The Narrow Path 10/9

Music Playing Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We take your phone calls if you have questions you want to bring up on the air to discuss questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or challenges, frankly, to the views of the host of this program because we have to understand that first of all, not all of our listeners are probably Christians, probably not all believe the Bible is even true, and there may be some who would like to bring up some challenges even to the presuppositions that the Christians hold. On the other hand, there are many Christians who hold divergent views on certain subjects and many of those subjects come up on the air.

So if you see things differently than the host and wish to balance comment, feel free to join us. Unfortunately, for those who might want to call at this time, we are, our lines are full, but you can take this number down. If you call sometime in the next few minutes, you may find a line has opened up.

The number is 844-484-5737. Now, some of our listeners may be in Arkansas and some may be in Oklahoma or parts of Texas and may be interested in knowing that we have a meeting up in the northwestern corner of Arkansas in Prairie Grove tonight. And if you're interested in that, we know some people from Tulsa, I think, are coming in. Some from Dallas said they might come, but we don't know how many will arrive. It's RSVP, but we don't have, we're not on any radio stations in this part, so we don't know how many may come. There are some, of course, who have RSVPed and are coming.

If you're interested, you can look at our website, TheNarrowPath.com, under the tab that says Announcements, and look down at tonight's date, and you will see, that's October 9th, that time and place can be accessed from there. That's going to be a Q&A in a private home. So that's happening tonight in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, which is pretty close to parts of Missouri, parts of Oklahoma, parts of Texas, and we might have listeners in those areas interested. All right, let's talk to Frank from North Texas.

Frank, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Good afternoon, Steve. It was a pleasure. My wife and I got the pleasure of meeting you and your wife and your grandson Wednesday night here in Richardson. Yes, I remember. And we had a good time and enjoyed it.

Thank you. There's something about that night, if you don't mind me asking, make sure I heard you right. A lady asked me something, I forget what her topic was, but it got into predestined, and you said there's only two spots in the Bible, if I heard you correctly, two places in the Bible that spoke of it.

Can you go over that for me, if you would, please, briefly? Yes, there are two places in the New Testament where the word predestined or predestination, that particular terminology, is used concerning us. Now, the Bible also uses the same word with reference to Jesus being predestined.

Peter uses that expression. But with reference to us being predestined, we have Romans chapter 8, verses 29 and 30, and we have a couple of verses in Ephesians chapter 1. So in 1 Corinthians 8, excuse me, did I say 1 Corinthians 8? Romans 8, verse 29, it says, "...whom he foreknew, he also did predestine," or predestinate, the King James says, "...to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn of many brethren. And whom he predestined he also called, and whom he called he justified, and whom he justified he glorified." So these two words have the word predestined or predestinated, and it refers to the people that God foreknew. It says, "...those who he foreknew, he predestined to," he doesn't say to be saved, this is not talking about anyone being predestined to be saved, nor even to believe. The ones he foreknew are the ones who are the believers, the Christians.

We are the ones. We who are believers are the ones that God foreknew. And of us, it says, "...he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son." So this is telling us that there are people that God foreknew as believers, and he made a certain predestination for their final destiny, which we have not come to yet.

We have not experienced it yet. We have not yet fully conformed to the image of his son. So he's talking about the final end that God has predestined for those who believe in him. There's no reference in this passage to God predestining anyone to believe, but those whom he foreknew refers to those who believe, those who are Christians. See, the believers, yeah.

Yeah, believers, right. And then in Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 1 is the only other place that these words are used. And it says in—well, I'm just glancing through here—verse 4—no, it is verse 5.

It's Ephesians 1.5. It says, "...having predestined us," again, we Christians, we Christians are predestined to something that is in the future, "...he has predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ himself, to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." And you might say, well, adoption?

That's not our future. Aren't we already adopted? Well, in one sense, we are certainly now children of God. The Bible says that. But Paul uses the word adoption to refer to the resurrection. Over in Romans 8, he says that we are groaning. We who have received the first fruits of the Spirit do groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, which he then said is the redemption of our body. So Paul speaks of the adoption that we're looking forward to, is the redemption of our body, or what we usually refer to as the resurrection in the future, which is when we arise in the image of Christ. So both passages tell us that God has predestined something for the believers. We are the believers, and he has something predestined for us in the future, a resurrection in the image of Christ. I don't hear anything there that would even closely indicate he's talking to others. Just the believers, correct?

Well, right. When he says us, yeah, he's talking to the church, the saints. He refers to them as the saints who, you know, are saved.

So he's talking to save people. He says, we who are, of course, saved, God has predestined that we shall have adoption as sons. That is, in the resurrection, we will be, as Paul said in Romans 9, the verse I mentioned earlier, conformed into the image of his son.

