Are My Kids Too Young to Understand the Gospel?

At what age can my kids consider themselves to be Christians? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. You can watch Adriel right now on YouTube and message him that way. And of course, you can always email us at questions at corechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Peter listening in Dublin, California. Peter, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Hi, Pastor Adriel, glad to be on the show. I just had a question because I'm going through a Bible study in the book of John, and we're reaching chapter 7, and I see in my Bible that the earliest manuscripts do not include chapter 7, verse 53 to chapter 8, verses 11. And I'm wondering how we should deal with that, if it's not canon, should we consider it as such?

Yeah, Peter, thank you for that question. And this is something that a lot of Bible scholars disagree on. There are some who say, yeah, we just should not treat this as a part of the canon of Scripture because some of the earliest textual evidence doesn't have this section. And then sometimes where you do have this section, it appears in different places in the Gospel of John, so where it's supposed to be placed, there's not a lot of certainty. And then there are others who say, well, there does seem to be some pretty early evidence because this scene is quoted by a number of the early church fathers.

They make reference to this. And so, I mean, it's one of those sticky issues in terms of New Testament studies, this text actually, and then the end of Mark's Gospel. I think where I'm at right now, and my views could change on this if I find out more, but where I'm at right now is I would not treat this section as a part of inspired Scripture because of the early manuscript evidence. But the comforting thing to me, Peter, is that when you read this instance, the story of the woman caught in adultery, there's nothing in it that would call into question the teachings of Jesus or contradict the teachings of Jesus.

It seems very much like something that you would see. And so that's another one of the reasons why a lot of people think, no, this actually just fits with the apostolic testimony, with the testimony of the Gospels, and it is quoted by the early church fathers. So there are those who say, no, this is a part of inspired Scripture. But where I'm at right now is I think it's helpful to look at it, to go over it, to talk about the discussion related to textual criticism and how we got our Bible, that kind of a thing, but I don't know that I would treat it as a part of the inspired text, the original canon. And so that's my view right now, and I think that really solid believers disagree on this, and so I wouldn't die on this hill necessarily, but hopefully that helps you as you guys think through this passage of John's Gospel. Thanks, Peter, so much for your question and for listening to Core Christianity.

We appreciate that. If you've got a question for Pastor Adriel about the Bible or the Christian life, we'd love to hear from you. No question is too difficult for Pastor Adriel. So you give us a call right now at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Now we do often get calls about the return of Christ on this program, and here's one we received earlier this week. Hi, so I am a young mom to three young children.

I have a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a one-year-old, and we're thinking about having more. I guess my question is, what happens if the Lord comes back when my kids are still too young to really fully comprehend the Gospel? And what happens if the Lord comes back while I'm pregnant? Will I have my baby in heaven?

That'd be great, but yeah, thank you for your time. Yeah, wouldn't that be great, the heavenly home birth, right? That kind of a thing. Well, let me just say this. If the Lord comes back while you're still pregnant, then you're just eternally pregnant.

That's how it is, but without the morning sickness. Great question. There are two passages in the Gospels that I think about. First, Jesus' heart toward children. In the Synoptic Gospels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you have this scene where parents are bringing their children to Jesus and the disciples.

They get worked up about this. They say, let the master be, that kind of a thing. Don't bother Jesus with your children, but Jesus rebukes the disciples, and he welcomes the children into his presence and blesses them. Our Lord has a heart for children, and especially the children of his people. Throughout the Scriptures, you have this promise over and over again, I'm going to be a God to you and to your children.

God cares for us, and he cares for our children as well. I also think of that section at the end of Matthew 11, where Jesus is praying, and he says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent. That is the reality of the Gospel. You've hidden this from the wise and the prudent.

