Music Playing Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon, taking your calls.
If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith that you'd like to ask, or maybe you see things differently than the host who would like to talk about that, you're always welcome to do so here. So feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is calling from London, England, and that's going to be Peter. Hi Peter, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi Steve, thanks for taking my call. Just two quick questions. Matthew 6.33, the way it's been taught to me is that the Kingdom of God is a priority, and I don't completely agree with it, because a priority implies that there are other important things, and having listened to your teachings on the Kingdom of God, I think the Kingdom of God is the only important thing, and I just wanted to ask if that's the right mentality to have.
And my second question is, growing up in the West, I've been encouraged, even from believers, Christians even in my own family, to seek a career and success in a career, and having listened to your teachings on genuinely following Jesus, what it means to be a disciple, especially regarding values, I'm a bit concerned that, when I look at Jesus and the apostles, I just can't reconcile seeking success in the world and being a disciple as mutually exclusive, and I just wanted to ask if seeking success is a worthy pursuit for a disciple. Okay, yeah, those are good questions. First of all, your first question was, are you correct in thinking the Kingdom of God is the most important thing? Is that your first question? Yes, yes sir.
Okay, well yeah, I would think so. I mean, Jesus told us to pray for the Kingdom to come, and that was the first petition and the prayer He taught, which places it as the most important, or at least the top priority. Then He said, as you pointed out in Matthew 6-33, seek first the Kingdom, that again is first in priority, and all these things we added to you. He also said in Matthew 24-14 that this Gospel of the Kingdom must be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, then the end shall come. Jesus made it very clear that the Kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price, which a wise man would sell all that he had to obtain. It's clear that the loss of everything, if that's what it took, would be a worthwhile loss if you gained the Kingdom of God. So certainly, the teaching of Jesus is that the Kingdom of God is all important. Now the second question about success, and by that you mean worldly success, it's a little more tricky than that because it really depends on what your calling is. Now you say when you look at Jesus and the apostles, seeking, let's say, business success or financial success doesn't seem appropriate.
Well, if you are like Jesus or the apostles in the sense that you are a full-time preacher, then, of course, seeking financial success would be a very wrong motivation for that because we're not supposed to be motivated by money if we're in the ministry as Jesus and the apostles were. Now when you get into the book of Acts, of course, you find thousands of people become disciples of Jesus. Every Christian is called a disciple in the book of Acts and most of them are not preachers.
Most of them have other things that they do. Now we know this because, for example, Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12 that there's lots of different gifts. He says it also in Romans 12 and he doesn't indicate that having one gift or another is more virtuous because he says it's the Holy Spirit that distributes to each one the proper gift. Now a person is called to be an apostle like the apostles were. I would think it would be quite a mistake for them to make it one of their goals to be financially successful, especially when Peter, one of the primary disciples and spokesmen for Christ, had to say on one occasion, silver and gold, I have none, but such as I have give I thee. And, of course, Jesus told the disciples, freely you've received, freely give, so you're not supposed to be seeking money for the ministry.
To sell the Word of God is something that many New Testament writers indicate is a sign of a false prophet. So when a person is called away from ordinary work in order to be in full-time preaching work, then I believe that any desire to become rich at that work would be very foolish. Not that it's wrong to be rich. Now the Bible does say it's a disadvantage to be rich. He said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
So it doesn't make it sound like it's very enviable to be rich. You may well, if you're supposed to seek first the kingdom of God, and yet it's harder to get into the kingdom of God if you're wealthy, then it would not be one of the major goals of a Christian. On the other hand, depending on what your gifting is, if God has you in a regular kind of a job, and that would be, I think, what most Christians are called to. For Paul said, with reference to the general church population, he wanted them to learn to live quietly and work with their hands and provide for themselves. He said that in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. He said it in Ephesians also, chapter 4.
He said, him that stole let him steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands that he might have something to give. So, you know, people who are working full-time in preaching aren't out making money because frankly they're forbidden to charge for that, and therefore they receive gifts from people who do work. And it looks like most people, according to Paul, should be working. Paul said those who don't work should not eat. So, in other words, if you are called to be a preacher, then yes, I would suggest that you live by faith.
