The Narrow Path 07/08/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon, taking your calls if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. We'd be glad to hear from you. The number to call is 844-484-5737. We have some lines open at this moment. It is a good time to call. 844-484-5737. I think we might as well just go to the phones now and speak to Caesar, who is calling in from Burbank, California. Hi, Caesar. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Caesar: Thank you, Brother Steve, for taking my call. My question is, if I were to be invited to a Catholic service, would it be wrong for me to take the communion?
Steve Gregg: I don't know if they would let you. Are you a baptized Catholic?
Caesar: No, I am a Christian.
Steve Gregg: I thought maybe as a child you might have been Catholic. Lots of people have converted from Catholicism. The reason I ask is that they probably won't let you. I wouldn't think so. On the other hand, if you view their particular understanding of that ritual as superstition, which frankly is the way I look at it, you could still partake of it without the superstition. To me, eating the bread and drinking the wine is symbolic anyway. To them, it's more than that, but you're taking it for you. I wouldn't see any reason why you couldn't take it. I haven't been to a Catholic service since I was in high school and I just visited once, so I can't tell you exactly what goes on there. If there are others who are not taking it, then you could easily just not take it. It is not going to hurt you to take it or hurt you to not take it. If it was one of those things where they just expected Catholics to take it, I'd probably just sit it out, especially if other people were doing that. I wouldn't want to cause a scene. In other words, if everyone's doing it and my not doing it somehow caused some kind of a distraction or a scene, I'd probably just go along with it and just interpret the action the way I interpret it, not the way they do. But that is just me. Different people have different responses. I would say you'd be at liberty to do whatever your conscience tells you about that. What are you inclined to do?
Caesar: Mostly I have family members who are Catholic in Mexico, and they invite us to the service. So I was just wondering if it would be wrong to take the communion.
Steve Gregg: You might ask them if they expect you to do it or not. Honestly, they might say that you are not a Catholic, so they do not expect you to do it. It would be a little more of a scene if you went up to do it and they said, "Sorry, you can't do it, you're not one of us." I don't know if that is what they would do or not, or if they just take it for granted that you're a Catholic if you go up and take it. I am afraid I don't have any personal knowledge of how that is done. But if I were in the position where I could either just sit it out or do it, and doing it wouldn't cause a scene, I would just do it and think of it the way I think of it instead of the way they think of it.
Caesar: That sounds fair. Well, thank you, Brother Steve.
Steve Gregg: All right, thanks for calling. Sorry I couldn't give you a more firm answer. God bless you. Bye now. We're going to talk next to Michael in Inglewood, California. Hi, Michael. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Michael: Hi, Steve. I tried to look at the website first regarding Acts 26:23. It said that Jesus was the first to rise from the dead. Can you explain what that means? Because I thought Lazarus and Jairus' daughter, and even people from back with Elijah and Elisha, rose from the dead before Jesus.
Steve Gregg: Jesus is, even in later writings in the New Testament, called the firstborn from the dead, the first begotten from the dead, and the first fruits of the resurrection. In other words, he is considered to be the first one to have been resurrected. Yet, as you say, there are at least three people who were resurrected during Jesus' lifetime through his agency. He raised Lazarus, he raised Jairus' daughter, and he raised the son of the widow of the town of Nain from the dead. He may well have raised others, too. More than that, there were people raised from the dead in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha seven hundred years before Christ. So obviously, for someone who is dead to come back to life, nobody would have thought to call Jesus the first to do that since that's not an unheard-of thing even in the Old Testament. What's it mean? When it says he is the first to rise from the dead in the sense of the resurrection of the dead, it means that the resurrection of the dead is the hope, as Paul says, of the believer. He actually says it's the hope of Israel, too. That's talking about the specific case of all the dead being glorified and made immortal at the time that the Messiah comes back. When Jesus comes back, all the dead will rise, Jesus said. Of course, those who are his will rise in a state of immortality. That's because their bodies will take on other qualities that they don't possess now. Paul said that the human body, when it's buried, is buried in weakness but it's raised in power. He says it's buried mortal but the mortality puts on immortality. It's buried in dishonor; it's raised in glory. In other words, the body changes at the time that Jesus raises all the dead. It says in Philippians chapter three, at the end of that chapter, that Jesus will change our bodies to be like his glorious body when he returns. That hasn't happened to anybody except him. That is what the Bible usually means by the resurrection, or even by