who's on here, it's going to be Lee from Detroit, Michigan. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I had a quick question about prayer. And I was wondering, so in I think 1 Thessalonians 5:17 he says, "Pray without ceasing." Paul does. And then in Matthew 6, Christ said don't babble on like the Gentiles who think they'll be heard for their many words. And my question plain and simple is, if I say the same prayer every morning before my feet hit the floor and it's kind of repetitive because it's from my heart but it's the same thing each day, does he consider that vain repetition or is that okay to do?

Steve Gregg: Well, first of all, to say that he said not to babble on in your prayers, if the Bible you're reading says that, it's a paraphrase. He said do not think that God will hear you because you use many words. He says don't use empty repetitions in your prayers. Now empty repetitions would no doubt be repeating something over and over again which has no effect the first time or the hundredth time you say it, it's empty. So it's not comparable to saying the same prayer more than once, which in fact may be necessary. Jesus told the parable about the widow trying to get justice from a judge who didn't care enough about her to give her the time of day or to take her case in the court.

But she pestered him, and Jesus said because of her persistence, she got what she wanted. And this was him teaching, actually the beginning of that parable, which is I think it's Luke 18:1 if I'm not mistaken, it begins by saying he told this parable to the effect that men ought always to pray and to not lose heart, or King James is "not faint." So the parable is to tell us to always pray. Now the woman obviously had the same request every time she came to the judge, but it wasn't vain. It wasn't just, I don't know...

She was pleading. Yeah, I mean to plead for, Paul said that he prayed three times to Jesus to take away his thorn in the flesh. Now he stopped because the Lord revealed to him that that wasn't his will and said, "No, my grace is sufficient for you." So I mean, once you get some kind of word from God, "Hey, stop asking for this because it's not really what I'm planning to do. You need to align your wishes with my plans." But if God hasn't given that information, and apparently God didn't give it to Paul before he'd prayed three times, Paul didn't think it wrong to pray three times.

Now when Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer, one of the lines is, "Give us this day our daily bread." In other words, we're only authorized to pray for our bread for today, and we have to pray for it every day just like the Israelites had to collect manna every day, God didn't let them store it up. So we're praying for bread for this day. Well, what about tomorrow? Well, I'll ask for that tomorrow. What about the next day? I'll ask for that when the time comes. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I'll be praying the same prayer but in a different circumstance.

The praying that prayer today will have impact on events of today. If I pray the same prayer tomorrow, it'll hopefully have impact on the days of that day. Now when it comes to praying for somebody's salvation, when you're praying for someone to be healed or something, you need to realize that God is taking those prayers seriously, but in some cases, for example praying for someone to be healed, no matter how many times you ask him, it's not going to happen if it's not his will to heal them. On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to ask until you know it's not his will, like Paul's prayer for the thorn. So in other words, no, repeating the same prayer isn't necessarily indulging in vain repetitions. A repetition doesn't have to be vain. If you hope that you're praying according to the will of God, you're seriously like a child approaching the Father about a legitimate request, you have reason to believe it could be his will to grant it if he hasn't yet, you're going to keep trying. That's not vain. That's just repetition, but some repetition is not wrong.

Guest (Male): Thanks, Steve. I appreciate you, buddy.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Lee. Thanks for your call.

Guest (Male): Have a good one.

Steve Gregg: You too. Bye now. David from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): You're welcome. I just wanted to ask, do you think that the aliens that are being talked about are demons?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know. I mean, I've never encountered them. I've never seen them. I've heard reports of encounters. Some of those reports sound realistic to me, some of them I have no idea if they're true or not. In other words, I don't have any expert information on this. I will say this, that I know there's been talk of, you know, there are actually corpses of aliens that are known and they've been held confidentially by the government, not classified for people to know. If that's true, then apparently there's something there.

Most of my life, when I've heard about the reports of UFOs and things like that, the fact that they dart around the sky in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics, especially and most notably where they're going several hundred miles an hour and they make a right turn and don't have to do a wide turn, they just make a right turn, kind of defies the laws of physics. I would say that I have typically felt like this probably is demonic, probably not physical and probably not from other planets but probably just deceptive spirits which the Bible speaks of such existing.

Now, I'm very comfortable with saying that the so-called UFOs and stuff are demonic even. Even people who've had encounters with, and gone aboard UFOs and been probed by the aliens and had horrible experiences, almost all, at least at one point in time a survey was done of such people, almost all of them had had some engagement with the occult, some curiosity about the occult, some involvement and therefore with demons. And so I don't know if they were actually encountering demons and they thought they were aliens, I have no idea.

Now, if there are actually physical corpses of creatures that are said to have been found in a crashed spaceship, then I'm going to have to rethink it. But it doesn't matter to me because I don't really care if there's life on other planets. I've never felt that it was necessary to debunk them. I've never felt it was necessary to deny extraterrestrial life, since God has a big world out there, big universe out there, he's certainly able to populate millions of planets if he wants to.

I would say this though, if they are from other planets, I don't know how much we'll ever know about that. And as far as curiosity about that, I think it's very unfruitful. I mean, just like Jesus says it's not for you to know the times and the seasons the Father's put in his power, and therefore I think Christians who are speculating about how near we are to the end are wasting their time and somewhat rebellious against God's, the limits he's placed on what he wants to talk to us about. He hasn't told us anything about aliens from other planets, and I think, if they show up, then we'll say, "Okay, there they are." If they don't, we can wonder or we can just not care. I'm in the third category. I don't care at this point. If they start blowing up our cities with ray guns, I'll learn to care, but right now I don't have any stake in the game. I'm out of time though, I have a stake in ending the program. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.