I would suggest you don't charge anything for it because I believe that that tends to corrupt preachers, and it certainly is a disobedience of what Jesus said about freely receiving and therefore freely giving. But if you are called to work in a business, whether you're self-employed or working for someone else, I don't think it's wrong. You shouldn't make money your primary motivation. You should make integrity your main motivation. But frankly, God may bless you if you have a lot of integrity. You may be recognized by your superiors or by your clientele. It may increase, and you might actually become quite wealthy. Many Christians, through just being honest in business, have become far more wealthy than they necessarily expected or cared to be.
Now, of course, that being so doesn't mean you've compromised. To be diligent and honest at your work is a very important thing for Christians to do who are called to do regular kind of work, and I think that's a lot of Christians who are. But of course, once you have the money, you have to realize this is not mine. This is God's. God has prospered me. God expects me to steward this money. Now that I have a lot of money, I have a lot of responsibility to find out what it is that God wants me to do with it. So Paul did say one of the gifts of the Spirit is the gift of giving, and I would imagine that somebody who's called into regular business and makes a lot of money in it would be among those who have that gift. There might even be people who have inherited money or won the lottery or something like that who have a lot. Anyone who's got money, especially if they have more than they need, is easily a candidate for one who has the gift of giving.
Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 6, I think it's verse 17, but I'm not sure. He said, you know, warn those who are rich in this world to not be arrogant or be trusting in uncertain riches, but to be rich in good works and ready to distribute, you know, that is ready to give it all away or give a lot of it away. So a person who has a lot of money is to be told to be ready to give a lot, and that's a good thing. So I mean, if you were called to preach, then I would say the model of Jesus and the apostles who were in fact called to preach, concerning finances and so forth, I think would be an excellent model to follow. That's the model I personally have believed in and have followed myself because that is my calling. But if I weren't called to preach, but I was called to be in some kind of ordinary work, I would seek to be a great testimony to God in that place of work.
And I would hope that if it's God's will, I might be promoted and maybe make more money so that I have more to give. It's not wrong to have money. It's certainly wrong to want to be rich for your own sake. Paul said, those who want to be rich fall into many temptations and a snare and many hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
That's in 1 Timothy 6, I forget what verse, probably, I don't know, verse 12 or so, I'm guessing. So anyway, those are my thoughts about it. You shouldn't necessarily look at the lives of the apostles and Jesus in terms of their financial policies as a model unless you are called to that same kind of activity that they were. But if you're called to work at a job, then of course, you know, it shouldn't be your first priority to be wealthy and successful, but it should be your first priority to make the most of that job, both as an influence on others for Christ and also insofar as you prosper in that work, that you'll have much more to give for the promotion of the Kingdom of God. Those are my thoughts. So it all depends on your calling. Yes.
One last question, if I may. As you said, the Holy Spirit distributes gifts as He wills, but also, Paul, I think in 1 Corinthians 14 or 15, he says you should earnestly desire the best gift. The best gift. So, yeah, what I don't understand is I need to wait. I guess the Holy Spirit decides what gift to give you, but then how do you then also yet pursue something, yeah. Well, Paul said you should desperately desire or eagerly desire the best gifts. He said especially that you may prophesy. Now, to prophesy is something that can happen whether you have any other gift or not. In other words, you might be called in a ministry of helps or giving or showing mercy or exhortation, which means encouragement, or any number of other gifts that Paul may list elsewhere, but he says prophecy is like a really good gift and you should all seek to prophesy because, frankly, that won't interfere with you doing something else. Suppose your ministry is that you work at a factory or you work at a job, but, of course, when you go to church, the gift of prophecy could still function through you.
So, I mean, that wouldn't interfere with any other calling. Now, some people are prophets, but Paul suggested not all are prophets. He said in 1 Corinthians 12, near the end there, he said, Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers?
Certainly, the question implies the answer is no. Not all are apostles or prophets or teachers, and yet even those who are not prophets, that is, those who don't hold an office of profit, may, on occasion, prophesy. Even some bad people have been known to prophesy, like Saul in the Old Testament or Balaam.
They were not prophets of God, but that wasn't their role, but they could prophesy. And Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, You may all prophesy, one by one, that the church may be edified. So to desire to prophesy is a good thing, regardless of what your main calling or gift may be. Of course, prophesying is something that is almost always something done in the church, so it should be in the church gathering. But our calling in life isn't necessarily related to what we do in the church gathering.