rising from the dead if there is no other context. When we all rise from the dead and when we are all resurrected and glorified, well, Jesus was the first to do that. Lazarus was raised from the dead but not in that sense. For one thing, Lazarus hadn't even decayed yet, so his body was still intact and simply it was necessary for his spirit to be called back into his body. Even in the case of Elisha and the young boy that he raised from the dead, it says the boy's spirit came back into him, so he came alive. Of course, the word spirit means breath also in the Greek and the Hebrew, so it's hard to know exactly which is meant. It says in James, "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." When the spirit leaves the body, the body is technically dead. If the spirit comes back into the body when the body hasn't even decomposed yet, that's just a resuscitation. That's just bringing the same body back to life without any change to the body. That's not what the Bible is referring to as the resurrection from the dead. So there are people who died and their spirits came back into their bodies in the Bible. There was even a soldier who was thrown into a tomb at random on the field, and the bones of Elisha were in there. When the soldier who had recently died touched the bones of Elisha, he came back to life. Those are pretty unusual cases, but they did happen before Jesus rose from the dead. But they were of a different order. When the New Testament talks about the resurrection of the dead or our rising from the dead, it's specifically referring to at the last day when we are raised immortal and glorified. Now we have to assume that people who were raised from the dead before Jesus was were not glorified and were not immortalized. Someone like Lazarus, whose spirit came back into him, his body was re-animated and he lived out the rest of his life and we have to assume he probably died again because he wasn't immortal. That is how I understand it when it says that Jesus was the first to rise from the dead in the sense that the Jews and Christians are looking for the resurrection of the dead. The cases of Jesus calling people back to life, just like when Elijah and Elisha did it, was more like a preview, a glimpse of the ultimate resurrection, but not fully so because they didn't come back immortal.
Michael: Thanks, Steve.
Steve Gregg: All right, good talking to you, Michael. Our next caller is Marilyn from Pensacola, Florida. Hi, Marilyn. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Marilyn: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I love reading the Bible and I was just wondering why Paul would say that women should not be allowed to be heard in the church. What did he mean by that?
Steve Gregg: It depends on which passage you're talking about because there are different contexts. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul was addressing a situation where there was chaos in the church. Not just women; women and men were causing quite a disturbance. You can tell when you read 1 Corinthians 14 in the latter part there, he's telling them to behave themselves, be orderly and things like that. He did say in that context, "let your women keep silence in the church. It is a shame for them to speak." That doesn't mean that it's a shame for women in every case to speak in a church because three chapters earlier, Paul said that it is fine for a woman to pray or prophesy in the church if her head's covered and whatever. Men shouldn't do so with their heads covered. That's a different discussion, but it's obvious that Paul didn't think that there's no place for a woman to speak in the church. Much of what's in 1 Corinthians is specifically to that church about the chaos and the disorder that was going on there. We have to assume, though Paul doesn't tell us but the church knew because they were there, that there were some disorderly women. They were apparently talking loudly in the church, distracting, asking their husbands questions and stuff like that, or maybe asking the preacher questions, interrupting him with questions. We don't know. Whatever they were doing was disorderly and Paul had heard a report of it. That is why he wrote 1 Corinthians. People from the church reported to Paul what was going wrong in the church. When he heard about this he said, "Just let your women be quiet in the church. If they want to ask questions, let them do it when they get home with their husbands." This is not, in my opinion, his way of saying all women should be silent at all times in the church. He did say they should be quiet, the women there. Now, the other passage, in a different context, is in 1 Timothy chapter two, verses 12 through 15. There Paul is talking, in my opinion, and my opinion is based on the context, on assignment of eldership roles to people in the church. The reason I say that is because as soon as he finishes talking about women there at the end of chapter two, in chapter three he begins talking about men. If men want to be bishops or overseers there, they should be a husband of one wife and so forth. He goes on and talks about their qualifications. In my opinion, the discussion of women just immediately prior to that is saying he doesn't put women in the role of eldership. He said, "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man," which I don't think it means a woman can't teach any man in any circumstances, but simply he doesn't put them in the authoritative teaching role in the church, like what we'd call a pastor today or what they in those days would call elders. Some people think, "Well, why wouldn't Paul let women be elders?" Well, we could theorize about that. He does say some things about it, but it doesn't maybe give the whole answer clearly. What I would say is this: it had nothing to do with Paul thinking that women were inferior because he had no problem with women teaching in certain situations, not as elders. For example, Timothy's mother and grandmother had taught him as a young man the Scriptures and Paul didn't seem to have any problem with that. Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple of whom Priscilla seemed to be the leading spokesperson, they took Apollos aside and corrected him. We can see a woman doing that in the presence of her husband. Paul tells older women in Titus chapter two that they should teach younger women how to behave. Obviously, Paul believed that women have no problem with women teaching children, there's no problem with women teaching other women, and there's no problem with women alongside their husbands teaching men. Those are all separate issues than what he's talking about in 1 Timothy chapter two, apparently where he's speaking specifically of their being in the position of pastorship or eldership. This doesn't mean that women can't be evangelists or prophets. Paul has already said that women can pray and prophesy with their heads covered. The first evangelists in the Bible were women because the angels at the tomb told the women to go and tell the apostles that Jesus rose from the dead. They evangelized the apostles. Clearly, there's not some kind of a generic dissing of women and not letting them have any ministry positions. Very specifically, Paul wanted the local church leaders to be married men, fathers, men who had managed a household and whose management of the household showed that they had some capacity for leading the church of God. The church was seen as sort of a family, obviously, brothers and sisters and all that. I think Paul wanted those who led the family to have already been vetted through the leading of their own families, showing that they knew what they were doing. They knew how to deal with family issues. That was just part of the qualifications for being there. In our day, people get offended if you say women shouldn't be pastors. I'm certainly not the one who came up with that. I didn't make that up. I think I've mentioned this on the air before when people ask me about this. When I was in Korea once teaching for Youth With A Mission, one of the women on staff there, I guess this came up, I don't remember what I taught, but she says, "Well, do you think you'd feel the same way about this if you were a woman?" I thought, what would change? It's the same Bible, right? I'd be reading the same Bible if I had the same commitment to following what the Bible says. Of course I'd see it the same way and many women do. Elisabeth Elliot, one of the most brilliant woman Christian leaders, was a Bible college professor, a pioneer missionary, and things like that, but she didn't believe women should be pastors either based on this. I'm assuming that if I was a woman, I'd see it the way she did because I think she saw it correctly. I guess I'd want to ask a woman if she's wondering that, "Would you see it my way if you were a man?" In other words, would you see different words on the page than are there if you were a man? I don't think it matters whether it's feminine or masculine eyes reading the text. It says the same thing. Frankly, men and women had no problem with this until of course the feminist movement came along which began to change attitudes about lots of things, including that.
Marilyn: What about Phoebe? She was a deaconess.
Steve Gregg: Phoebe was a deaconess, or a servant. The word servant, diakonos, which is deacon.
Marilyn: Okay. All right. And then you already touched on it, where the first evangelism happened and was done by women too, because they were the first the angel told, not the apostles, but the women.
Steve Gregg: Exactly, and they evangelized the apostles, which is amazing. Clearly there's no problem with women prophesying, which Paul said is the most desirable gift, by the way. Paul said, "Desire the best gifts, especially that you may prophesy." Well, Paul doesn't make any restriction on women prophesying. It's not like being a pastor is like the most privileged thing. In fact, Jesus said, "whoever wants to be chief among you, let him be the slave of all." It's the lowest position. I realize that in the organized church, which is set up like a secular corporation today, the pastor holds a role like a CEO or something like that, and so he's seen as the boss. Well, Jesus and Paul and the apostles, they didn't set up churches with CEOs in them. They didn't set up corporations like that.
Marilyn: They were the servant.
Steve Gregg: They were the servant. The older brothers who qualified were identified as the ones whose lifestyle is worth emulating and who could teach and their providing this service was serving the church. It was not privilege.
Marilyn: I think that was epitomized by Jesus Christ when he washed the feet of the apostles.
Steve Gregg: When he washed the disciples' feet, he said, "If I, your Lord and Master, wash your feet, then I want you to wash each other's feet." And that was to the apostles. All right, good talking to you, sister. God bless. Bye now. Let's talk to Alan in North Haven, Connecticut. Hi, Alan. Welcome.
Alan: It's always a privilege to talk to you, our friend Steve. Now, I'm going to mention a parable of our Lord. Can I ask you about how it might apply to public policy?
Steve Gregg: Okay, sure, of course.
