Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each week the afternoon and we're taking your calls as we usually do. And you can call if you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith. If you have a different view from the host and want to talk about that, we'd be glad to hear from you today. Right now our lines are full, but if you call a little later in the program, you'll very possibly find a line open.
This happens all the time. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And last night I spoke in the Phoenix area. I'm in Arizona and therefore I want you to know if you live anywhere near Tucson. We're not on the radio in Tucson, but we have friends in Tucson and some people may be driving through Phoenix and listening to me on our Phoenix station and maybe you're on your way to Tucson. Tonight I'm speaking in Tucson and information about the location can be found at our website and the time. It's a six o'clock meeting and so if you'd like to join us, you can go to thenarrowpath.com and find out everything you need to know.
I guess I can give you the information right now. It's at the First Baptist Church of Catalina, which is outside Tucson. So the First Baptist Church of Catalina from six o'clock to 830. I believe we're going to be having a question and answer time tonight, so that's what we'll be doing. If you're interested, that's tonight in the Tucson area. Alright, and right now we're going to go to our phones since the lines are full and talk to Ivan from Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Ivan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey brother Steve, how you doing? Good, good. Thanks for calling.
Thanks for taking my call. I've got two questions for you, but I think they'll be pretty quick for you. So the first one is, do you think that Judas would have been forgiven by Christ if he had repented instead of taking his own life?
And the second one is, do you think that our mind or our consciousness would be the same thing as our spirit? Okay, as for Judas, I have no doubt that if he had truly repented and come back to Christ that he would have been forgiven. I don't believe there's any sin that a person can commit which they cannot be forgiven for if they truly repent. Now sometimes people presume on that and they say, well, I'm going to live my life of sin and they become very debauched and they harden their hearts so much without realizing it that they soon find that they couldn't care less about repenting and repenting isn't something that they will do or even can do because they have no interest in it.
If you know the truth and you harden your heart against it by rejecting it, your heart by stages becomes less receptive and less responsive and less able to even feel conviction. And so repentance becomes essentially impossible at a certain point. Now had Judas reached that point? Probably, because he had seen so much and known so much that when he turned against Christ that was a very extremely deliberate, rebellious act and seems to be speaking extremely hard heart.
Now the Bible actually says that Satan entered him, which obviously had something to do with it too, but I believe that anyone who still has the capacity to repent can be forgiven if they will repent. But one should not presume that they will always have that ability because the heart is not a static thing, it's a dynamic thing and as you condition your heart to yield to God, you find yourself drawing nearer to God and it becomes more habitual to yield to God. If you condition yourself to ignore what you know God wants you to do, you don't stay the same.
Your heart becomes harder, becomes more callous and if it becomes too hard, too callous, it will be totally desensitized. It will be given over to a reprobate mind as I believe Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 1. Now as far as our consciousness, is that the same as our spirit? That's kind of impossible to answer with certainty because there are several words that the Bible uses for the inner aspects of human nature, sometimes the heart.
We were just talking about the heart and of course when I talk about the heart hardening, we're not talking about literal hardening of the arteries, we're talking about the metaphorical heart. It's the inner part of the inner man. The Bible actually uses the term the inner man, the hidden man of the heart.
It uses the word heart, it uses the word soul, it uses the word spirit, it uses the word mind and some other words. And the question is, are all these words referring to different phenomena, different parts of us or are they all different ways of speaking of the one phenomenon that we have our outer, as Paul refers to the outer man, perishing but the inner man being renewed day by day. Did Paul believe there's three parts or two parts of human nature? Is there an outer man and an inner man and therefore two? Or is the inner man divided, subdivided into heart, mind, soul, spirit?
And if so, you know, what are they? Now this is something that theologians discuss and disagree with each other about and the reason that it's not settled is that the Bible doesn't really distinguish between these that much. When Jesus said, you know, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, is he talking about three different parts of us or is he simply laying on synonyms for emphasis?
I, you know, I don't know. There are people who believe that our consciousness is what is called the soul, actually the emotions and the will and the intellect. They would say that's the soul and they would say that the spirit is something else other than the soul, something deeper, something that's, you know, the image of God in us. And there are times when the spirit and the soul are spoken of separately, but whether they're being distinguished between is another question.
For example, it says in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12 that the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword and dividing to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow. And that sounds like it's saying it divides or distinguishes between the soul and the spirit. Though, if somebody didn't believe that the soul and the spirit are different from each other, they could say, well, the soul and the spirit is one thing and the joints and the marrow is the other thing. You've got the inner man referred to the soul and spirit and the outer man as the joints and marrow.
