Is There Any Biblical Precedent for Having Godparents?

Is there any biblical precedent for having godparents? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity.

Well, happy Labor Day! I'm 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 call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. If you get our voicemail system, feel free to leave your question there.

You can also post your question on our social media sites, and you can always email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Well, believe it or not, today is the fifth anniversary of Core Christianity. I can hardly believe it. Five years on the air. And you know, just to back up a minute, this program started off a little differently. Actually, it was a recorded program with Dr. Michael Horton, our founder, who was hosting the show. Adriel was his protege. Is that a good word to use?

Yeah. And then Dr. Horton, because of his schedule, his teaching and writing schedule, needed to back out of the program. Adriel took over the show and has done such a wonderful job. And I have to ask you, Adriel, what do you think has been one of the most encouraging things to you over the past five years? Yeah, Bill, it's crazy to think back to those early days five years ago, because at that time the broadcast was pre-recorded.

So we'd get the questions, or the voicemails, or the emails, and then we'd pick a handful of them, and then we'd go through them, Mike and I would. And for those of you who don't know, we're always offering Mike's book, Core Christianity, on the broadcast for Intercore listeners. It's a great resource introducing people to the core doctrines of the Christian faith. He's a phenomenal theologian, has written a ton. And so it was great to have him. I miss him.

I want to bring him back for a special episode one of these days, or something like that. But just such a blessing, and then transitioning the way we did, Bill, with you. I mean, you've been such an awesome addition to the show, and you bring such a wonderful component as well.

But one, I've been super encouraged by when we transitioned to live, so that definitely changes the dynamic, right? Because now we're answering in real time. I mean, we don't know what people are going to call and ask. And so people sometimes, I get that question frequently, people who are introduced to the show, or they see me, and they say, okay, are you really answering those questions live?

You don't have those beforehand. The answer is, yeah, we don't know what people are going to call and ask. But it's so much fun, and the most encouraging thing I would say are the letters that we get, or the emails that we get of people who reach out to us and say, that really helped me. I was really encouraged by what you said there, or man, that helped me understand something that I hadn't understood before. So getting to see the fruit of the hard work, I mean, not just for me, but there's an entire team, Bill, you know, producer and call screeners and a team that works. Yeah, yeah, shout out to them. And so, hey, pray for me with the daily broadcast, but say a prayer for them as well, that God would bless them. And just so you all know, we do depend a lot on prayer. Our team, every time we get into the studio, before we start, we pray and we say, Lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit, give us wisdom, you know, give us callers who have questions that they need to have answered, that we can point them to the scriptures. And so we really do depend upon the Lord, and getting to see God work in and through this broadcast has been the most encouraging thing for me. And so that's what I'm grateful for, Bill.

I would love to throw that question back to you. Like, what's been encouraging for you as you've joined the team? You know, I think just digging into God's Word each day has been such an encouragement, as it just, you know, more and more my faith is solidified by the questions and the answers that you give. And just a little behind the scenes thing for our listeners, sometimes you will hear what sounds like the flipping of pages on the air. And I have to tell you, that's not Adriel reading the daily newspaper. That's him looking through God's Word, because as you said, you don't know what kind of questions you're going to get. Sometimes frantically searching for a Bible verse, yeah, sometimes frantically, wait, where is that passage? Yeah, people will pull out, you know, obscure passages from the Old Testament and will tell me about what's going on here with Ezekiel.

And the cool thing is, is that Adriel has this encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture, and he's able to just go right to the source, to God's Word, and then to, in context, help our listeners understand, you know, what the Bible is saying. And I think that is so critical in this day and age when there are so many people that unfortunately don't have a solid view of God's Word. So our prayer is that more and more people will discover this program.