Alan: A parable of our Lord is the Talents. He gives five to one, three to another, and one to the last. It seems to me that talents and gifts are from the Lord and socialism disincentivizes excellence. Even our Lord didn't expect equal results on the people in the parable. Isn't he actually pointing out that he doesn't support socialism because it disincentivizes excellence?
Steve Gregg: Well, I don't disagree with you. I don't think that there was such a thing as socialism in his day for him to be speaking against, but what he did say does seem to rule against the expectation of equality of outcomes among different people. Different people have different things to start with, like you said. One servant received one talent. By the way, a talent was a weight measurement. We use the word talent to mean an ability, like you can sing well or draw well or act well. In the English language, that is just a peculiarity of the language that that word came to be used that way. The word that's used in the Greek refers to what was a weight measurement. A talent was actually about a hundred pounds. To receive a hundred pounds of silver would put you in a position where you can go out and, if you're wise, go out and use it to make a profit and multiply it in the free market. There's no such thing as free market language in the Bible, but the free market is an assumption. The assumption is there is a free market, and one had two talents and one had five, which means they didn't all have the same amount to begin with. When the master came back, they didn't have the same amount at the end either. They all had apparently equal opportunity, and that's often the language that differentiates between free market capitalism and socialism or government-run economics. Socialism wants to have as much as possible equality of outcomes, so that a person who has very little to begin with, or maybe has a lot to begin with and does nothing of value with it, they would like him to have just the same amount in the end as the ones who did start out with more or who used what they had better. That doesn't seem like justice to me because why should the person who's been diligent and hardworking and turned his original capital into something more, why should he have that taken from him to give to someone who did nothing? The guy with one talent in the parable, he didn't do anything with it. He hid it in the ground. He just figured he was going to be secure and he didn't want to take any risk of losing it in the market. So he had nothing to show for it, and that was not good. A socialist would say, "Well, okay, so he didn't earn anything, but that guy who had five talents, he got five talents more, and the guy with two talents, he got two talents more. Why don't we just take all 14 talents and divide it up three ways for these guys?" Well, because that wouldn't be fair. There's such a thing as personal responsibility. Equality of outcomes would mean that you'd have to have some kind of inequity in terms of reward for hard work. They didn't have equal starting points either, but they weren't expected to come up with equal amounts. The man who had two talents and turned it into four, he received the same commendation from his master as the one who had five and made five more. The guy with five got a lot more wealth for his master, but he started out with more. The guy who had only two and only made two more, he got the same praise from his master. There was no expectation of equality of outcomes because it was understood not everyone has the same resources to begin with and not everyone who has resources manages them or stewards them well. I don't think you're wrong in making that analogy.
Alan: Steve, you've given me some ballast to continue to believe the right thing. Thank you very much.
Steve Gregg: All right, Alan. Good talking to you. Thanks for your call. Our next caller is Scott in Irvine, California. Welcome.
Scott: Thank you very much, I appreciate the work that you're doing. I'm a Catholic and I'm calling in regard to the conversation you had with the caller who was talking about taking the Eucharist during a Catholic Mass.
Steve Gregg: Yes, thank you for calling.
Scott: For Catholics, we do believe that it is the Body and Blood of Christ. It would be considered a very big issue for a non-Catholic. I'm stressing the word Catholic; I understand the gentleman was Christian. But for a non-Catholic to take the Body and Blood of Christ would really be a big problem for Catholics. Even St. Paul himself says that one should not take unworthily of the Body and Blood of Christ. That's an admonition for Catholics as well. In other words, if a Catholic come before the altar with a mortal sin that hasn't been confessed, that would be a grave mortal sin for a Catholic. So it's not that others are excluded; it is considered a very major mortal sin for someone to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Steve Gregg: I thought maybe even the priest would refuse to serve a non-Catholic who came up for that. Would that be the case?
Scott: Yes, if the priest were aware, the priest could refuse. Of course the person may not identify as not being Catholic, but if the priest were aware, they can and will deny them the Body and Blood of Christ. Now, what a lot of people do, it's perfectly acceptable to sit in the pew piously and remain behind. Some people, you'll especially see young children, will come forward with their hands clasped over their breast, in a cross touching their opposite shoulders, and that's a sign to the priest that they are not either eligible or worthy of taking communion, and so they'll receive a blessing. That's another option, but if someone comes forward and the priest is aware that they're not Catholic or they're a Catholic who's no longer in good standing, they can and will deny them.
Steve Gregg: That's exactly what I suspected would be the case.