If you have a gift of giving or helps or showing mercy, this is what you're going to be doing, frankly, in and out of church, probably mostly outside of church. So, you know, what you do with your weekday life does not have to interfere with something else you do on one of your gatherings. Anyway, those are my reflections on that. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, Peter, thank you for your call.
God bless you. Take care. Bye. You too. Bye now. Okay, let's talk to Mark from Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Steve, the little story about the four blind men who are trying to describe an elephant, one has a leg, one has a tusk, one has an ear, one has a tail or whatever. The moral of that little story basically is if the four blind men compare notes, they can get the whole picture, correct?
Yes. Okay, now, so the thing is, when I look at the four positions of the Godhead, I don't really have to be very smart. All I have to do is say, okay, I check out the binitarian position, I check out the Trinitarian position, I check out the Unitarian position, I check out the oneness position, and then I get a very clear picture of it. I don't have to be very smart.
All I have to do is just be honest and open to do that. Would you not agree with that assessment? Well, I'm not sure I would agree with it quite as far as it fitting with the elephant model because the real suggestion of the elephant story is that nobody, although everyone thinks they know, there are things in the invisible world, since these are blind men, everything's in the invisible world, including the elephant, there are things in the invisible world that we all think we know something about and we've each examined only a part of it. Certainly, if we had all of our perspectives put together, we might gain, we certainly would gain a better idea, but the idea of the story is basically that we shouldn't think that we see the whole picture because we only see a part of it. Now, these different views of Trinity, Unitarian, Oneness, these are not parts of the picture. Each of them is a theory about the whole picture. In other words, one side of God is not Trinitarian and one side Unitarian and one side Oneness, but God is one way. These are different theories about what He is.
Now, I would say this about the elephant thing. We don't have to be blind men. We don't have to be at the same disadvantage as, say, the Buddhist and the Hindu and the Muslim and the Jew in discussing who God is because we have the revelation given us. Jesus is the light of the world. He's opened our eyes and, therefore, we can see the elephant, as it were. Now, when it comes to the different views of the Godhead, as you say, all of us who have these different views are looking at the same Bible. We're all reading about the same Jesus, and each one has a different opinion about what Jesus' words actually mean on the subject.
It's not quite the same thing because the elephant is not just his tail or just his legs or just his trunk or just his tusks or just his ears. He's all of them put together, whereas these are four different theories about what God Himself is. Have you heard of the ministry? Are you familiar? Have you heard of the ministry of Anthony Buzzard? I think I've heard his name, but I'm not sure. I certainly am not familiar with him.
Okay. One quick question before I let you go, and that is, would you not say that the essence or the most important essence and point of the doctrine of the deity of Christ is not so much believing that Jesus is equal to the Father, but more in the aspect of believing that Jesus is worthy to be worshiped as God to the glory of God the Father? Well, perhaps. There certainly are some evangelicals who would not agree with you. Some of them think that believing that Jesus is God is like the non-negotiable hill to die on. The truth is, I do believe Jesus is God, of course, but if somebody was mistaken and thought maybe He isn't God, maybe He's like some of these other views hold, but they still worship Christ and followed Christ and glorified God through doing so, I'm not positive that this would be the deal breaker. This one thing would be the deal breaker. At least the Bible doesn't say it is.
It is in the minds of some people, but the Bible does not say that it is. So yeah, I guess maybe I'd agree with you on that. Thanks for your call. Let's talk to Paul from Peachtree City in Georgia. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Paul. Thanks for calling.