You've revealed it to the babes. The Gospel, God's word, is for our kids, for little children. Now, in order to understand it, to grasp the Gospel, we need a work of the Holy Spirit, but the good news is the Spirit of God can work in our children, even at a very young age. Think about that scene where Elizabeth meets the Virgin Mary, and the baby in Elizabeth's womb, John the Baptist, leaps for joy, if you will, when he's in the presence of Jesus, even though Jesus is in utero. Somehow, it seems like the Spirit of God was working in John right there, giving him this sort of perception. He was in the presence of the Christ, and so, boy, I think we really have to be confident in the fact that the Spirit of God can work and does work in our children, and that the Gospel, the message of salvation, is for them, and that they can even understand it, because it's simple.

It's the free forgiveness and love of God for us in his son, Jesus. Just one more passage of scripture that I want to point to. It's in Matthew, chapter 21, when Jesus cleanses the temple.

Listen to this. Verse 12 says, Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

They said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes, have you never read, and he quotes from Psalm, chapter 8, Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. God doesn't just welcome our children.

He prepares them to praise him, if you will. And so I think you can be confident, sister, if the Lord comes back right now, that God is working in your children and that they're going to be with you in the presence of the Lord. Don't discount the power of the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of the gospel even to the littlest among us and around us. And so may the Lord bless you as you continue to mother these children, to care for them.

I am just so grateful for the work that you're doing, and thanks for giving us a call. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We have an awesome new Bible study that we'd like to offer you today. Actually, Adriel wrote this one, and it's on Paul's letter to the Galatians.

Yes, a book that I actually was able to preach through not too long ago, and such a powerful book of the New Testament. Galatians was written during a time of great turmoil for the church because the church in Galatia was being led astray by false teachers who were compromising the gospel. And the fact of the matter is, brothers and sisters, we see people compromising on the gospel everywhere around us today.

There's one thing that we have to know for certain, and that's what the gospel is. And Paul gets to the heart of that in this book, the book of Galatians. And so I think that this resource, the letter of Paul to the Galatians, a 10-week Bible study through the book of Galatians will really bless you and help to fortify you in the truth of the gospel. Get ahold of this resource. It's yours for a donation of $20 or more. You can go to our website to find that at corechristianity.com forward slash studies.

Again, that's corechristianity.com forward slash studies and look for the new Bible study on the book of Galatians. You can also call us for that resource or any one of our resources. Here's the phone number. It's 833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE.

Let's go to Marie calling in from Missouri. Marie, what's your question for Adriel? My question is, the book of Enoch is not in the Bible. Is this something that we should be reading as well to be better prepared as well as should our kids be reading the book of Enoch? Yeah.

I think we should just stick to having our kids. I mean, if we're thinking about religious texts, reading the scriptures, it's there where the power of God is. The book of Enoch is not a part of the canon of scripture. It's this sort of ancient Jewish apocalyptic text that sometimes people can look at these books, especially scholars. You might look at them to learn a little bit more in terms of the context of that time, what people were thinking about things like the end times, things like the apocalypse. But I would say for Christians, especially because there's so much biblical illiteracy today, we need to make sure that we're growing in our understanding of the inspired text, that we're committed to reading the holy scriptures and knowing them and being built up in them. I would say, Marie, focus on the scriptures for yourself and for your children. Does that mean that you can't benefit in some way or maybe just get some more historical background from other books like that one?

No, you can, but I would just say focus on the scriptures, and I think you can't go wrong there. Thank you for your call. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We often get emails here as well, and we get questions via YouTube. We have one that came in from one of our listeners in Lodi, California, and he says, I'm a nurse and I'm resisting the mandatory vaccine policy at my hospital because I think it might be the mark of the beast.

What do you think I should do? Well, thank you for that question, and certainly this is a question that is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. The first thing I'll say is I don't believe that you need to be concerned that the COVID-19 vaccine is the mark of the beast. The mark of the beast is not something that people can accidentally take.