Scott: That's why I thought I wanted to call in. I thought the advice to kind of sit it out was the best advice. Again, there's many Catholics who come to church who have a mortal sin. This is no judgment. They haven't gone to confession for whatever reason, and it's perfectly acceptable that they'll sit in the pews while others come forward and there's no judgment, nobody looks at them funny. So I think if that caller is still listening, that would be the right thing to do, just respectfully sit and wait in the pew until the family comes back.
Steve Gregg: I appreciate that. Thanks for sharing that. We're going to take a break now and we're going to come back. We have another half hour coming. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. If you'd like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Lots of resources, all of them free, at thenarrowpath.com. You can donate there if you want. thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away. In the series "When Shall These Things Be", you'll learn that the biblical teaching concerning the Rapture, the Tribulation, Armageddon, the Antichrist, and the Millennium are not necessarily in agreement with the wild sensationalist versions of these doctrines found in popular prophecy teaching and Christian fiction. The lecture series entitled "When Shall These Things Be" can be downloaded without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. If you would like to join us, the number to call is 844-484-5737. We still have some lines available to you if you call now. You can get through before the program is over. 844-484-5737. Before the break, we were trying to talk to Alan in North Haven, Connecticut, but his phone was breaking up. I'm hoping that he's gotten to a better place now. Are you in a better place, Alan?
Alan: We got a technical cure, my friend and our friend. How's that sound?
Steve Gregg: Sounds good now. Go ahead.
Alan: The question was about our Lord's teaching on the Talents, five to one, three to another, and one to the last. It seems to me that talents and gifts are from the Lord and socialism disincentivizes excellence. Even our Lord didn't expect equal results on the people in the parable. Isn't he actually pointing out that he doesn't support socialism because it disincentivizes excellence?
Steve Gregg: Well, I don't disagree with you. I don't think that there was such a thing as socialism in his day for him to be speaking against, but what he did say does seem to rule against the expectation of equality of outcomes among different people. Different people have different things to start with, like you said. One servant received one talent. By the way, a talent was a weight measurement. We use the word talent to mean an ability. In the English language, that's just a peculiarity of the language that that word came to be used that way. The word that's used in the Greek refers to what was a weight measurement. A talent was actually about a hundred pounds. To receive a hundred pounds, this would be usually of silver normally, would put you in a position where you can go out and, if you're wise, go out and use it to make a profit and multiply it. In the free market, there's no such thing as free market language in the Bible, but the free market is an assumption. The assumption is there is a free market, and one had two talents and one had five, which means they didn't all have the same amount to begin with. When the master came back, they didn't have the same amount at the end either. They all had apparently equal opportunity, and that's often the language that differentiates between free market capitalism and socialism or government-run economics. Socialism wants to have as much as possible equality of outcomes, so that a person who has very little to begin with, or maybe has a lot to begin with and does nothing of value with it, they would like him to have just the same amount in the end as the ones who did start out with more or who used what they had better. That doesn't seem like justice to me, because why should the person who's been diligent and hardworking and turned his original capital into something more, why should he have that taken from him to give to someone who did nothing? The guy with one talent in the parable, he didn't do anything with it. He hid it in the ground. He just figured he was going to be secure and he didn't want to take any risk of losing it in the market. So he had nothing to show for it, and that was not good. A socialist would say, "Well, okay, so he didn't earn anything, but that guy who had five talents, he got five talents more, and the guy with two talents, he got two talents more. Why don't we just take all 14 talents and divide it up three ways for these guys?" Well, because that wouldn't be fair. There's such a thing as personal responsibility. Equality of outcomes would mean that you'd have to have some kind of inequity in terms of reward for hard work. They didn't have equal starting points either, but they weren't expected to come up with equal amounts. The man who had two talents and turned it into four, he received the same commendation from his master as the one who had five and made five more. The guy with five got a lot more wealth for his master, but he started out with more. The guy who had only two and only made two more, he got the same praise from his master. There was no expectation of equality of outcomes because it was understood not everyone has the same resources to begin with and not everyone who has resources manages them or stewards them well. So I don't think you're wrong in making that analogy.
Alan: Steve, you've given me some ballast to continue to believe the right thing. Thank you very much.
Steve Gregg: All right, Alan. Good talking to you. Thanks for your call. Our next caller is Lori from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lori, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Lori: Hi, Steve. My question is about a previous caller you were discussing, the transformation of the body after resurrection. It got me to wondering, what happens to the bodies of those that are not saved and does the Bible address that in any way?