Hi, Steve. I listened to one of your lectures you gave on the deity of Christ the other day and you suggested in that that Jesus was God because He calmed the storm and I was thinking of that in light of what Peter had to say in Acts 2.22. It says Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him. Is there something about that particular miracle that you think is a special case and do you know of any examples in Scripture where we're told that Jesus was able to do miracles because He was God? No, I personally don't believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus was able to do miracles because He was God. However, I do believe that the miracles He did demonstrate that He is God. Now I think He could have been God even without doing the miracles and He might even have done the miracles without being God. After all, the apostles did miracles, many of them similar to the ones that Jesus did, and they weren't God. The prophets in the Old Testament did miracles, even raised the dead, but they weren't God either. So the fact that a man does a miracle from God doesn't necessarily tell us that he is God. Now in the case of Jesus, we know He's God from other factors and the kinds of miracles He did were in order not just to show that He can do spectacular things and therefore He must be God, since Elijah and Elisha did spectacular things and so did Paul and Peter and others, and they are not God. So the fact that Jesus could do spectacular things is not intended to prove that He's God, but they illustrate that He's God. The kinds of things He did are parallel to the kinds of things that only God is known to do, and they connect Jesus with the person of God in some specific ways. For example, Jesus said He was the light of the world and then He opened the eyes of the blind. Now He's not the only person in the Bible who opened the eyes of the blind or who raised the dead, but He said He's the resurrection of the life. He did things that illustrated what He claimed about Himself. For example, in the case of walking on the water, this is interesting because none of the apostles, frankly, did that particular miracle, nor did they ever still storms, even though Paul was at sea with a storm that almost sunk the ship and he never stilled the storm. Could he do so?
I don't know. He apparently wasn't led to do so, maybe he couldn't, but these two signs, I think, connect Jesus with God, not just by saying that only if He was God could He do them, but He was God. We know from other things in the New Testament, and we can see that as He did them, He showed His connection with God because in the Old Testament, for example, Psalm 107, it talks about how God stills the storm and the sailors, when they cry out to Him, He stills the storm and they're immediately at their desired haven.
That's exactly the way the story is told of Jesus stilling the storm when He was asleep in the boat. It also says in more than one of the Psalms that God walks on the waves of the sea, and of course that's what Jesus did. Now, in other words, I believe God could allow someone like Paul or Peter to walk on the waves of the sea if he wanted to, but he never did, and I think that's because the miracles Jesus did, they didn't prove He was God because they were miraculous, but they pointed to His being God because they were the kinds of things that the Bible specifically says that God alone does. Of course, God could allow a man to do it, like Peter walked on the water. He was a man, but He only did it at the behest of Christ. The fact that Jesus was seen walking on the water was, I think, no doubt to call back the imagery from the Old Testament of how God walks on the waves of the sea, which is a figure of speech, of course, but in other words, I don't think that the miracles of Jesus are what proves He's God.
They certainly point that direction. There's lots of things for which we don't have absolute proof, I mean, in the secular world, but we have plenty of good evidence for them. For example, we don't have absolute proof of divine creation, but we certainly got a ton of evidence for it, and we may not be able to prove it entirely to a skeptic, but the fact that we believe in creation is well supported by much evidence. I think the same could be said of Jesus' miracles. The fact that He did miracles doesn't prove He's God since a lot of miracles were done by people who make no claim to being God, but the fact that He does claim to be God, His claim is well supported by the miracles. It'd be surprising if He didn't do miracles and He was God, but they are evidence.
They're not proof, in my opinion. Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. I appreciate your call.
Let's see here. We have—I don't know how much time we have before the break—one or two minutes only. I'll take a call, but I'll hold you over if necessary after the break. Mike from Aurora, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi, Steve. I've just been looking at 1 John 1-7, and it talks about the Father, the Word, the Holy Spirit, those who bear witness in heaven. That's 5-7, yeah. In 1 John 5-7. Yes. What bears witness on earth was the Spirit, the water, and the blood. What is the water and the blood? Is that baptism, or is it the birth water? I'm trying to make a connection there.
Yeah. There are quite a few theories about that, and I'm going to have to just say I don't know. One of the theories is saying that what testifies to Jesus being God, or being who He is, as opposed to the Gnostic versions of Jesus, was heard with the voice of God speaking at His baptism, which is the water, and at His death, shortly before His death in John 12, which is the blood. I have trouble believing that that's what it means, but that's what many commentators suggest. John himself, in John 19, saw Jesus pierced in His side and saw water and blood come out. He says, I testify that this is true.
I who saw that testify that. And the water and the blood could possibly refer to the water and blood that came out of Jesus' side, which proved He was dead and had not just swooned. Then that would leave open the question, why did He link that with the Spirit also? This is something which I'm pretty sure John's readers knew what he was talking about, but it's one of those times in the Bible we realize we're reading somebody else's mail. It's like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. You don't know what the other person is saying. You kind of have to guess at it from what you're hearing the person on your end saying. These people, John and his readers, had a relationship. He ministered among them, and they knew a lot of things and shared a lot of understanding that we don't have. And there are times, whether we like it or not, that we're just going to have to say, you know, I think his readers knew what he was talking about, but frankly, no one now knows for sure.