Please tell your friends and relatives, people at your church, about core Christianity so they will grow as well. And can I just, if you're listening, thank you for your support. One hundred percent, I mean, five years we give thanks to God. And if I could just ask you to do one thing, you know, maybe today, would you say a prayer? Just one prayer, that's all I ask. Would you say a prayer that God would be merciful to us and continue to enable us to serve Him in this way, and that the Lord would use this ministry, this opportunity, to get to talk to people on the radio about Jesus, about the Gospel, that God would use this to draw people to Himself? That's what we want to see. We want to see people grow in their faith. We want to see Christians, people who are already believers, built up and grounded more in the truth of God's Word. And we even want to see, we pray for this, we want to see people who are just driving in their car and, you know, they're flipping stations and they happen to hear us and they stop. We want to see people who don't know Jesus yet come to know Jesus and be convicted by the Word and comforted by the Gospel. And so would you say a prayer for us to that end, and thank you for your support. So well said. By the way, if you have a friend or relative that you want to tell about this program, and maybe they live in an area where Core Christianity is not on the radio, we have a podcast, and of course you can find the streaming audio at CoreChristianity.com. So let them know.

Check it out, CoreChristianity.com. Well, let's go to the phones. We have Chan on the line from Texas. Chan, what's your question for Adriel? Hello. Hey Chan, are you there? Yes, how are you, sir? I'm doing well, thank you for waiting on the line.

Good to get your call. What's your question, brother? Well, probably something you've answered before, but I've never heard it on the program, and I think it's only going to be an opinion or a lean-to belief, you know. It's not... just wondering about the Christ being in the belly of the earth three days, three nights, just like Jonah, as he said, and wondering how that can be explained if He died Friday afternoon and rose again Sunday morning. And I have my own take on it, not for sure, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

Hey, great question. And, you know, one that I think is important that we talk about, because it's sometimes brought up by skeptics or those who want to make an argument against the Bible, say, well, look, this is... obviously this is wrong. If Jesus died on Good Friday, was He really entombed for three days or for three nights?

And so there's that question that sometimes will come up. There are, I think, two primary ways, Chan, that Christians have responded to this objection. The first is thinking about potentially how the Jews sort of thought about their days, and the portion of the day, you know, encompassing the whole day in one sense. So, you know, Jesus dying at three o'clock on Friday, that would be day one. Saturday and then Sunday, the argument is we'll know that there really were three days there, at least in terms of the way, you know, that at that time people understood how days worked or the way they thought about days. The other argument that's put forward is that Jesus didn't actually die on Friday, but that He died on Thursday.

And so one thing that Christians will do sometimes is go to John's Gospel in John chapter 18 verse 31. It says, Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for the Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. And the argument is that there was a special Sabbath that was happening, that Jesus probably was crucified and killed on a Thursday. So you have death on Thursday, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday rise again from the dead. So those are the two ways that Christians have responded to that objection. It does seem to me like, I mean, it's, you know, if we're thinking 24-hour days and it has to be, you know, Jesus had to have been there for 72 hours and that's how you sort of understand the literal fulfillment, I think that that's going too far. It does seem to me like, you know, if we just make the argument that, well, the way in which the Jews thought about these days, it makes perfect sense to say that Jesus died on Friday. But then additionally, that other argument that's sometimes put forward, I think that there could be some merit to that as well.

I don't think that this is one of those things that should really cause us to question in any way our faith and certainly not the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And so those are the two ways that it's typically parsed out. But I'd love to just throw this back to you, Chan, because you said, you know, you have a way that you've been thinking about this.

Was it one of those two ways or was it something else? Okay. Well, this may make you roll your eyes, but it's just a thought and it's not something I'm, that's my doctrine on it. But so Genesis chapter one, the Bible defines and God defines day or the light as day and the darkness as night. Right.

Okay. And he called that day and he called that night. So, okay, if he died around three in the afternoon, the sun failed in its complete darkness, probably for three hours, it says, he could consider that night.

That could be one of the three nights. That's just, I've never heard it taught before, but that's, I've looked at it and drew it out on a diagram and I went, wow, that's three days and three nights if you're just talking about light and darkness. And I think I see what you're doing. That's pretty clever, pretty clever that you, now I don't know if I would follow you there, but I do appreciate the, I do think that that's interesting, looking at that text early on in Genesis. And let me just say, I love the fact that you're wrestling through the, you're not just saying, well, who cares? Well, who cares?

I don't know. Like, I mean, I think this is what we need to do with the Bible, is when we come across something that, okay, this is making me scratch my head, rather than just sort of move on, I think God rewards the diligent students. So like, as we dig deeper, as we seek to study and to know what we find is, no, actually there are pretty good answers to these dilemmas that we have if we're just willing to look into the scriptures to study. And so I just want to commend you in that, and may God help us all, really, to do that and to grow in our understanding of his word. Chan, thanks for listening to the broadcast, and God bless you as you continue to be Berean in your study of the scriptures.