Now that's a process that's going on even now. In 2 Corinthians 3.18, Paul said that we are being changed from glory to glory into the image of Christ. So that's a process through our lifetime. But the ultimate is that we will be like him. Remember 1 John 3. John tells us, Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. So the destiny of the Christian, as all these passages suggest, is to be resurrected in glory on the last day and be in the image of Christ. We'll be like him.

That's what God has predestined for us. Alright, I'm good with that. Thank you, Safe Travels, for you and your wife and your grandson. Thank you, Frank. God bless. Alright, God bless you too, brother. Bye-bye. Bye now. Okay, Elisa, or Eliza, from Hillsboro, Oregon.

Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. It's Elisa. Elisa. Just Elisa, yeah. Oh, Lisa.

Okay, we've got an E on there from the call screen. Go ahead. So I was recently listening to a sermon, and I've heard this one before, and I've heard you talk about it a little bit. I'm wondering if you could just talk about it a little bit more. He's talking about, he keeps saying in the sermon how we're told not to judge. And I was, I'm struggling with how, this is a, he's talking about it in relation to the election coming up, and people not judging, people who have differences of opinions on him. And at the same time, I have heard this same preacher, I don't know what he means by judge, but I've heard him say, like, recently say that racism is wrong, and certain other things. Which is a judgment, right. Yeah, I don't understand how we're not supposed to judge as Christians.

Could you just talk about this a little? Okay, so this is actually coming from a pastor who should know better than to say such silly things, right? To me, yes.

Yeah, okay. Well, let me just say, when Christians say to other Christians, or more often when non-Christians say to Christians, you're not supposed to judge, they are always referring to Matthew 7.1, which is the favorite verse in the Bible for unbelievers. Judge not, lest you be judged.

As if that has no context, as if that is the whole statement on the subject of making judgments. Actually, throughout the Bible, we are told to make judgments, but in fact, let me just tell you, in John 7.24, Jesus said, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. So, he tells us there's a way that we're not supposed to judge, and a way we are supposed to judge. We're actually commanded to judge righteous judgment just as much as we're commanded not to judge according to appearance. So, if someone says we're not supposed to judge, they are not nuanced thinkers at all, which is a shame.

They shouldn't be preaching until they can understand some of the basic sentences in the Bible. When Jesus said, judge not in Matthew 7.1, lest you be judged, he went on to say, the measure you use to judge others is the measure that will be used to judge you. And he said, how can you say to your brother, let me get the speck out of your eye, when he says you have a beam in your own eye. He says, you hypocrite.

First, get the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to get the speck out of your brother's eye. Now, notice he calls hypocrites. He's talking about hypocritical judgment. Somebody who is trying to correct someone else, which is analogous to trying to get something out of their eye so they can see more clearly.

In other words, you're suggesting that they aren't seeing and evaluating their own behavior accurately, and you are, and you're trying to clear up their vision on that by your constructive criticism. He says, that's like trying to get a little speck out of somebody's eye, but he says, what if you have a beam in your own eye? Now, if you use the same measure to judge yourself that you use to judge others, and he said you will be in fact judged by that measure, then you having a beam in your eye disqualifies you for judging someone who's got a speck in there. He says, but he does say this, first get the beam out of your eye, and then you will see clearly enough to get the speck out of your brother's eye. In other words, if you're a hypocrite and you're doing the same thing that you're criticizing someone else for doing, or at least something equally bad, then you are a hypocrite and you ought not to judge them until you get your own act together.

He says, once you get your own act together, then you'll be as qualified as you need to be to assist your brother in correcting his or her behavior. So, Jesus is not saying that we have no obligation to correct people when we see them going wrong. Everything in the Bible is, I mean, when Paul wrote his letters, a great percentage of what he wrote was correcting things that the church was doing wrong, and that's judging, and judging is a good thing. If it's constructive criticism, if somebody has a blind spot or a speck in their eye, for you to clarify the matter for them, is a very loving thing to do since we assume people would want to see things clearly.

Maybe they don't, but we're going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're honest people who like to see things as they are. So, when we tell people the truth and it happens to be something they don't like, they might, if they don't love the truth, they may say, oh, stop judging me. But the truth is, you can't stop judging because if you don't judge behavior, you'll never have any opinion about right or wrong. That's a moral judgment. If you say it's wrong to commit homosexual acts, well, that's making a judgment, of course. But if someone says it's wrong for you to judge people's homosexual acts, that's also making a judgment.

As soon as you say that something is wrong and something is right, you've made a judgment. The question is, are you making righteous judgment? So your pastor, if he's your pastor, he really needs to go back to Bible school or maybe he just needs to study the Bible. Maybe Bible school is what steered him wrong. You never know.