And you can tell that by reading all the commentaries and all the different opinions. So I have to apologize that I can't tell you what it means, and I wish I could. Thank you for calling. All right.
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Share and do good. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, maybe you see things differently than the host and want to balance comment, you can call me here in this half hour. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Michael from Detroit, Michigan.
Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Hi. I just caught the end of your show yesterday, and there was a caller talking about the scripture.
I was hoping to talk to you yesterday, but the show ended. I just wanted to get a little bit of clarity. I know you mentioned you studied the Greek copy of the Bible, and I just wanted to clarify. In 2 Timothy 3.16, Paul writes that all scripture is given by the inspiration of God.
It's that first line. I just wanted to clarify. Now, in the Greek, does it have a different meaning? No, the Greek word for scripture is grafe, and the word for inspired is breathed out or exhaled. Paul is referring there, of course, to the Old Testament scripture because he has just said that Timothy had been taught in the holy scriptures from his childhood. Now, of course, when Paul wrote this, the New Testament didn't even exist yet, and Timothy certainly had not been taught from his childhood from anything other than the Old Testament because his mother was a Jew. So when he says all scripture, I think he's continuing to speak of the same scripture that he mentioned in the previous verse that Timothy had been taught in since childhood, so that would be the Old Testament. Now, by the way, I believe in the authority of the New Testament, too.
I believe the New Testament and the Old Testament are both given to us by God, and I agree with everything they teach. But the caller yesterday was arguing for almost the inspiration of the King James Version of the Bible, and we were discussing then the Greek word aionius, which appears many times in the New Testament in the Greek, and it's the word that the King James Version translates either as eternal or everlasting. And he was telling me, well, in this such-and-such verse it says it's everlasting or eternal, and he's using the King James Version of the Bible.
I said, well, yeah, but in the Greek it's this word, and I couldn't seem to get past him. He didn't seem to realize the Bible was not written in English. It was written in Greek and Hebrew. God never wrote an English translation of the Bible. The King James or any other English translation, none of them are written by God or inspired by God. The original documents were, and the King James Version is a pretty darn good translation of the Greek and Hebrew in most cases. But every English translation has areas where it has to make a decision about the meaning of a word, a word that may have more than one possible meaning. And the translator can't, unless they're going to write the Amplified Bible, they can't put all the meanings in there, so they choose a meaning. And the King James Version chose, in the various places where the word aionius is, they chose the English words everlasting and the words eternal for aionius and also the noun aion. What I was telling him is that Greek scholars now, of course, understand those words better than they did in 1611. It's not like Greek scholarship remains stagnant.
I mean, people are always studying these ancient languages and learning more about them. And that the most authoritative Greek scholars who write the lexicons, and that's where you find out what a Greek word means is in lexicon, they would say that in the time of Christ, the word aionius, it had to do with something related to an age. And while they're not entirely clear whether it means pertaining to an age or lasting for an age, it means one of those two. Now, aionius is also used to translate the Old Testament Hebrew word olam, which every time you find the word forever or eternal in the Old Testament, it's the Hebrew word olam.
But the Septuagint translators, the Jews who translated the Old Testament into Greek from Hebrew, they chose the word aion and aionius, these two words, to translate olam. Now, olam means lasting for a very long time. It means that it endures beyond the point that we can see the end of it. It can refer to something that is everlasting too, but it's not the meaning of the word itself.
I mean, I can talk about something that's never going to end and say it's going to be around a long time, or I can talk about something that is going to end, but not soon, and say it's going to be around a long time. So I mean, the expression enduring for a long time can apply to things that are in fact endless or not. And so the question then becomes, when you use that word in the Greek or in the Hebrew, are you talking about something that truly lasts forever, like the eternal God, for example? God is eternal.
He never ends. So the olam God, or the aionius God, this would be talking about something that really has no end. But when it talks about the everlasting doors of Jerusalem, these are not endless.