Steve Gregg: Not with as much detail. It is said that those who are not saved will also be raised from the dead, but we're not told that they'll be raised immortal. Immortality seems to be a gift of God that comes from being in Christ. That's why the Bible says, "whosoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life." Those who don't believe in him don't have everlasting life. Those who don't have him perish. So there's no promise of eternal existence or eternal life to the unbeliever. On the other hand, there is a promise of resurrection to the unbeliever because in John 5:28 and 29, Jesus said an hour's coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth, some who've done good to a resurrection of life and those who've done evil to a resurrection of condemnation. So the good and the evil are both going to be raised. Paul said that also in Acts chapter 24 and verse 15. He said that "I believe there will be a resurrection of the dead both of the just and the unjust." Obviously, Jesus talked about his coming in Matthew 25:31 as setting down on the throne and calling all the nations before him, and some of them are saved and some are not. He compares them to sheep and goats being separated to separate destinies. The resurrection of the dead includes both. In Revelation chapter 20, there's a great white throne and it says the grave and the sea gave up all the dead that were in them and they were all judged by their deeds. It says those whose names were not found in the Lamb's Book of Life were cast into the lake of fire. Obviously, these are the bad ones, and they were resurrected and judged and then sent to the lake of fire. As far as what happens to them after that, that's been disputed because the Bible is not crystal clear on that. Obviously a traditional view has been that they suffer forever and ever and ever consciously in hell. I say it's traditional only because there's no clear teaching that I can find in Scripture of that. There are verses, a very few, that sound like they may say that, but there's also quite a few verses that sound like they give a different picture. The Scriptures simply don't speak with one voice on what becomes of those who are put in the lake of fire, but there is the lake of fire and it is certainly different from being saved. So the unbelievers also then are going to be resurrected, but not necessarily to immortality.
Lori: Thank you, Steve.
Steve Gregg: All right, Lori. God bless. Let's talk to Desi from San Diego, California. Desi, welcome.
Desi: Steve, how are you doing, my friend? Mostly all of the preachers that I listen to say that God never creates anything evil. I can flow with that. But the first thing we have is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Was the tree good or was the tree evil?
Steve Gregg: It was good. It was a good thing. Everything God made after he made it, he said it's very good. Everything he made, he said it's good. The tree was good. It wasn't good for people to eat though. We could argue that if you want to build a hedge, a hedge of poison ivy might be very useful for keeping people off your land and it's good for that purpose. It's not good to smoke it and it's not good to eat it. That'll kill you. Everything God made is good, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not made for man to eat. The tree is not evil; the disobedience is evil. God simply told Adam and Eve not to eat of that tree. Well, frankly, there's probably nothing wrong with the tree except that he told them not to eat it, and so it was now on them to be obedient or disobedient. When they ate of it, they were disobedient and that was the entrance of evil into the world.
Desi: The problem was not the tree, the problem was the disobedience.
Steve Gregg: In my opinion, the tree didn't have any magical powers in it. I think it could have been any other plant that was attractive and tasty or whatever. Anything that would have been a temptation, if God said don't eat that, you'll then if you do, you'll know good and evil in a way that you're not supposed to know it. People should live in a world where there isn't any evil to know. God didn't create any evil and therefore it should be the case that if Adam and Eve had been obedient to God, they'd never have any knowledge of evil at all because there wouldn't be any evil to know. They'd just be good. So what happens by disobeying God, they acquire an awareness of evil; their conscience activated. We can see that their conscience was activated because before that they were naked but they weren't ashamed, but as soon as they ate it, they wanted to cover themselves up. This is a sign that your conscience suddenly has kicked in. You know you've done something wrong. It's the only wrong thing they could do because nothing else was forbidden to them. They were given the whole planet. Everything was theirs to do, but only one thing was forbidden and that's the thing they did and that awakened in them their conscience. Now they knew good and evil. They had known good; now they knew evil. That wasn't something God wanted them to do. Now, as far as what they understood the tree to do, I don't know. I don't think there was magic in the tree but they might have. I mean, the serpent told them, "If you eat it, you'll become like God, knowing good and evil." Adam and Eve were naive like little children; they didn't know much of anything. They knew God told them not to do it, so they knew they shouldn't. But they didn't know what the powers of the tree may or may not have been. The tree didn't have any particular powers at all. It was their disobedience that caused them to know good and evil. But they didn't know that, and it sounded like the devil's trying to tell them, "There's some power in this food, man. It's going to make you like God." And their desire to be at God's level and to basically kind of bump him out of his position of the one who knows what's right and wrong and them being in that position is very akin to the natural desire to make your own rules, to not have anyone tell you what you can do or can't do. They wanted to be autonomous, I think.