Got to appreciate Chan's creativity there. I mean, that's pretty interesting. Well, I mean, I think that's how, in one sense, right, like, that's how we're supposed to read the scriptures. I actually do appreciate that, too, in terms of looking at the whole of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and realizing that this is, I mean, this is God's revelation to us, and scripture does interpret scripture. That's one of the primary tenets of, I think, proper biblical interpretation, that the only infallible interpreter of scripture is the scripture itself. And so looking at other passages to help us understand things, and oftentimes those dilemmas or those things that we feel like, okay, how do I make sense of this?

Is this a contradiction? Well, looking at the whole of the Bible, and that's precisely what Chan is seeking to do, and so I think that's really commendable. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can always leave us a voicemail 24 hours a day at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also email us anytime at questions at corechristianity.com.

Here's an email from one of our listeners named Mandy. She says, My church believes you have to have the proof of tongues in order to have the Holy Spirit. I've not found that anywhere in the Bible. My church says we need to be baptized in the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues as proof. I'm not convinced this is true.

What do you think? Okay, you know, hearing these kinds of things makes me sad because it creates this sort of, you know, different tiers of Christianity. There are some Christians who have the Holy Spirit, some Christians who don't really have the Holy Spirit, and you don't know until you speak in tongues. That's not what the Bible teaches. Paul told the Corinthians that no one can even say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. If you confess Jesus Christ is Lord, not just mean, you know, you're paying lip service, but if truly you believe in Jesus and you've confessed him as Lord, the Bible teaches that you are sealed with the Holy Spirit, that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of God lives in you. The language of being sealed with the Holy Spirit comes from the book of Ephesians in Ephesians chapter 1. And so we're called as Christians who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit to be filled with the Holy Spirit daily, and that happens as the word of Christ dwells in us richly, but nowhere are we told that the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit is that you have to speak in tongues, and if you don't speak in tongues then you don't have the Holy Spirit.

Now let me just, to be fair, I know where this church or this pastor gets this idea. What they're doing is they're reading the book of Acts and they're seeing those instances in the book of Acts where the Spirit of God fell upon people, like on the day of Pentecost or on the Samaritans, and they spoke in tongues. But the issue is they're taking something that's descriptive in the book of Acts and making it prescriptive for Christians at all times. And so there's an issue in just proper biblical interpretation here. And in addition, the apostle Paul makes it absolutely clear in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that not all believers have the gift of tongues. In fact, that's one of the points when it comes to the body of Christ. We're not all the same.

We don't all have the same gift. If we did, the body wouldn't be very healthy. We need hands and feet and eyes and noses and, you know, forearms. I mean, we need everything. We need everything. And if all of us were the same member of the body, well then that's, again, Paul's point in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, then the body wouldn't function properly.

It would be a disaster. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 27, Paul says, Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. One, I think, important point here is you as an individual are not the church or the body of Christ. We are a part of the body of Christ.

Individually, we are members of the body. Hey, this is a good argument for a good case for why you need to be in a local church, why you need to be a part of a local church, because you on your own in isolation are not the body of Christ. You're not the whole body of Christ. You don't have all the gifts. You need other people around you who can encourage you and support you and build you up in your faith. You need to use the gifts that God has given you for the edification of the body as a member of the body. When you withhold yourself from the body of Christ, from the church, the whole body hurts.

It's missing a key component. And so continuing, right, individually members of it, verse 28, 1 Corinthians 12, God is appointed in the church, first apostles, second apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. And then he asks this rhetorical question, are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? And the answer he expects is no.

No, they don't. We each have, you know, we've each been uniquely gifted by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the body of Christ. But to suggest that all Christians need to speak in tongues, and that if you don't, you don't have the Holy Spirit, is to misunderstand the teaching of the New Testament, and really to put a burden on believers that I think is really dangerous. And so I am against that, and I'm concerned about churches that try to do that, because then what you're left with is Christians who feel like, well, I'm like a second-class citizen, you know, I guess I don't have the Spirit. I guess, I don't know. And the real tragic thing is when people start trying to to conjure up, to manifest these gifts in the flesh, if you will, because they're told if you don't, you don't have the Holy Spirit.