I mean, this world's going to be burned up, and the doors of Jerusalem will be burned up too. And when it says that a slave who's offered his freedom after seven years and wants to remain a slave should have his ear pierced, and then he'll serve his master forever. Again, that's the word olam in the Old Testament. But we know that that servant is not going to serve his master into eternity. You see, sometimes the word does refer to something that's eternal, sometimes not.
The difference I had with our friend who called yesterday, and he was from the same town you are. He was from Detroit, I think, is that he thought that if the King James Version uses a certain word, then that settles the matter. And certainly no one who knows much about Greek would agree with him on that. And I don't know very much about Greek, but I have studied those words out pretty well in lexicons, and I happen to know at least enough to know that he's making an assumption that is not safe to make. Okay. I appreciate your answer there, Steve, and thank you for all your study and for your program.
Okay, Michael, I appreciate your call. And in case I didn't speak directly enough, I just want to say that I agree that Scripture is inspired by God. But it was inspired to writers who did not write it in English. They wrote it in Hebrew and Greek. So the best we can hope for if we don't read Hebrew and Greek, which frankly most of us do not, including me, the best we can hope for is that we use an English translation where the translators didn't make any real serious mistakes. And we can't be sure about that unless we look in the lexicons and so forth. Anyway, if somebody thinks the King James Version is as authoritative as the Greek and Hebrew, we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
I can't see any reason to believe such a thing as that. All right, let's talk to Pat in Connecticut. Pat, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi, Steve. My question pertains to an understanding of the Trinity. Perhaps you can tell me—I have a perspective about it from different reading and just from Scripture and I'm wondering if you see a problem with it. Summarize it for me.
What's that? Go ahead and summarize it for me. Okay, so I kind of view God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—as a board of directors. The King James Version refers to them as the Godhead. And when you read in the book of John 17 and 21, Jesus' prayer was that we would be one, that they are one, and that we would be one with them.
And from reading authors such as Watchman Me and John Bevere, the perspective I get is that it's all about authority and then of course unity. And what would you take me on what I just said? Well, I mean everything you actually said sounds biblical enough. I'm not sure if the things you said are specific enough to nail down one view of the Trinity over some of the alternative views of the Trinity. The idea that God is a board of directors, that the Father, Son, Holy Spirit are board of directors, I'm not real comfortable with that. Just because I think it treats God as if He is a material being, and yet I think He's a complicated spiritual being, and it's hard for us to really understand.
I don't know if we have any analogies in the physical world for it, but I'm inclined to believe there's only one God, but His Word and His Spirit proceed from Him, just like my words proceed from me, and yet His Word is personal like He is. It's a person too, and that is the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us and became a human person. See, God is personal.
He's got personal traits, but He's not a human person. Until Jesus, until the Word became flesh, then He became a human person. But the Spirit and the Father are still seen as having some separate function or some separate identity from Jesus, apparently through eternity, because Jesus spoke about the Father as being different from Himself, and He even spoke about the Spirit as being different from Himself. And yet, in other ways, He said, the Father and I are one, and you did quote from His prayer in chapter 17 of John where He said, I pray that they may be one as we are, which obviously we are one in a sense that does not preclude us being three or multiple persons. So, there's much mystery in the Trinity, I think.
What's that? For instance, in a marriage, there is authority, a woman under her husband, and yet we are one. So, there would be a picture. When it talks, I forget which chapter it talks of, but it says God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman. That's 1 Corinthians 11.3. So, I mean, I agree that the picture of man and woman being one flesh is an illustration I often use in talking about the Trinity. I guess what I'm saying is, I would have a hard time nailing down a definition of the Trinity that I could be certain was not lacking in any aspect, because we don't have in the Bible a place where the Trinity is really explained to us. There's just not even a single verse that explains the Trinity, and therefore, we have to take what we have.
We have the fact that there's only one God, we have the fact that the Father is God and Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God, all are stated to be so, and that Jesus is not in all senses the same as the Father or the Holy Spirit. So, you know, I just kind of leave a lot of those gaps open, because the Bible does. I think it's the impulse of theologians, of course, to systematize everything, and that can be helpful, I believe. But on the other hand, there's times when we can't systematize things with absolute certainty, and I don't know that we need to.