So you still just have two parts. Paul does talk about God sanctifying your whole spirit, soul and body where he mentions those three separately. But some feel that he's not necessarily distinguishing between the spirit and the soul. He's just again heaping on synonyms and sometimes the writers of the Bible do that.
And that's what makes it ambiguous. My own thought and I hold this very lightly because, as I say, the Scripture does not answer it definitively to my mind. My own thought is there are three parts of us. Our body, of course, is the outer man, but the inner man would be comprised of the soul, which I would consider to be probably the same in the Bible as what the Bible calls the mind and the heart.
But that there's also the spirit. And the reason I would make a distinction between soul and spirit, though it's not an ironclad case, when Paul talks about speaking in tongues, he says when he speaks in tongues, his spirit prays, but his understanding is unfruitful. And I don't know, but by the understanding, he seems to be referring to the mind. So he seems to refer to the spirit praying and the mind not, which would make a distinction between them.
Yet this isn't much to go on. And therefore, I never am dogmatic about the whole issue of whether man has two parts or three parts. Well, for that matter, if we gave a different meaning to every word that he uses, there might be six or seven parts. But it's entirely possible that all the references to the nonphysical nature of man, the mind, the soul, the spirit, the heart, all these terms that are used, might all just be referring to what Paul calls the inner man without differentiation. But I lean toward the view that the inner man is divided into the spirit and the soul. In that case, the understanding or the consciousness would be the soul, I would think.
And that's your question, is our understanding our soul? Is that what you're asking? Yes, basically. So my understanding would be, yes, probably, but maybe not.
I mean, there are others who feel differently about it. Okay, thanks. Thanks for this, Steve.
I appreciate your answer. Okay, I've been good talking to you, brother. Thanks for your call. The next caller is Christian from King Valley. Now, King Valley, is that in Arizona, Christian? Yes, that's it. Oh, that's in Oregon. You're that Christian. Okay, I'm sorry.
I forgot you lived in King Valley. That's in Oregon, right, near Falomath, right? Yes. Okay, good to hear from you again.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to hear from you. I have pre-ordered your book on Amazon, and they're going to send it the day it becomes available, and I just cannot wait to read it and the inspiration it gives. Thank you so much for writing that book on the King of God.
And just, I love your teaching. Bless you for it. But I'm calling today to help, you know, because I think I have a help for that, for our brother, John, who's trying to turn from homosexual sin and with addictive temptation there. You know, there is a way website called livingout.org, which is created by Christians in his exact same position, who they are same-sex attracted Christians.
They have overcome the challenges that he's facing right now in those temptations, and they're really devoted to the Christ, but they have same-sex attraction. They have to handle what that means, and there's a lot of great testimony on that website and a lot of great resources to help with the struggle there, and I think it's something that he might really get a lot from. Now, what was that website again? It's called livingout.org..org.
Livingout.org. Yeah, I've known of, you know, ministries that are begun and comprised of Christians with same-sex attraction who are learning to get victory over that. Some of those ministries, I don't know if they're still around or not, but there's probably quite a few, but it's good to have a recommendation for him. John might be calling again today because I invited him to yesterday.
The last two days he's called are right at the end of the show, so we haven't been able to talk much, but that's a good resource. I'm glad to have it recommended. Yeah, great, and I just want to let him know that I feel a lot of compassion for him because, like, struggling with celibacy, it's a little different for me, but I still, you know, must be celibate, and I understand how much that kind of, how hard that can be, and I just want John to know that we're praying for him, and I really wish the best for you, and I know that you can overcome it, so good luck, and God bless you. Christian, thanks so much for that recommendation and that encouragement.
God bless you, bro. And I might just say this, too, you know, as a single guy, Christian mentioned, he has to, you know, practice celibacy, as all single Christians do, and I want to say that, you know, I was a single adult Christian for many years. Before I married my wife, I had 10 years of unmarried life and, you know, had the same temptations probably any other man has. You can avoid many of them by, you know, avoiding certain situations and places, but everyone has, I think, some kind of temptation in the area of sexual drive, but whether you're gay or straight, the Christian standard is celibacy until you're married. Now, of course, the gay person has a valid complaint in saying, well, yeah, that's easy for you to say, because even though you're celibate, you knew you could get married, you know, you like women, and therefore you could have a wife, and you could then, you know, you could not have to be celibate. And that's theoretically true, but in my last stint of 10 years of celibacy, I actually wasn't sure I'd ever find another wife, and I thought I was actually facing the possibility of never being able to be married, and there are many people who would love to be married, but they've just never found a mate.