Sometimes it does. But he needs to study the Bible before he tries to represent the teaching of the Bible. Anyone who says that Christians are not supposed to judge simply haven't been very careful in their study of the Bible. Jesus is saying it's wrong to judge hypocritically, but once you get your own act cleaned up, then you should be helping people get specks out of their eyes.

That's the good thing to do. He likewise said, don't judge according to appearances. But he does command us to judge. Paul said in a single Epistles, probably 10 times, 1 Corinthians, he told us to judge. He says in chapter 2, you know, the spiritual man judges all things. He also says in chapter 14, let the prophet speak to her three and let the others judge. In another place he says, I'm speaking to you as mature men, judge what I say. Concerning a man who's living in fornication in the church, in chapter 5, he says, I, being absent, have judged the man already.

And he rebukes them that they haven't. He says, for what do I have to do with judging those outside the church, but don't you judge those who are inside? He said, those who are outside, God judges, but you have to judge those who are inside. We have to make judgments.

He even rebuked them for going to the courts in 1 Corinthians 6 before pagan judges. He says, isn't there a wise man among you who can judge between brethren? See, making judgments is a mature spiritual thing to do. It's a beneficial thing to do, beneficial to the one you're judging if you're doing so charitably. If you love the person and you're trying to correct them because you know they're doing what's wrong and harmful, if it's not immediately harmful, it's going to be harmful on the day of judgment.

It's a very merciful thing to point that out. Now, Jesus said in John 3 that this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than the light. And he says they don't come to the light lest their deeds should be exposed.

But whoever is a doer of the truth comes to the light that his deeds might be shown to be wrought in God. What he's saying is, if you bring illumination to people morally and they don't want it, they resent it because they don't want their deeds to be exposed. They like darkness. They want to hide in the shadows. They don't want anyone bringing light to them because light exposes them for what they are. But he said anyone who loves the truth is someone who wants that exposure because they don't want to have things about them that are self-destructive or that are going to bring God's disapproval upon them.

People who are smart want to get better, want to know what they're doing wrong and be corrected. And judging people is a very merciful and godly and loving thing to do for such people. But if they love the darkness, well then they're going to say, hey, stop judging me. In other words, they won't deal with the issue. If you tell them they're doing something wrong, rather than dealing with the issue and saying, yeah, you're right, it is wrong, or defending their behavior.

They'll just say, don't judge, which means I can't defend myself, but you have no business pointing that out to me. Well, these people act as if human beings don't have any responsibility for each other. We do. And we should correct people. And we should wish to be corrected when we're going the wrong way ourselves. So your pastor is a very shallow man when it comes to this particular issue.

Maybe he's deeper on some other issues, but he certainly hasn't studied the Sermon on the Mount very well. Thank you so much, Steve. That was really great. I appreciate it so much. Okay, Lisa, God bless you. Thank you for your call.

Mike from Aurora, Oregon. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. Hey, thank you so much for all you do. I'm so grateful to learn so much from you. In Ephesians chapter four talks about one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And then I look at them going, okay, one baptism, but there's the baptism of fire, baptism of spirit, baptism of water, John's baptism, baptism of the dead. In Hebrews two, it talks about elementary principles and baptisms plural is one of those. So in Ephesians four, I'm trying to find out when it says one baptism, which one of the several baptisms in the scripture is he talking about there? In Ephesians four, he begins that chapter and it's like in the first few verses of that chapter. He makes that list of the one God, one Father, one faith, one hope, one baptism, you know, and so forth.

It's at the beginning of the chapter. He's basically arguing for unity in the body of Christ, telling them to, he says in verse three, to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace because there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and so forth. Now he lists there, his argument is for unity, that we should have maintain a unity of the spirit among all brethren because there are things that all of us have important, the important things we have in common. And we all have the same God, we have the same Jesus, we have the same faith and so forth, and we all have had the same baptism. Now he's not arguing here that in a person's life there cannot be multiple things that are called baptisms. The word baptism in the Greek just means immersion. And you could be immersed in, as you mentioned, there's a baptism in fire, there's a baptism in the spirit, there's baptism in the water. Even among baptisms in water, there's John's baptism is different than Christian baptism. There's being baptized, Jesus asked his disciples, can you be baptized with the baptism I'll be baptized with, meaning his suffering. There's a variety of things called baptism and all of them, or several of them, might occur to the same person. So Paul, when he says there's one baptism, is not trying to say there's only one thing in your life that you'll ever have that can be called a baptism or an immersion in something. But what he is saying is that when Christians were immersed, they were all baptized the same, that is in the name of Christ, as opposed to, for example, he says in 1 Corinthians 1, you weren't baptized in the name of Paul, were you? You weren't baptized in the name of Apollos. He's talking about how there was again a division. He's arguing for unity. Some of you are saying I'm of Paul, some are saying I'm of Apollos, some are saying I'm of Cephas, some are saying I'm of Christ.