It's not like, oh, I thought I was taking this medicine, but it was actually the mark of the beast, and now I'm eternally condemned. No, we have to understand the mark of the beast in the context of the book of Revelation and what Revelation is as God's word. It's this apocalyptic literature, this prophetic word that John receives from Jesus. It's visionary prophecy, and oftentimes in visionary prophecy, you have a lot of symbolic language. John earlier in the book of Revelation talks about the seven golden lampstands, which are the seven churches.

He's seeing these lampstands, but they stand for something else. This is a picture of the church there on earth at that time. We have to understand the book of Revelation in its context. When you look at places like Revelation chapter 13 where it talks about the mark of the beast, and I'm just going to read verse 16. It says, it causes all both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or on the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. That is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man, and his number is 666, which again is this number associated with the antichrist, associated with man, with the worship of man, the worship of self. That's really what the mark of the beast is about. It's identifying with idolatry, with the worship of the beast, and rejecting the gospel, rejecting Christ, the true Messiah. Actually, as Revelation continues, it's interesting because you sort of have this mark of the beast associating with, identifying with the beast, contrasted with those who are in Christ and united to him by faith, and are associated with the true and the living God. Chapter 14 of the book of Revelation begins, Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. I don't know what this is pointing to, is God taking the heavenly Sharpie and writing his name on the names of the 144,000. No, it's a symbolic word of prophecy that these are those who are identified with the true and the living God, who have his truth in their minds and in their hearts. The mark of the beast is contrasted with that.

You don't have to be afraid that the COVID-19 vaccine is the mark of the beast. That's just bad theology, bad study of the Bible. We really ought to reject that. I can't tell you what you have to do in this situation.

I don't have the authority to do that. My job as a minister of the gospel is to proclaim God's word and to encourage people in the scriptures, in God's word. If you have a pastor who's telling you, you have to do this one way or another, I would be really careful with that.

But what I think, we want to use wisdom and also use the best of what's before us in terms of God's common grace and science. Let me just say something. I have a friend who's a chaplain in the Los Angeles area. He was just sharing with me not too long ago how 100% of the people that he's seeing, that he's praying with, who are dying in the hospital there are people who have not been vaccinated.

You hear a lot of stuff out there in the media, on the news. I trust this guy. He's a friend. He's a fellow minister in the gospel.

He says, look, I'm seeing it firsthand. I personally would say we have to use wisdom here and think about what are the consequences of the decisions that we make and certainly wanting to take care of ourselves and wanting to take care of the people around us. Joe, may God bless you. May God give you wisdom. May God keep you safe.

Thank you for the service that you provide for the community. And you don't have to be afraid that the COVID-19 vaccine is the mark of the beast because it isn't. Such a controversial issue right now in our culture. And I know we have Christians on both sides of the issue. So thanks for exploring that part of it for us, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

Got an email come in from one of our listeners named John. Hi, I was in a Bible study when someone asked about the actual meaning of repent. Vine's expository dictionary says that means to perceive afterwards, to have a change of mind, the seat of moral reflection. But when I studied repent and repentance in the Englishman's Concordance Numbers 3340 and 3341, it seems like all the verses refer to specifically the act of salvation, as opposed to a Christian repenting of sins after he or she is saved. I was a little surprised by this. Can you please help me out in understanding the correct idea and meaning of repent and repentance?

Thank you. Hey, Jon, love digging into the scriptures with questions like this. So we have to understand first that words just in general, but certainly in the scripture, have a semantic range, a range of meaning.

And so words can be used in different ways. Even the same word can be used in different ways in the New Testament. So you might have this idea of repentance unto life, this sort of initial repentance where a sinner sort of apprehends the reality of who God is, who Jesus is. They're convicted of their sin. They're seeing maybe for the first time the veil has been lifted and they're realizing, I'm a sinner. And they're turning away from that sin towards God, towards Jesus Christ in faith. And they're experiencing for the first time, the grace of God, this repentance unto life.