They've never found somebody who works with them. So, I mean, there's a sense in which anyone who cannot get married, even if it's just because they can't find a suitable partner, is in the same position as a person whose same-sex attraction makes it impossible for them to marry, and, you know, it's hard. But I will say this.
Whether it's going 10 years celibate, even knowing that I could get married, if you can do it for 10 years, you can do it for 20 years or 30 years or whatever. I mean, if you walk with the Lord and walk in the Spirit, you can do these things. God will assist you.
And having a ministry of people who are facing the same struggle, like that ministry that Christian mentioned, livingout.org, I believe it was called, that's something that you can probably find some encouragement in if you're struggling with same-sex attraction and trying to live a holy life. Let's talk to John from Wyoming. John, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Thanks, Steve. I'd like to talk about another delicate subject. I'd like to get your opinion. Okay.
Talk as loudly as you can, because I can't hear you very well. This is a subject that I haven't heard really taught on. But can you imagine a situation where masturbation would not be sinful, say, like for a married couple in the military and one of them gets deployed and they're separated for a while? Would that be a sinful situation in your estimation? You know, that is a hard subject to answer for the simple reason that masturbation is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, despite the fact that the Bible lists a great number of sexual sins, and it lists them many times. In many passages, there's long lists of sexual sins, and either by neglect or on purpose, masturbation is not mentioned in them. Nonetheless, most Christians, like myself, do not feel very comfortable with recommending or approving of masturbation because, well, usually there's mental things that go along with it, which can be, you know, violating Jesus' command about looking at a woman to lust after and so forth. But obviously you're talking about a situation where a person's married, and I assume that they're thinking about their spouse, and whereas it would not be wrong to actually have relations with their spouse, one could argue it can't be much sin in imagining having relations with their spouse. There are others who see masturbation as always wrong because they feel there's something very sacred about sex, and they don't believe in using birth control. They think it's wrong simply to, as they would say, spill the seed, as Onan did in the Bible, which he was practicing a form of birth control. He wasn't masturbating, but they would say, you know, God's displeasure with him would show that God doesn't want any human seed wasted or whatever. But I think that's reading more into that passage than that passage is trying to say. I don't think that Onan, I think his sin was that he was refusing to raise up a child for his brother, which he was supposed to do under the Jewish, well, there was no Jewish law at the time, but under the customs of the time and basically family ethics.
So he didn't love his brother is the issue, I think, here with him. So there's really nothing in the Bible that answers your question directly. And I just have to tell people, pray about it and ask God to convict you one way or the other about it and follow your conscience in the matter. I will say that I've never condemned anybody who would do the kind of thing you've described when they're thinking of their wife or whatever, simply because I can't think of any biblical principle that it would violate. But I do think it's very important to cultivate self-control.
And even when husband and wife are separated for periods of time, having self-control over your drives is a very important thing, and the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. But it may not be that God is offended by somebody, you know, imagining their wife in that situation. Since the Bible is silent, I can only mumble, and I can't really answer directly. And of course, not only can I not answer directly, but it's a subject that a lot of people have strong feelings about, one way or the other. I've known pastors who've told me that they thought that masturbation was just kind of a release valve that God has given us for people who, you know, can't have regular relations with people because they're single or whatever.
And it's, you know, that's not necessarily my position, but I don't know that they're wrong. I honestly just don't know what the Bible would say about it. So I would just recommend that if you pray about it, ask God to convict you about it, and follow your conscience. And, you know, I think God will convict if somebody is doing something, and they're asking Him to do so, to convict them about it.
So that would be my answer. I mean, there are couples also where either the husband or the wife simply, for medical reasons, or, you know, they're invalids or they have injuries or whatever, they simply are not able to be available to each other for sexual intimacy. And it's hard to know. I mean, it's hard to say that God would be offended by, you know, finding that kind of an alternative. But I can't answer for God directly on that one. And He hasn't spoken for Himself directly in Scripture. So I would think He'd have to guide the individuals.
The fact that He hasn't spoken directly on Scriptures would make it legalistic, because I don't like to add rules to Christians that the Bible doesn't lay out, make it legalistic to condemn somebody for. But nonetheless, I've never felt for my life that it was something I wanted to excuse or have, that I didn't want to maintain self-control over. I think self-control is a very satisfying thing.