He says, what's up with that? Who died for your sins? Not Paul, certainly. You weren't baptized in the name of Paul, were you? So what he's saying is we all were baptized with the same baptism. That is the baptism in the name of Christ, not in the name of Paul or Apollos.

And because of that, we acknowledge ourselves to be one people, one body. We were baptized into Christ. And so he is referring to water baptism. But the statement there is one baptism in the context is not meant to say, and there's only one that anyone will ever have, and there's only one kind of baptism. I mean, Jesus himself said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now, he said in Acts 1-5. So obviously, Jesus made a distinction between two kinds of baptism for the same people.

But what he's saying, Paul's not really discussing how many kinds of baptism there may be. He's enumerating experiences that all believers have had that are in common. We've been born again. We have the same Father. We're brethren. We have the same Lord.

We have the same hope. We have the same baptism. And by that, again, comparing with 1 Corinthians 1, he's not saying anything other than we've all been baptized into Christ who died for us. We haven't been, some of us, baptized into Paul, some into Peter, some into Apollos, which is a mark of division if you are baptized into different leaders. But we've all been baptized in the same leader, the same Lord, and that's what he's arguing.

Wow, thank you so much. That really clarifies. Can you just give me an explanation of what this whole thing about baptism for the dead is? In 1 Corinthians 15, what is it, verse 27 or so, Paul mentions about those who are baptized for the dead. He says, or else, why are they baptized for the dead?

If the dead do not rise, why then are they baptized for the dead? This has been taken a number of different ways. In fact, the exact number of different ways it's been taken is 40. It's been taken 40 different ways. I have not encountered all 40, but one commentator said he had encountered in commentaries and sermons 40 different interpretations of that. Now, I don't know 40 different interpretations.

I do know several. And certainly one, the one I was perhaps raised with, the one that teachers used when I was being taught the Bible when I was young, they say that Paul knew of some, you know, some religious groups or somewhat cultic or heretical that baptize people by proxy for dead people. Now, you know that's what the Mormons do, and they even use that verse in 1 Corinthians 15 to justify that. They say, well, you need to be baptized to be saved, and so if you have loved ones who died without being baptized, you might want to be baptized in their name on their behalf so they can have that on their record so they can be saved. I think, first of all, that whole argument has a rather skewed understanding of what really saves a person, but nonetheless, they see it as a baptism by proxy. One person is baptized for another person.

The person being baptized is alive. The person on whose behalf they're being baptized is a dead person. And they think that Paul's referring to that as the baptism for the dead.

Now, again, the teachers I sat under argued that although Paul mentions that he doesn't endorse it, and that he's just saying some people do it, but I've never understood why Paul would give as an example and an argument for a true Christian doctrine, namely resurrection from the dead, the practice of a cultic group, you know. Now, he might just say they're being inconsistent, but if they don't believe in the resurrection, then they still baptize for the dead. But you see, I think that what Paul's saying, if you look earlier in his argument, he says, if the dead don't rise at all, then Christ is not risen.

He says that early in the chapter. And so I think here he may be saying we were baptized under Christ, but if the dead don't rise, then he's dead. He's not alive because if the dead don't rise, he didn't rise. So he might be saying we who are Christians have, in fact, been baptized under Christ, but if the dead do not rise, why do we do so?

Because he would be then dead. We're being baptized for the dead. Christ being the dead, hypothetically, in this argument. He's already made earlier the point that if the dead don't rise at all, then Jesus is not risen.

And that's also the condition he uses in this. Why are they baptized for the dead if the dead don't rise at all? That means Jesus would be dead, and he'd be the dead person in whose name all Christians are baptized. So he might be saying the fact that we're baptized in the name of Christ, which presumes that he isn't dead, we're followers of his, that's what baptism suggests, would be a way of arguing that there must be a resurrection of the dead, or else who are we being baptized to?

A dead person? Anyway, that's all I can say right now on that subject. I'm out of time, but I hope that gives you some things to chew on. We're going to take a break here, and we've got another 30 minutes ahead, so don't go away. The Narrow Path is listener-supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O.

Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Please stay tuned. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour. We're taking calls from listeners like you.