Desi: Well, that gives me a better understanding, Steve, because I was struggling with that. I was really struggling with that. Okay, so that gives me a better understanding of that particular instance and that situation of disobedience. I appreciate you, bro. Thank you.
Steve Gregg: All right, Desi. God bless you. We're going to talk next to Frank from Fairfield, California. Hi, Frank. Welcome.
Frank: How are you doing? I had a question about something that I heard yesterday. You had said basically you can practically be in any religion or any sort of doctrine, but as long as you believe in Christ and the resurrection, that you could be saved. My question was in 1 Timothy 4:16 where it says, "Take heed to the doctrine." 2 John 9, "Except you abide in the doctrine of Christ, you have not God." If you're in a religion that's not abiding in the doctrine, how is it that you could still be saved?
Steve Gregg: First of all, if you're abiding in the doctrine of Christ, the word doctrine means teaching. Doctrine to us sometimes we use it to think of theological propositions, but the Greek word for doctrine is just the word for teaching. So he says we need to remain in the teaching of Christ. That's what Jesus himself said. Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." If you've taken his yoke upon you and you're learning from him and you're continuing, as it says in John 8:31, "If you continue in my words, you're my disciples indeed." To be a disciple of Jesus is to continue in his teaching, in his words, and following him. Anyone who does that, I take it that Jesus is correct, they're saved. They're his disciples; they're true disciples. Now I've never said you could be part of another religion, but if you're a follower of Christ, you're not part of a religion per se. I don't think that any religion, even a Protestant denomination or a Christian religious organization, I don't think any religion saves anyone. I think Jesus does. So I certainly would not want to give the impression I was saying that Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims or Jews or people who reject Christ could be saved. Of course, I made it very clear those who have received Christ, those who are his followers. If you're following Christ, then you are continuing in the doctrine or that is in the teaching of Christ. Now, what I think maybe you're talking about by the word religion is like different denominations. Is that what you mean?
Frank: Could I identify with a religion or a denomination that teaches contrary to the doctrine of Christ, like if I were a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon or Catholic, or any other religion that's teaching contrary to the doctrine and I identify with that religion, can I still be saved?
Steve Gregg: What religion do you identify yourself as right now?
Frank: I'm a Christian, just a Christian, that's it. But there are so many denominations out there and a lot of them are contrary, like let's say some that believe that you can speak in tongues today when you can't. When they spoke in tongues, they spoke different languages, but that's what they believe, and Christ said, "In vain do you worship me, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men."
Steve Gregg: So you're saying that if a person believes the Bible when it says, "do not forbid people to speak in tongues" and when it says the gifts are with us until Jesus comes back, if they believe that and they turn out to be wrong, that they've got a damning heresy? You see, there's many things that Christians could be wrong about and they still follow Jesus. I personally don't think you have to believe one thing or another about tongues to be saved, nor about a lot of other things. I don't think you have to believe one thing or another about predestination. I don't think you have to believe one thing or another about the Rapture or the end times. I don't think you have to believe one thing or another about a lot of these things because those are not the things that define whether you're a follower of Christ. If you are a follower of Christ, Jesus said it'll be obvious because you'll love one another. He said, "By this all men will know that you're my disciples, if you love one another." So it's in 1 John chapter four verse seven says, "Let us love one another, for love is of God; and he that loves knows God and is of God; and he who does not love is not of God, because God is love." Obviously Jesus and the apostles believed it's not so much what your opinions are about certain doctrinal points; it's whether you are loving as Christ does. Paul said it too, by the way, in 1 Corinthians 13. He said, "If I speak in tongues or move mountains with my faith or understand all mysteries and have all knowledge, if I don't have love, it's nothing." We need as Christians to be concerned about whether we are exhibiting love as Christ does, not whether we have the right opinions about every single thing. Because frankly, I suspect that I myself have some opinions that are probably not correct. I don't know which ones, and I certainly wouldn't believe them if I knew they were not correct. But the point I'm making is that I think I'm correct, but there are people who have different ideas from mine and they think they're correct too. So if I'm doing my best to follow Jesus and to understand the Bible correctly, but I'm deficient, and somebody else who's also doing their best to follow Jesus and to understand the Bible correctly has a different view, now they may be right and I could be wrong or we might both be wrong, you never know. Or maybe I'm right and they're wrong, who can say? Do you think that because somebody who's trying their hardest to follow Jesus and to believe what he taught isn't intelligent enough or isn't able to synthesize the theology well enough that somehow on the Day of Judgment, Jesus is going to say, "Sorry, you didn't quite understand predestination properly, so you're going to hell." I mean, do you picture God being that way? I don't.