But, of course, I'll let God convict people as He wishes. Well, as far as self-control, I mean, didn't Paul say, you know, it's better to marry than to burn? He did.
He did. And he even said that when a husband and wife deprive each other of that, he said they should only do it for a short time and only, you know, for fasting and prayer or something like that. And he said that, and then come back together lest Satan tempt you for your incontinence. Now, Paul's very realistic. He knows that when a husband and wife, or even I suppose he knew because he was single, even a single person, has to go a long time without sexual release, that that person is going to have strong temptations. He mentioned the saint will tempt you. But Paul also believed that you can resist temptation.
So, you know, it's not like it's inevitable that we have to follow our drives. On the other hand, the real question is how sympathetic is God with us with the struggles that we may face? And that's why I can't answer for him on that point. I know that he, it says in Psalm 103, he remembers our frame. He knows our frame.
He remembers that we are dust, it says. And so, I mean, God knows our weakness. That doesn't mean He approves of us, you know, doing everything that we in our weakness might fall to, but He certainly knows the struggle we're having.
Jesus had the struggle, too. So, you know, I'll just, again, have to leave that between a person and God, because I can't give a verse number about it. Well, I just see all kinds of scenarios. Yeah, I understand. Or the loss of a spouse, you know, something like that.
Of course. I understand very well. I've lost a spouse before, and I know exactly how it is. And I'll tell you what, it was a lot easier for me to remain celibate as a virgin until I married my first wife. I was a virgin when I got married. It was a lot easier to remain celibate as a virgin than as a formerly married person, of course, because obviously getting married or even just having sexual experience opens a world to you that you didn't have. You might have imagined it, but you didn't have it when you were a virgin.
And it can be a hard thing to put out of your mind. Anyway, I'm very sympathetic. Thank you. And I'll just, again, just ask God, because I'm not His spokesman for everything. If there's something in the Bible, I can tell you where it is.
But if it's not in the Bible, you're as good a judge as I am, you know, in terms of finding God's conviction in your life. Thanks, Steve. All right, brother. Thank you for your call. God bless you. Okay, let's talk to Maggie in Massachusetts. Maggie, welcome to The Marrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Wow, that was some loud noises on your line. Go ahead. Hi, Steve. Good afternoon. Yeah.
I need your help. So my brother keeps asking me the same question, and I'm obviously not doing a good enough job in regards to, he wants to better understand if God is such a loving God, then why did he have or allow other religions and cultures to exist? And what about those cultures, like a Muslim who has never heard of Jesus, and I understand, you know, in the Israelites, why God separated them and didn't want them to interfaith Mary.
And I understand in the New Testament, you know, that resurrected Jesus instructed Paul to spread the gospel, so that's letting me know that this is the only truth, that Jesus is the way, the truth of a life. But how would you better explain it to someone who's questioning that? Like, if God's such a loving God, then how would he allow, like, a sweet Hindu person who's never heard of Jesus to then, you know, be rejected in the time of judgment?
Thank you, Steve, for your help. Yeah. Well, as far as why God allowed there to be so many religions, God has allowed many things to exist that he doesn't approve of. Religions are created by man and by men who are rejecting the truth of God. Now, that's how religions are created.
Some people are born into religions and they don't know any better, and I don't know how God's going to, you know, how God's going to assess their level of innocence or guilt about their ignorance. But, you know, all people knew the true God at one time, and that was after the flood. Noah knew the true God, and he and his sons were the only people who survived the flood.
So his sons certainly knew about God, too, because they had seen the miracle of the flood and their deliverance. So everyone came from them, and some were long-lying. People dropped the ball and didn't pass along their understanding and knowledge of God to their children. And so whole groups of people apparently formed communities in various parts of the world that didn't retain the knowledge of God, but because human beings are worshippers, you know, they had to make up religions, which are not okay, but that's just the way it is.
I mean, people do it. Now, in a sense, religions that are not true are an evidence of people's search for God in many cases. And God knows who it is they're searching for, and the question is how, you know, what's God going to do with people that He knows are searching, but they don't have access to the truth. And all I can say is God's going to deal with that fairly and mercifully. And perhaps you're trying to answer a question about, you know, do these people go to hell and burn forever and so forth if they never heard of Jesus. Well, there's nothing in the Bible that says specifically in my mind that they are all going to do so. There were people who didn't know about Jesus in the Old Testament, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who got saved. And I think people who turn to God and have faith in God and seeking God if they don't otherwise know the Gospel, God's going to deal with them differently than He's going to deal with somebody who's just rejecting God even though they know. And I can't answer how He will do it in each case, but He'll do the right thing in every case.