There's a couple lines open. You can reach me here. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or maybe you disagree with the host and want to talk about that, feel free to give me a call. We'll be glad to get to your call if we can. We will try to get to all these calls in the next half hour. Our next caller is John from Jackson, Wyoming. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Steve. Hey, I've heard you disagree with Calvinism several times, and not that I agree totally, but wouldn't you agree with the total depravity of man? As I understand the five points of Calvinism, and by the way, I understand them differently now than I did when I was growing up, I actually thought when I was growing up that I was partially Calvinistic. I mean, I was raised in a Baptist church, and we talk about the five points of Calvinism. I think we in our church would have probably thought, well, it's supposed to be three-point Calvinists, and we would have thought, well, certainly one point we can't deny is the total depravity of man. Now, as I came to study actual Calvinists and Calvinism and understand what they really teach when I got older, I realized that when they talk about the total depravity of man, they don't mean the same thing that I would have thought, and if you actually accept the view as they understand it, you're stuck with all five points.

I mean, there's a logical consistency within the system that if you start with a certain premise, all the rest follows by a seamless logic, and the first premise is the total depravity of man. Now, what I thought it meant when I was younger is universal sinfulness. Universal sinfulness simply means everybody has sinned, as the Bible affirms many times. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and therefore all are lost until they, you know, come to Christ. That's how I understood the words total depravity, that the totality of the human race is depraved, or, in other words, everyone has sinned and everyone needs salvation.

I would, of course, still believe that because the Bible says that, but when I got to understand how Calvinism uses the expression, I realized it's not something I believe, because you can't really find it in the Scripture. And that is the view that if a person has not been supernaturally regenerated by God because they are one of the elect and have been regenerated, they are so depraved they can't want to be saved. They can't want to follow God.

They can't want to worship God. They can't believe and they can't repent because they are dead in trespasses and sins. This total depravity is often mixed with the idea of being dead in Ephesians 2 or Colossians 2.

We are dead in our trespasses. And they would argue from that metaphor that, you know, a dead man can't believe, and a dead man can't repent, and a dead man can't pursue God. And so if people haven't, you know, if they're spiritually dead, they can't do anything to get saved. So God has to, according to Calvinism, unconditionally elect some people for salvation, which is the second point of Calvinism, and then he has to irresistibly draw them, which is the fourth point. And the idea is that God has selected before anyone was born a certain number, called the elect, a number to which none can be added nor any subtracted, who he has determined to regenerate so that they can believe and come to him. Now, the difference between a Calvinist and a non-Calvinist can be reduced to, well, there's many differences, but one of the main ways you can tell if somebody's a Calvinist or not, a true Calvinist, as Calvin and the leading voices of Calvinism would argue, if you ask somebody what comes first, faith or regeneration. Now, everywhere the Bible says faith comes first.

There's not a single verse in Scripture that says the opposite, and there's many that say that. Faith comes by regeneration. You receive life through believing, the Bible says so many times. Faith first, regeneration is a result.

Calvinists say no, regeneration comes first, because total depravity says you can't believe unless God brings you to life because you're dead. And this doctrine, of course, arose no earlier than about 400 A.D. in the church. No early church father believed anything like that, and they argued against that kind of thing.

They said that was Manicheanism. But, you see, Augustine was a Manichean before he was a Christian. Then he introduced these ideas, and both Luther and Calvin were Augustinian. Luther was an Augustinian monk before he was a Protestant. And in the next generation, Calvin had been an Augustinian, also Catholic and became a Protestant. And so both the Reformed leaders in Germany and that part of Switzerland, Geneva, were Augustinian. And Augustine had introduced this idea that people are dead in such a way that they cannot believe unless they are first made alive. Well, again, I have lectures on this.

You can listen to it at the website. So I can't go into it in as much detail here, but the Bible actually says Jesus, when he was talking about being regenerated, Nicodemus asked him, how can this be? How can a man be born again? And Jesus said, well, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Well, having everlasting life begins by being born again. That happens to people who believe. Believing comes first. Being born again is a result of that. And Jesus said it very plainly there, it seems, and so does Paul everywhere he talks about it.

Of course, that raises questions. What's he mean when he says we're dead? Well, it certainly isn't literal. A non-Christian, according to Paul, is dead and trespasses and sins. And while dead men can't believe or repent, they also can't breathe or brush their teeth.

They can't get up in the morning and go to work. Dead people who are literally dead can't do anything at all. But certainly we don't believe that dead and trespasses and sins means that people can't do that. So Calvinists have, seemingly arbitrarily, because there's no basis for it in Scripture, they've decided, well, of course people who are dead and trespasses and sins can do some things, but the things they cannot do are believe and repent.

Now, one has to ask, if they're reasonable, why would you pick those two things? Of all the things, the Bible certainly doesn't say they can't believe or repent. That's just being extrapolated from the fact that they're dead. And we know that being dead in sin is a metaphor commonly used in the Bible. For example, the prodigal son, when he came home, his father said he'd been dead. My son was dead.