And scripture does talk about this. Let me think about the Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, where he calls the people to repent and to believe. But it's certainly the case that repentance is also very much so a part of the everyday Christian life.

I think it was the very first of Martin Luther's 95 theses where he says, when our Lord said to repent, he meant that the entire life was supposed to be a life of repentance. We never have to stop repenting as Christians. And yet there is this initial turning away from our sins and turning towards Christ by faith. Now here's what we need to understand.

And this is where a lot of people get confused, John. Yes, repentance is, I think a change of mind is a good definition. But our salvation isn't dependent upon the perfection of our continual repentance. The fact of the matter is, you know, I know the Christian life is a fight. We are fighting every single day to walk with the Lord, to take up our cross and follow him. We're called to repent of our sins, to put to death by the spirit.

Paul says in Romans chapter eight, the fleshly deeds of the body. And so your whole life as a Christian is going to be a life of repentance. But what we're saved by, what we're justified by is trusting in Jesus Christ. You're born again, right? Like you believe in Jesus Christ. You lay hold of the gospel for yourself. And that's what saves you.

That's what justifies you. And as a result of having been saved, justified by the grace of God, boy, we should be encouraged to live lives of holiness and lives of repentance. The spirit of God lives in us to convict us of sin, to draw us nearer and nearer to the Lord, to mold us and shape us more and more after the image of Christ, to enliven us, if you will.

And so, again, the simple answer to your question, John, is that words can, the same word can be used in two different ways. And sometimes you see repentance in the Bible as that initial repentance into life. And sometimes it's speaking of the day to day repentance that we're called to as believers. Thank you for your question.

Great explanation. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity. Just a reminder that we have that great new Bible study on the book of Galatians available to you.

It's one that Adriel himself wrote. And you can find that by going to corechristianity.com forward slash studies. Just look for the Galatians Bible study. Here's a question we received from one of our listeners named Jason, and he says, What is the correct interpretation of the verses John 14 26 and John 16 13?

Do they apply to Christians in general or do they only apply to the apostles and the direct associates of the apostles in relation to the inspiration of the New Testament? Well, John 14 26 and later in John, John 16 13, let me just begin at John 14 verse 25. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. And then just going over to John chapter 16 verse 13, I'll start in verse 12.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

A really good question. You know what I appreciate about this question as well is a lot of times we're not asking this question when we read the Bible, when we read the Old and the New Testaments. Is this something for me too or was it specifically for the apostles or was it specifically for the patriarchs? And too often I think one of the problems that we have, Jason, is we just will read the Bible and we'll apply promises given to the patriarchs or promises given to the apostles directly to us. So, for example, the apostles were promised authority over snakes and serpents, the evil one, the ability to cast out demons and to heal.

And so we just think, well, I should have that kind of authority too. And Christians can go around trying to do those things. And so we have to be really careful that we understand the scriptures in their context. And here in particular, I think that there is a special application for the apostles themselves as they were taking the word out initially, many of whom were involved with the writing of scripture even.

But I wouldn't want to say that this upper room discourse, John 14 through 17, is limited to the apostles. It applies to us in a very significant way. Because in so far as Jesus throughout these chapters is talking about the sending of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of Joel chapter 2, the Spirit of God being poured out on all flesh.

Well, this is about us too. The helper, the comforter that Jesus is talking about here with his disciples is the same Holy Spirit who fills you and me. And so I think, one, recognizing that, yeah, there is a particular application of the apostles, but by extension, in so far as the Spirit of God was going to be poured out on the whole church on the day of Pentecost, and that same Spirit fills everyone who believes in Jesus Christ today, this is for us.

It's meant to be a comfort for us. And the Spirit of God does lead us into the truth. It's by the Spirit that the word of God is illuminated for us. So that as we're reading the scriptures, as we're learning about the gospel, we come into that understanding, that saving understanding of what this means. And so I would take comfort, read these passages and receive what the word has for you in these passages as well. Thanks for your question. We'll be right back.