And we can guarantee people that because God is always right. I need to take a break for 30 seconds. I'll be right back for another half hour.
Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour. And if you'd like to call in, you can call in with questions you have about the Bible or the Christian faith or to a balanced comment if you have a different viewpoint. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is John from Dallas. And John, is this the same John who's been calling the last couple of days?
Yes. How are you? Welcome.
How are you? What's your first half hour when Christian recommended a resource? I got in the car right when I heard him talking about lifeout.org. And when I realized what he was talking about. Yeah, living out.
It's livingout.org. And when I realized what he was talking about. Okay. I realized when he was talking about me, it almost brought a tear to my eye. Yeah, well, I'm sure a lot of people are praying for you because you've shared the struggle. Now, you haven't actually said it's your struggle, but I'm assuming it is. I mean, it may be that someone you know is having a struggle.
But I think people probably assumed it's yours. It's my struggle. It's my struggle. And I'm trying to come out of it. And I mean, I think I'm doing fine about it.
It's just that the thoughts are still there. I still wrestle with, you know. How long have you been a believer? Are you a follower of Christ at this point? I believed in Jesus my whole life. But actually, up until I had a demonic experience, I didn't I started seeing things differently and trying to learn more about the Bible and getting into it a little more. Just trying to make sense of what I was dealing with. Ephesians 6 12 kind of struck me when I realized that that's what it was.
And I don't know, you know, it's just like a couple of people told me, you know, it's not a snap your fingers and it changes. It's an everyday battle. Yeah, and it has been. Well, you know, the truth is the the Christian life is that way for everyone, because even those who are not LGBT people are are tempted with sin. And a lot of people have been abused. A lot of people have addictions and even people who seem to not have those kind of special struggles have struggles you don't know about because to become a follower of Christ requires that we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus.
And that goes right against our human nature to do anything like that. And so it's, you know, anyone who's really struggling to try to follow Christ should not think that they are in a special category. You know, it says in First Peter, chapter five, verse eight and nine, it says, Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, like a roaring lion roams about seeking whom he may devour. It says, resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are being experienced by your brothers throughout the world. In other words, we sometimes think we're fighting a struggle that is worse or harder than everybody else has. And we may have a very exceedingly difficult struggle. But Peter says, hey, you got to realize all the brethren, all the Christian brethren are facing temptations.
All of them are struggling with something. And even people, you know, like I've never had any addictions. I've never had any of that. But I've had my own kinds of struggles. I've had family crises. I've had, you know, lots of issues.
Children who, you know, have given me some grief at times. I mean, there's just there's almost an infinite number of ways that life can become difficult. But all of them are, I think, opportunities for us to learn to trust God in hardship and to be strengthened spiritually because we're at war. It's like, you know, whatever our struggle is, we may not defeat it entirely instantly, but as long as we don't give up fighting against it, we do grow stronger.
If we give up, it's the best we can become weaker. Can you tell me what I missed when I caught the very end of what the guy was saying? Yeah, Christian was saying, OK, what he was saying, what he was saying is that he's got a lot of sympathy for you. He's a single man. He's not gay, but he's he has to live celibate life, too. And he finds it very, very difficult at times, as I think most single people do have their times where they do, whether they're gay or straight. You see, we have to remember that a person who's same sex attraction and has to remain sexually pure has exactly the same amount of struggle as a person who's who's not gay and has to remain sexually pure and is single. So, I mean, it's simply a common struggle. Jesus was a single man.
The apostle Paul was a single man. Godly men have had to somehow master that particular struggle, whether their sexual attraction is for same sex or opposite sex. It's pretty much the same struggle. And, well, I shouldn't say it's the same struggle, but it's the same.
There's just as much requirement of dedication to resistance, to temptation and so forth. And I know I know some gay Christians who have been celibate for a long time. Some of them actually have seemingly changed their orientation.
They've gotten married and had kids and so forth. I mean, they're the gay community would tell you that that can't happen. They say it's a it's a false hope. And that, you know, some in California, I'm not in California right now, so I can say this in California, it might even become illegal someday to tell people that there is such a thing as changing over. They don't mind, by the way, if the schools help a confused straight child switch over to being a gay child. But they think it's criminal to have a confused gay child change over to a straight child. But I don't make any promises that a gay Christian can change his orientation because I don't know that to be true. Some do. I know that some do, but some may never.