He's now alive. It's a common metaphor in the Scripture. But the son who was dead actually made a decision to come home.

His father didn't go and regenerate him in the far country. He came to his senses, as many other people have done who are sinners. They come to their senses. They hear the gospel.

They decide, hey, I'm going to return to my father and I'm going to repent. And the son did all of that before he re-encountered his father. And his father said, my son was lost. Now he's found. He was dead.

Now he's alive. So whatever the metaphor of being dead in trespasses and sins means, and the prodigal is one of them, it certainly does not mean they can't repent, because he did. And so, I mean, it's frankly arbitrary. It's 100 percent arbitrary to say that a person who's not regenerated cannot repent. But that's exactly what total depravity means in true Calvinist teaching from Calvin. And, you know, ask any major Calvinist teacher. Ask R.C. Sproul.

It's a little late to ask him. And he's changed his mind now anyway, but, you know, John Piper and others would argue that, you know, you can't repent. You can't believe unless you're elect. And God has to, because you're elect, regenerate you, and then you can. So, again, I guess the question, it's one of the simplest ways to distinguish between Calvinism and, frankly, historic Christianity before Augustine, is to ask what comes first, regeneration or faith? If someone says regeneration, they're a Calvinist or an Augustinian. If they say faith, then they agree with Jesus and Paul and all the Protestant scripture. And to be humble about it, but at least the way I read it, I've certainly read all the Calvinist books I can get my hands on, and I know what they say. They're no question about their doctrine, at least not in my mind. I've debated several of the major Calvinist spokesmen.

So it's not like I haven't heard or don't know what they say. I do, but I just can't find anything in the Bible that agrees with them on that. So that's why I don't hold the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity. Well, Steve, what do you do with passages that say that we're chosen in God? We are.

We are. We're in Christ. In Christ we are chosen, because Christ is chosen. In Christ we are righteous, because Christ is righteous. In Christ we have died and risen and are seated in heavenly places, because we're in Him and He did those things. The Bible says that we have our status before God in Christ. Now, it says in Ephesians 1-4 that we are chosen in Christ.

Okay? Now, Christ is chosen. The Bible refers to Him as the chosen one in Isaiah 42, and it's quoted as being of Christ in Matthew. Jesus is the chosen one, and we are in Him.

So in Him we are chosen also. But you see, Christ is treated in New Testament language as being corporate. We think of just Jesus as the Christ, but Jesus Himself said, No, He's the vine. We're the branches. Now, branches are part of the vine.

Branches are the same organism. Paul put it in human terms. Christ is the head and we're His body. We're His flesh and His bones. We are in Him like organs are in a body. And if a body is on death row, those organs are on death row. If that body is exalted to be king of the world or president of the United States, all the organs in that body are in that status with it.

The head and the body rise or fall together. So if the head is chosen, His body is chosen too. So the question is not whether I have been chosen, but whether I am in Him who is chosen.

He is chosen. And I, according to Scripture, have an obligation to remain in Him. Jesus said, Abide in me or remain in me. If anyone remains in me, they bear fruit. He said, If any man does not remain in me, he's cast forth as a branch and withered, and they will gather him up and burn them.

And of course, John 15, 6. So the vine is chosen. Christ is chosen. We are chosen in Him. We are the chosen because we are in Him. But nowhere does it say in the Bible that we were chosen to be in Him. Just like Israel corporately was chosen. They were the chosen people. But no one was chosen to be in Israel.

That's a personal choice. If someone was born in Israel, they could defect and become a Baal worshiper and be cut off from the people, the Bible says. If they were born Gentile, they could be converted. They could be circumcised and become part of Israel. Israel corporately was chosen. Individuals would have to decide whether they were going to be in Israel or not. I mean, certainly those who were born in Israel had an easier time being in Israel because they didn't have to change. But anyone could change from being in Israel to being out of Israel or from being out of it to being in. And Israel is a type of Christ in Scripture.

In fact, Israel was the true vine. In Isaiah 5, Israel was the son of God. In Exodus chapter 12, Israel was the servant of Yahweh in Isaiah. But so is Jesus. Jesus is the son of God. He's the servant of Yahweh.

He's the true vine. Israel was a type of Christ. And being in Israel in the Old Testament meant you were in the chosen nation. Being in Christ in the New Testament means you're in the chosen nation also. You're in the chosen one, Christ. So to speak of us as chosen, we have to understand we're chosen in Christ.