Frank: So what I would like to understand then is 2 John 9, "whosoever abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God." Can you explain that then?
Steve Gregg: The teaching of Christ. Anyone who doesn't remain in the teachings of Christ isn't a Christian, he's saying. That's pretty clear, right?
Frank: Right. So if I mentioned 1 Corinthians 13 because it clearly says that tongues would cease when that which is perfect is come. That which is perfect is come is God's word in its entirety. It's not Christ.
Steve Gregg: Do you realize there are people today who still don't have a Bible?
Frank: I agree there might be people that don't have a Bible, but the point is that when they spoke in tongues they literally spoke other languages, it wasn't gibberish like a lot of churches do today.
Steve Gregg: I definitely believe it was other languages; that's what the word tongues means. It means languages. But of course some people around the world have languages they speak that sound like gibberish to me. I wouldn't necessarily know unless I knew all languages, which I certainly don't. I wouldn't know whether a given thing that sounds like gibberish to me is somebody else's language or not. But then that gets us way off the subject. Suppose you're right. Suppose the gift of tongues doesn't exist anymore, but some people mistakenly think it does. You're thinking that's one of the things that would disqualify a person from being saved?
Frank: I believe that if that's what you're teaching, but the Bible says contrary to what you're teaching, that you're not abiding in the teaching of Christ. You've gone off into another teaching.
Steve Gregg: Suppose the people who believe in tongues are saying that you're the one who's not abiding in the teaching of Christ, that you're saying that tongues have ceased, but you haven't really given any Scripture that says so. It does say in 1 Corinthians 13, "when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part will be done away." You're correct about that, but Paul doesn't tell us what he means by that which is perfect. You have assumed that it means when the complete New Testament was finished. The complete New Testament was finished in the first century, but the canon of the New Testament wasn't determined until late fourth century. So we've got a wide range of centuries there that people didn't have the whole text of the Bible in their canon. Even to this day, like I said, the past 1,500 years now that we have the canon, there's a very large number of people around the world who don't have Bibles. If having the whole Bible is what causes tongues to cease, then there's no reason for tongues to have ceased for people who don't have the whole Bible, I would think, if you're right. I don't think Paul was thinking that way at all. I don't think Paul even had a concept of a New Testament canon; he never mentioned it anywhere and there's no reason to believe that his listeners expected it. These were early Christians just reading letters from different apostles like Paul and they didn't know these letters would be collected into a book called the New Testament. That came along later. But many people think that when Paul said "when that which is perfect is come," he means when Jesus comes back. Jesus certainly is perfect and that would certainly be a good time we wouldn't need the gifts anymore because Paul said in the same book, 1 Corinthians 1:7, that the church will lack in none of the gifts while they're waiting for the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which sounds to me like he's saying until Jesus appears, we won't lack any of the gifts. If you're saying we do, then there might be somebody on the other side of that aisle who says you're the one who's teaching contrary to the Scripture. Now, of course, that could be debated endlessly, but I don't think that either side has a claim to be the ones who are saved as opposed to the other ones not saved. I've never found anything in the Bible that says we're saved by believing the right thing about the gift of tongues. I can't even imagine why God would care. Why would he make that the disqualifier? Does he not want anyone to get to heaven except people who have this strange fringe view that you're talking about, that when the Bible's completed, then tongues cease? I'm going to stick with what I said. If you're a follower of Christ, if you're continuing in his teaching, if he's your Lord and your king and that's how you live, you're saved. It really doesn't matter what other mistakes you may be making. The apostles, when they were following Jesus, were mistaken about a lot of things. Even after Pentecost they were mistaken about whether uncircumcised people could be saved, but they figured that out. I don't think anyone in the Bible was omniscient except God. I am out of time. I appreciate your call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener-supported. Our address is The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593.