But that's not really the issue. You don't come to Christ in order that your orientation will be changed and you'll have no more struggles in that area. You come to Christ to please him and live a life that pleases him and is holy to him.
And you take into consideration whatever your struggles are and say, OK, I need to find ways to resist this. And so Christian, when he called, all he said was that he had a lot of compassion for you and he understood how hard it is to be celibate, but he said he had known of a website called livingout.org, is what he said. Now, my wife is holding a saying that says living out the word of God, but he didn't say that. He said livingout.org. Just a moment ago, during the break, I looked up livingout.org, and there is something there about the LGBT community, but I couldn't tell that it was Christian.
So, I mean, I haven't looked at it. So all I can say is he was saying that is a place where Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction are trying to help each other out. But, again, I'm not familiar with that website.
And I also tried to look up livingoutthewordofGod.org, and nothing came up on my screen that said can't find it. So if you go to matthew713.com, you'll find that there's, well, there's a lot of calls I've received over the years from people about addiction and things like that, and you find an index of topical calls from this show in the past. If you look up abuse or addiction or something like that, or even gay lifestyle, you'll probably find there are some previous calls. But as I told you the first time you called, I think it would help a great deal for you to listen to my lectures on cultivating Christian character at our website.
And that's because I can say a lot more there than I can here on the radio show, because I've got my lines full, and I can't really dedicate a lot of time to one caller when there's a bunch of them waiting. Do you remember the question I asked you about a friend that was trying to deceive me, and they gave me a Bible verse? They gave me the wrong Bible verse, and then they actually sent me a picture of it. It wasn't Isaiah 21-7, it was Isaiah chapter 6, and it's talking about my lying lips, and that I am with them.
Isaiah 6-6 where he said, Behold, or verse 5, Woe is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, I dwell among people of unclean lips. How was he using that? How was he seeing that as relevant? I think it was basically saying that I am a person that is lying to you because I am a follower of other people that are liars.
I don't understand. Wait, he's saying that you're a liar? No, like he's implying that he is a liar, and that he is a lying lip, and he is of people that have lying lips. Okay, well I can't do anything about him saying that, you know, I mean, apparently he is a liar. He's telling you that himself.
When people tell you that kind of stuff about themselves, believe them. Yeah, I mean, that verse is not about your friend. That verse is about Isaiah. Talk about himself. It could apply to other people too, but it's not a generic statement about humanity. It's a statement about Isaiah feeling this about himself when he was in the presence of God.
So I'm not really sure how quoting that verse and making that point was intended to impact you, but if he's lying and he's telling you he's lying, well then don't believe him. John, I really need to take some more calls. You're good. Thank you. I appreciate you calling, and like I said, there is that website.
I don't know anything about it, and I hope it's the kind of thing that will be helpful, but I don't know. Thank you, Steve. Have a good day. Yeah, my lectures at thenarrowpath.com or the topical arrangement or index of calls from this program can be found at matthew713.com, so there's some resources there that hopefully can help you out.
Okay, thank you. Okay, John. God bless you, and by the way, many feel compassion for what you're going through, and I'm sure many are praying for you. Let's talk to another Texas caller, Bob in Texas.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello, Steve. It's nice to talk to you. Thank you for taking my call, and God bless your ministry. Thank you. I just have a quick two-part question for you.
Is it a sin to have oral sex with your spouse, and is it also a sin to have lust for your spouse? And I'll take your answer on the radio. Okay. Okay, thanks for your call. Well, a lot of similar type subject matters, I guess, today.
By the way, my screen is frozen, studio, and I cannot hang that call up now, so if the studio would disengage that call, that would help. Well, again, the Bible doesn't talk about any specific form of sexual activity between a married couple, and most Christian counselors I've heard of would say there's really no restrictions about that, and they're basing that on the fact that the Bible is the Word of God and doesn't say anything forbidding it, and that may be true. However, I wouldn't say that it's not okay, but I wonder about even married couples becoming overly sexually charged. I think sexual behavior, the normal kind that God created, the kind that can possibly create children and so forth, that obviously is a gift from God. It obviously is there to enhance life for a married couple, but I think when we begin to say, yeah, but that's not satisfying anymore. That's getting boring.