Some people really want to. I'm wondering if people are uncomfortable with, for instance, that view of board of directors simply because of the understanding that, you know, we've kind of run with throughout. Well, it does. It sounds very much like three gods. It sounds like three gods, or I think Muslims and Jews would particularly object to this. Actually, I think the disciples would have, too, because they were Jewish, but three gods, I don't think, is something allowed.
But I know you're not saying three gods, but when you talk about there's three guys like a committee or a board of directors, and together they're God, that's, you know, it's very, very difficult to picture three persons being one person. What do you think about the King James Version, and here again, I don't have in front of me what the reference is, but where the King James translates to as God's head? Well, that's in Colossians 2.9, in Colossians. Paul says that in Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. You know, it's true, modern translations usually don't use the word Godhead, but use something like deity or something like that, or the divine divinity or something.
I don't know. The word Godhead is a strange word that the King James translators created to refer to the Greek word that they're translating, which means something like divinity or deity, but it's a word that was formed for that, I think, and it's hard to know exactly what Godhead would mean if it were not taken in some specific context like that. It's not a word that conveys real clarity as a vocabulary word. My position is I lean a little bit toward the way that the Eastern Church has chosen to describe the Godhead or God, and that is they say that the analogy of the sun that gives light to us in the daytime, the sun in the sky, is like God, and that the heat of the sun or the power that comes from it, which is heat, is like the Spirit, and that the light of the sun is like the Word or like Jesus, that Jesus is like the light of the world, comes forth from the sun. The light and the heat of the sun are not something different from it.
They are part of it, and yet you can speak of them differently. That is, I can talk about the light of the sun without making any reference to the heat of it. Or I can talk about the sun itself as an orb in the sky without specifically referring to the heat or the light.
But each has its own identity of a sort, and you can't really separate from them, because as soon as the sun is in existence, you've got the light and the heat of it. When you have this under authority as well, though, if someone is under authority, there's even examples within the Scriptures where, oh, he's going to see Caesar or some soldier. I will say this. I'm not sure how you're concerned about the authority, but I would agree with you, if what you're saying is that Jesus is under the authority of His Father. He made that very, very clear in the verse you alluded to. Well, you should see the Father.
Well, yes, I believe so. I think being under the authority of the Father in His case is different than, say, for the rest of us. We're all under the authority of God, but Jesus was under His authority and yet possessed His authority. It's like it was delegated to Him. The authority of God was delegated to Him. So He says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me, Jesus said in Matthew 28, 18. So are we not delegated with a certain amount of authority?
Yes, we are. Jesus said He gave us authority over serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. So He has given us authority to act in His name in terms of the warfare that we're involved in here in the world. We don't have the authority He had in the sense of everyone has to obey us. Everyone has to obey Him. When someone's in authority, that means people have to obey them. I think we could say in certain situations, demons have to obey us, just like they had to obey Jesus because He gave us that authority. But He hasn't made us kings and lords, not yet.
We will reign with Him when He comes back. But right now, we're subject to Him and we're not necessarily supposed to exercise authority over anybody, except our children, I suppose, or anyone else that's in a hierarchy, like if we're the boss in a job while we're supposed to exercise authority or a ruler of a country. There's a certain amount of authority we exercise.
But just as God's people in the world and His soldiers in the field here, we're not supposed to be giving orders to people, but we certainly are in a position to give orders to demons in certain cases because that's the authority that's been given to us. Listen, this is a deep subject and one that we could go on about, except I have so many people calling and so few minutes left. I should take some more calls. I appreciate you joining us today. We'll talk next to Patrick in Bellingham, Washington. Patrick, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. I got a question on Matthew 5.43-46. How do we carry that out? How do we love our enemies? I would do it the way Jesus said. You bless those who curse you. You do good to those who persecute you. You pray for those who spitefully use you in persecution. That's what Jesus said to do.
That's what loving your enemy is. He says it in verse 44. I realize the verse is a lot shorter in the Alexandrian text, but all these features of this verse, Matthew 5.44, are found in the parallel in Luke 6.27-28. So Jesus did say all these things, even if they're not all found in Matthew's Gospel and all the manuscripts. But if you mean how do we carry it out where we don't resist the evil person? Is that what you're thinking of?