And it's very difficult for some people to understand this concept, I think, because we think in terms of individual choosing so much. God chose Christ, and He commands everyone to be in Him. And Jesus commands us all to remain in Him if we are in Him, warning that if we don't, we'll be withered and burned. But weren't we chosen before the foundation of the world? And doesn't that claim predestination? Yeah, Christ was chosen before the foundation of the world. And we, when we come into Christ, become part of that eternal chosenness, that primordial chosenness, we could say. Jesus is chosen eternally chosen. And when we come into Him, we are eternally chosen in Him. You see, again, the Bible says we are chosen in Him. It doesn't say we are chosen to be in Him.

No one made the choice, as far as we know in Scripture, for me or you to be in Christ, but you yourself. You repented. You believe. That's your obligation. God doesn't repent or believe for you. He commands you to do that. And He's angry if you don't. He punishes people who don't. So obviously, He's not making the choice.

He complains when people don't do it. So no one can say it was His idea for you not to believe. He chose Christ, and we are obligated to choose to be in, to remain in Christ. So this is the language of Scripture.

And I think people get mixed up because they don't understand the corporateness of election. Christ is a corporate entity, and we are individuals who are part of that corporate entity. And the whole entity, including us in it, are chosen. Now, the word chosen, I think Calvinists often mix up the term chosen with the term predestined. As I said to an earlier caller, the word predestined never refers to anyone being predestined to become a Christian.

It's hardly used in the New Testament at all, but when it is, it says that Christians are predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son. Or Christians are predestined to adoption in the resurrection. So predestination is about something entirely different. But I think a lot of people just assume, and I'm not sure why they do, but I guess maybe they're taught this, that to be predestined means that you were predestined to become a Christian. And that being elect means you were chosen to become a Christian. And so, elected and predestined are kind of used interchangeably in that system. But the Bible doesn't use them interchangeably. There's obviously a connection.

God has chosen Christ and is predestined that those who are in Him will become like Him. That's kind of the biblical teaching in a nutshell on those terms. All right? Wow, you've blown my mind. Well, it's only the first time. There will be more. God bless you, John. I appreciate your call. Thank you. We'll talk again. Bye now.

Oh, well, okay. For anyone who's interested, I have 12 lectures on Calvinism called God's Sovereignty and Man's Salvation. These are free. Everything is free at the website.

The website is thenarrowpaths.com. You can go there and look under the tab that says topical lectures. And there's a bunch of sets of lectures arranged in a kind of a table of contents in alphabetical order. And one of them is called God's Sovereignty and Man's Salvation. It's a 12-lecture series where I deal with every single verse the Calvinists use on every one of their points. And I give their case. I use their words. I quote them to give their own case and to argue from these scriptures. And then I exegete the scriptures in their context.

And so that's what that series is. If you're interested, well, then you can go to the website and get that. Now, my wife seems to think some people might want to listen to this call.

Again, if you do, you can go to matthew713.com. Go there and look under – what would they look under? I guess Calvinism, huh?

Or total depravity? Yeah, something like that. We have a topical arrangement of calls for this program on this website.

And you can look up – there's like 10,000 calls that have been indexed there on various topics at matthew713.com. Well, our lines are full still. We need to keep moving. Let's talk to Mike from Albany, Oregon. Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Steve. I'm calling because I used to be Mormon. And when I first left Mormonism, I figured my baptism was fine because my heart was probably in the right place when I did it. But since then, I've come to realize that I want to be baptized again.

And I just have a couple lingering questions about that, though. The Protestant views that if you have faith in Christ, you can baptize. I've been reading Ignatius, who would say that you need the Presiding Elder's consent. Yeah, the bishop must be there. It says Ignatius, yeah.

Right, right. I mean, I know that he may have been a disciple of John and was a martyr, you know, a good man, closer to the apostles than I am, obviously. And then the Protestants would say that if you meet the criteria Paul told Timothy about, you know, the requirements for being an elder, then you can become one.

And the duplicate kind of seemed to say that, too. You know, it was the congregations that would call the elders. It wasn't an apostle or anyone like that. But I know, you know, there's the early church tradition that a bishop needs to appoint another bishop and another bishop, that whole succession thing.

I just want to get your take on how you make sense of all of those things. And I'm going to take this off the air because otherwise we would be talking far too long. But I really appreciate it, Steve.

OK, Mike, good to hear from you. And of course, when you were a Mormon, they believe that there's apostles and that there's, you know, people anointed by apostles to baptize and things like that. In the New Testament, we do not read that baptism was only done by apostles or bishops. For example, the man who baptized Saul of Tarsus, whom we know as Paul, a man named Ananias, is simply described as a disciple, which is what all Christians were called, disciples.