Yeah, let's try something else. I think that when you get on the slope toward other things, and I'm not saying that the thing you mentioned is specifically a sin, but when you start moving away from the ordinary use of the organs that God gave you, you begin to cultivate, I think, a desire for novelty that can become unhealthy. Now, again, I know that a lot of married couples probably practice that, and I don't say they're sinning, but I don't only worry about legalistic rules about things.
I also am interested in the trajectory of my spiritual life. I may be doing something that is okay in terms of not morally forbidden, but it might be having an impact or it might be a signpost along a trend in my thinking that if I continue very far down that road, who knows what. People get so bored with ordinary intimacy that they get into bondage and all kinds of weird kinds of things. I've known Christians who say they do that, and I think, is that really kind of, I don't know, is that really pure?
I don't know. The difficulty here is people say, well, we're married and therefore everything's okay. Well, okay, being married, we're not told what is and is not okay in terms of sexual intimacy in the Bible, but we can use our spiritual sense and say, if I'm getting to a place where I can't enjoy regular intimacy with my wife in the way God designed it to be done, am I not maybe becoming addicted to continuing novelty? Now, of course, it should go without saying that if a couple is allowing themselves that behavior, it should be something that both of them agree with because sex is supposed to be a manifestation of love. And there are, I know, cases where I think probably especially men, I don't know, women too sometimes, I'm not of this number, but where they, one party really wants to do things that are innovative in that area and the other is not comfortable with it. In that case, I would think it should be avoided altogether, that is, that particular behavior, because a man should never, I think, pressure his wife or a woman pressure her husband to do anything intimately that the other just doesn't feel good about. And a lot of times, especially the man will sort of force his intentions on his wife just because he feels like he can and sometimes the life will go along, but she doesn't like it and wishes they weren't doing that.
So I think the main thing a Christian should be concerned about is that we are not making sex the focus of a relationship as the world teaches us to do. The world tries to teach us that, you know, even on dating and things like that, you know, it's normal to have sex. It's not. It's not normal. It's become average behavior.
It's not normative behavior. God made people to have only one sex partner in a lifetime ideally. Now, of course, when someone is widowed or something happens and, you know, the marriage is cut short and there may be another marriage, I mean, sometimes the ideal is not realized. But I think the ideal for the human psyche in God's mind is to have one partner for a whole lifetime and to wait until marriage. Once you're married, I don't think suddenly all restraints are down.
And I'm not talking about moral imperatives here. I'm just talking about spiritual life. Your spiritual life with your husband or wife should not be focused on sex. Now, I understand enjoying sex, but when it gets to the point where ordinary intimacy is no longer enjoyable, then I think a person needs to check their spiritual state. Why isn't that enjoyable?
It should be. And many times the answer is that they need to learn to love their spouse. They've lost love for the person and they've begun to use that aspect of the relationship just to satisfy themselves and not to be concerned about their spouse. If you love somebody, if you love your wife, your husband, then you use that time of intimacy to try to make their life blessed.
You try to please them. That's what love is. But we have come to think of lust as love, and that being so, the more you lust, the more you think you love the person.
That's just the opposite of the truth. I think that people who are not becoming overly obsessed with sex can be satisfied with normal sexuality. And I'm not saying that they immediately are sinning if they do something else, but it is, as I say, a step down a path where the heart doesn't stay the same.
You get the law of diminishing returns in drugs and alcohol and lots of behaviors, including sex. So I would say, well, if couples both want to do that, I don't know of anything in the Bible that forbids it. I would say someone who's really trying to keep their marriage holy and keep the sex drive under control, and it may, would probably want to draw the line somewhere.
And I don't know if that's where they draw the line or not. I personally can't imagine why anyone who loves their spouse would not be satisfied with ordinary intimacy. But if the spouse is somehow incapable of being satisfied with it, maybe there's something physical about them, then other options, no doubt, would be a loving thing to consider. You ask, is it wrong to lust after your wife? Jesus said if a man looks at a woman to lust after her, he commits adultery in his heart. Well, that's because he's looking at a woman that isn't his wife, or else it wouldn't be adultery. If he would have sex with his wife, it's not adultery.
If he had sex with a woman who's not his wife, then it would be. So obviously he's talking about looking at someone who's not your wife and committing the act in your heart. It would not be adultery if it's your wife, and therefore it's not adultery to desire your wife. The word lust, by the way, doesn't mean specifically sexual attraction, though it is speaking about that in that verse. The word lust in the Greek is an ordinary word for desire.