No, you're thinking 43-46 merely. He's saying we need to be like our Father. The Father loves everybody. He sends His rain and His goodness and His sunshine on the evil and on the good. God sends blessings on His enemies as well as on His friends because God is bigger than that. If we say God hates these people and He's angry at them and they've really gotten to Him and therefore He won't let the sun rise on them. Well, there are people who God finds intolerable and has had to remove them from the earth, and of course the sun doesn't shine on them anymore nor the rain fall on them.
But it's not because He really doesn't have any patience. It's because there are people whose rebellion is hurtful to others ultimately and to God's purposes in the earth. So at times, like Herod, he took him out. An angel of the Lord struck him and he was eaten with worms and died, or others. God has His own reasons for taking some people out, but frankly all of us are going to be taken out. Even His friends are going to be taken out.
We're going to die. The point is that God loves people because they were made in His image like our own children. We love our children. Even those who are in rebellion against Him, He told the story of the prodigal son to show that God is like a father who still sees the rebellious children as His children. When the son came home, the man said, well, my son was lost and now he's found. He was dead and now he's alive. Notice it's his son he's still talking about. When he was lost, he was still my son lost.
He was my son dead, but now he's found. So God loves everybody. That doesn't mean He doesn't have to punish people. God definitely has to do what's just and right ultimately, and He's got to clean up the universe someday, and that's going to mean removing those who are unrepentant and those who are harmful.
At this point, He's not removing them, but He still does not withhold all mercy from them because He, as I said, the sunshine on the field or the rain on the field of a farmer does not discriminate between whether the father's a Christian or a Satanist. So Jesus says be like that. Be like your father. Don't just love those who love you.
Don't just greet those who greet you. If you do, you're just like the publicans, the tax collectors who are pretty scoundrel-y kinds of people. But yeah, He said, if someone's your enemy, love them. Now, if the person is, you know, that doesn't mean you submit to them. It doesn't mean that you encourage them in their bad behavior. It just means that you don't hate them. You pray for them.
You bless them. If they're in trouble, you do. He says if you see your enemy's donkey fallen under its load and you'd rather not help, He says you go ahead and help it. You help it up again. Now in both of these cases, you're helping somebody who's described as someone who hates you or someone who's your enemy. So even the Old Testament says, do those who hate you. And Jesus was not making this up from scratch.
This was an ethic in the oldest parts of the Bible. And so we are to do that. Thank you.
All right. Well, thank you very much for your call. Our next caller is Tom in Seattle, Washington. Tom, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi, Steve. Are there biblical verses on why God hides from us? Could one be that we can only seek Him and find Him through God's grace so it's a way of humbling us?
Well, that could be. I mean, the Bible doesn't necessarily talk about God hiding from us, but the psalmists sometimes complain that God seems to be hiding. So we could conclude that maybe God doesn't always make Himself His presence felt or doesn't reveal Himself as quickly as we'd like Him to, so we have to seek Him.
And yeah, I think your theory is a good one. It humbles us. It gets our attention and makes us seek Him. If you could easily find Him whenever you snap your fingers, you'd easily take Him for granted, and also you'd feel like you're the one who's in charge.
You're the one who rubs the lamp and the genie comes out. The Bible makes it very clear we're not the ones in charge. God is available. He hears our prayers. He loves us. He provides for us. He makes sure that not one of us falls to the ground dead like a sparrow. None of them fall to the ground without His will. God's very involved in our lives, but as far as revealing things to us, as soon as we give the command, He's not going to play that game. He doesn't put us in charge. He's in charge. So you'd say He doesn't willfully hide.
He's just back there. No, I wouldn't say that He doesn't willfully hide. I'm saying I don't think the Bible specifically speaks of Him doing so. He might, but I don't know that I could affirm from Scripture that He does. I could not deny that He does. God does what He wants to do, and certainly to make Himself scarce or seemingly scarce has been what many Christians and godly people in the Old Testament have experienced. I used to feel your presence more. I used to see your activity in my life more.
I don't now. I usually call that going through a tunnel, honestly. When you're on the right road, you still go through tunnels sometimes, and God does that to test your faith, to see if you're going to turn back, and there are instructions about that. In Isaiah 50, it says in verse 10, Isaiah 50 says, Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant, who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. So it basically recognizes that some people who are godly, they're in the dark, but they have to just trust in God.
And that's Isaiah 50 in verse 10. I'm out of time. Thanks for joining us. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. God bless.
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