And that's dangerous, and we need to avoid that kind of teaching. God bless. Great clarification. Thank you for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. I want to say thank you to a very special group of people. We call them our Inner Core, and they have committed to support us on a monthly basis, because they believe in what we do here as a ministry.

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Truly is a pleasure to get to do this, and I just want to thank you for your support. And as an additional thank you, we'll send you a copy of the book Core Christianity, written by Dr. Michael Horton. I was talking about him at the beginning of the broadcast, a dear brother and friend, and I know that this book will encourage you in your walk with the Lord. We'd love to have you join the Inner Core. You can find out more by going to corechristianity.com forward slash inner core, and we'll get you involved in that, and we'll send you that wonderful book by Dr. Horton, and you would be a great blessing to us. So again, check it out at corechristianity.com forward slash inner core.

Let's go to John from St. Louis. John, what's your question for Adriel? Yes sir, I was just wondering, in Revelations, how many nuclear wars are there? That's one question.

The second question is, can the Holy Spirit communicate with you, like, through messages? I mean, do you see it on the news? Next thing you know, like, oh well, I thought about that about a week ago, and it happened on the news. It happened several times. Is that the Holy Spirit?

Okay, two questions there. One, with regard to the amount of nuclear wars that the book of Revelation describes, I think that's one way of reading the judgments that Revelation describes. Certainly, when you think about the judgments that are described in the book of Revelation, on the world, because of sin, there is death, destruction, famine. I don't know necessarily that that's trying to communicate this was or is a nuclear war. I also don't think that that means that, you know, it couldn't be in one sense. The book of Revelation is giving us a picture of world history throughout the time from Jesus's ascension into heaven to his second coming, and it pictures it as a series of judgments that progress, that get greater and greater, leading to the final judgment, if you will.

And oftentimes we're looking for these historical reference, you know, this was that, that was the, you know, the nuclear war here, or that was this thing that happened over there. But in reality I think what John is doing is he's giving us this overview, if you will, of the kind of judgments that the world is going to experience until the coming of our Lord Jesus, and of what, you know, what the church is going to go through in terms of her suffering and her faithful witness as she seeks the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I don't think the Bible tells us.

It's not like, well, there's one nuclear war, there's another nuclear war. That's not the point of John as he's writing the book of Revelation. Additionally, and I love this question, John, can the Holy Spirit speak to us?

Well, the first thing I want to say is he does, absolutely. We have the Word of God, and as we read scripture, the Spirit of God illuminates God's Word to us. That is, grants us understanding. Every time you open up the Bible, you should say, okay, this is God's Word to me. But additionally, can God guide us by his Spirit providentially?

Sure. Now, I get a little nervous when people say, well, God spoke to me. I don't think that ordinarily God speaks, you know, giving you an audible voice or something like that, but that doesn't mean that God doesn't guide us through ordinary circumstances, through providential leading, but ultimately and primarily through his Word. And so if you want God to speak to you, be saturated in the Word. God bless.

So well said. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to a voicemail from one of our listeners. This is Tyler.

My question is, we had some friends that asked us to be the Godparents for their child, and I understand this being a, you know, a tradition to care for and spiritually invest in their child, but I was wondering, is there any biblical basis or biblical precedence for Godparents or sort of that office in the life of a child? Thank you. Tyler, thank you for that question specifically.

You know, I don't know that there's one passage that I would go to. I think that the precedent would be the fact that we are a community of faith. So at our church, for example, when a child is brought into the visible church through the sacrament of baptism as a church, we make vows together to help the parents raise that child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In other words, we're all in this together. And I like the idea of, well, that's sort of something that's happening with a Godparent, right, recognizing that, hey, we're in this together in terms of raising our families in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but if we were looking for some sort of biblical prescription, a clear Bible passage, I also don't think that we're going to find it. And so I think we ought to and want to encourage you to hold your friends, their family accountable and to encourage their children as they grow to love and follow Jesus. And may the Lord bless you and strengthen you as you do that and enable you to do it well. Thanks for reaching out. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-The-Core. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.