Jesus even used the very same Greek word in Luke when he came to the upper room with the disciples and said, with great desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. That's the same word, desire, as it's translated, whoever looks at a woman to lust after, to desire her. Of course a man desires a woman sexually, but he's talking about a woman who is not yours, a woman who belongs to someone else. It's coveting your neighbor's wife, whether it's strictly for sexual reasons or just because you think she'd be a wife that would make you a happier man if you had her instead of your own. To desire another man's wife is to commit adultery in the heart. But if it's your own wife, well, you should desire her. If you want to read the early chapters of Proverbs, especially chapter 5, Solomon strongly urges husbands to have passionate, intimate relations and desire their wives in that way. So that's what Jesus is saying about looking at a woman to lust. He's not talking about how you can't desire your wife.
I think it's wrong not to. All right, let's talk to David in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Hi David, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hi Steve, I appreciate your program and you very much. My question is, can a Christian have a besetting sin or an addiction and expect to be saved after death? Well, we all stumble in many ways. A besetting sin is by nature something that defines our struggle. If I have a problem with pride or if I have a problem with envy, if I have a problem with lust or with alcohol, and let's just say that's a bigger problem to me than other sins are. Maybe someone else has another sin that's the biggest one in their life.
That's a besetting sin. But once you know that you have a besetting sin like that, what you've done is defined your struggle and this is what you're fighting against for the rest of your life. And that's okay because you've got to fight against something. You're at war. The war doesn't end until Jesus comes back or you die.
I mean you retire from it when you die. But life is a battlefield and therefore, let's just say you have a problem with just to pick something out of there, alcohol. Well, now you know what you've got to fight against and a true Christian will fight against sin in his life.
That's what the spiritual war is doing. You're fighting against the temptations of the enemy and yes, if you're a follower of Christ and you're fighting it, fighting the sin in your life but you're not succeeding completely, it's the struggle that shows whether you're a follower of Christ or not. You know, a Christian who gets drunk or a non-Christian who gets drunk differ from each other in one specific way. The Christian wants to stop. The Christian wants to not get drunk. When the Christian does get drunk, they repent because they know it's something they really don't want to do because it doesn't please God.
That's the difference. So yeah, there are Christians who when they die, they have not defeated all the sin in their life in the sense that they're not living a sinless life. But Christians are still in the struggle. Sometimes people say, you know, I don't know how I can be a Christian because I'm struggling with pornography.
Well, struggling with it is a good thing. I mean, reading it without struggling, falling into sin without fighting it, that's a bad thing. If you're struggling, it means the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these two are contrary to another. But it does say in Galatians 5 16, if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. So what we need to learn is walk in the Spirit and when we do, we don't fall even to our besetting sins. It's just that nobody walks in the Spirit all the time.
Only Jesus did that. But we must do it all that we can and develop a pattern and habit of always walking in the Spirit. Great. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, David.
God bless you. Thanks for your call. We only have a minute or two. John in Arizona, do you want a minute or two?
Is that too little? I'm not sure, Steve. I want to give it a try while I have a check because I'm under a deadline here and what I'm calling about. Okay, quickly then. Quickly, what's your call? My problem is that I'm a senior and I've been having a lot of health problems.
I got evicted from my home and I've been living in my car since January about 18th and it's been hard on my health. And bottom line, what I'm trying to get at is that I can't get some of my Christian friends to help me when I need their help and I haven't been able to find, I thought you would be the best at it, find a scripture to convict them that God says in his eyes that they should help me. The only thing I could find, so I want you to give me a scripture if it exists so I can use that scripture on them and convict them that they should help me. They seem to think it's just up to them. Let me just jump in because we're going to run out of time.
I have to put you on hold because I'm going to hear the music in just a minute here. I think the problem that you're facing is that you're demanding something of others who perhaps should be doing something. The Bible does say that Christians should help the poor and should have compassion on the needy and Jesus said, inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. There's lots of scriptures about that, but they are not calling me. If they were calling me, I'd give them those scriptures.
You're calling me. And what I would say to you is don't be looking at what other Christians are doing or failing to do. You will do well if you do what Jesus said to do and that is in Matthew 633, he said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things, meaning food, clothing, things you need, will be added to you. Of course, you might have to live in poverty. I've done that. I've done that for decades.
I've lived in a car or a bus, a VW bus. I've done those things, but I never looked to people or blamed people if they didn't help me. I just realized I need to do the will of God and he'll take care of me and he always did. And so that would be my recommendation. Look to your own heart and not to what others are doing wrong. You've been listening to The Narrow Path.
Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'm out of time. Thanks for joining us today. God bless you.
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