In the ninth chapter of Acts, it says a disciple in Damascus named Ananias was called. Now, he could have been a bishop, although the scripture, you know, doesn't tell us so. And it's very possible that churches didn't even have bishops quite that early on. We don't know if the word bishop was in use in any churches at that time. He was just a disciple, a brother, and he baptized Saul.

And that's a pretty important baptism right there. Also, we know that when Philip, who was one of the seven, what we'd call deacons, went off into Samaria, he baptized his converts in Acts chapter 8. Now, he was not a bishop of anything. If he's called anything in the Bible, he's called an evangelist. He's called Philip the Evangelist later on in chapter 21 of Acts. But he was like what we would probably call a deacon, which means servant.

Diocanist in the Greek means servant. And he was, you know, a table server in Jerusalem. And then he fled during persecution, and he happened to be useful as an evangelist.

And he baptized his converts. There's no mention of him having any office in the church of apostle or bishop or anything like that. In fact, he wasn't a bishop because bishops are resident in the church, and Philip traveled around. After he did what he did in Samaria, he went out and worked with the Ethiopian eunuch for, you know, a few hours, I guess.

And then he went to Caesarea and settled down with his four daughters who were prophetesses. I guess what I'm saying is there's not the slightest evidence in the Bible that one had to be a bishop or an apostle to baptize. And some of the early baptisms in the book of Acts were done by people who, in no sense, were identified that way. So, yeah, the Catholic Church, of course, believes in apostolic succession. They believe that when the apostles died, they left successors to their offices, bishops. And then those bishops, when they died, they left successors after them who were bishops. And they believe that the bishops now in the Roman Catholic Church are the successors of the apostles. And since the bishops can ordain priests and so forth, then the priests have that apostolic authority and, you know, they can baptize and so forth.

All of this is just a bunch of man-made traditions, really. There's no biblical evidence at all of apostolic succession. While I have no doubt that when the apostles died, there were men left in place to leave the churches after them, but there's no evidence that they had apostolic authority, an apostle is not the same thing as a church leader. An apostle is a very special thing in the New Testament. And there's no evidence in the New Testament that apostles like the Twelve or like Paul, that they existed in the second generation of the church. Even the apostolic writings, I should say the church father writings, do not identify them.

So, as far as you being re-baptized, and now that you're no longer a Mormon, I don't think there's any particular officers in the church that need to have special apostolic authority to do that. So, anyway, that'd be my take on that whole idea. By the way, you and I are going to get together for lunch or something when I'm in Albany in a week or so, so we can talk about that some more. Let's talk to Tom from San Diego.

Tom, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello, how are you doing? I'm fine, thank you. The other day you had said that in Minnesota, that if they get 50% or more that they supposed to live under Sharia law, this is America, this ain't Iraq.

What was that? When did I say that? You said that the other day when the Muslim brother had called and he was asking about something about being born again or something like that, or does the Holy Spirit talk to people that's non-Christian? So you had said in Minnesota, if they get 50% more, then they believe they need to live under Sharia law, and I was like, this is America. Yeah, I don't remember that subject even coming up, and my wife is here.

She actually writes down all the questions every day. She doesn't remember saying that either. If I said that, I'm surprised, because I don't remember that subject even being discussed, and certainly not about Minnesota. I don't think of Minnesota as being a predominantly Muslim area. Minnesota, Michigan, one or two, because you brought it up.

Well, Michigan, Michigan has a lot, yeah, in the Detroit area, Michigan has a lot of Muslims, some large Muslim neighborhoods. I don't know, I mean, maybe I said something, but I can't answer for it, because I don't remember saying it, and I'm not sure what I would have said. Like I said, I remember you saying it, maybe you'll probably get it, but I was saying, this is America, I don't care how many people it is, Sharia law is not part of the United States Constitution. Well, that's right, but if the election goes a certain way, there will be many things in our country that aren't part of the United States Constitution. There already are, and there are a lot of people who would like to trash the Constitution and kind of rewrite it their own way. It's hard to know how it would turn out once the Constitution has been abandoned. But I don't remember saying anything about it, and honestly, I don't remember what I would have said about it, because I don't have any firm opinions about that subject. I might have said, you know, if a significant majority of the population becomes Muslim, maybe they'll start, okay, I could have said something like, you know, they'll start installing Sharia law. Obviously, they couldn't install everything about it, because they couldn't in America do things like, they couldn't do things like, well, yeah, honor killings, yeah.

But if all the rulers of the town were Muslims, they might not enforce laws against honor killings, I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry I'm out of time, I don't want to cut you off, but I myself will be cut off in 15 seconds. God bless you, brother, I'm sorry for the confusion, because I don't even remember the call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path, we are listener-supported. If you'd like to find out more about how to support us, or just use our resources, you can go to the website, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com, thanks for joining us, God bless you.