The Narrow Path 08/18/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and you're listening to The Narrow Path live broadcast. If you're listening between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon Pacific Time, that means you can call in while we're on the air and we can talk to you. You can call with your questions about the Bible or about Christianity or your disagreements with the host on any subject. We welcome those calls. I'm looking at two or three open phone lines on our switchboard right now, which is a pretty good opportunity for you because almost everybody who fills our switchboard in the first half hour will almost certainly get on the show before the hour is over. Sometimes even more than those do. But if you say, "I don't want to sit there for an hour and not get on the air," that's not going to happen if you call and get on the switchboard in the first half hour. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. You folks who are listening up in the Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst, Yosemite area, I'll be speaking up there a little over a week from now. I'll be speaking several places. Those places I mentioned are towns I'll be speaking in, in various churches and other places, homes in at least one case. If you're interested in joining us for meetings in that area, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under announcements. You'll find the time, place, and information that we have posted at the website. By the way, about two weeks after that, I'll be doing a similar short stint in several locations in the Sacramento area. So if you're in the Sacramento area and interested in that, you can go to the same place, thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements, and you'll see the places I'll be speaking there. Some of these, I think we have some unconfirmed meetings in some of these places, so some are confirmed and some are not, but you can see which ones are at the website. If you are living in one of those areas and would like to schedule a meeting of your own for me to speak at in one of those areas, feel free to give us a call. We'll let you know if that's a possibility. It often is, although since I'm going to have to make my travel arrangements and stuff, I have to kind of know when the first day and the last day of my trip is going to be as, obviously, if you're going to schedule transportation. You'd have to kind of get in touch with us fairly soon. One of the easiest ways to get in touch with us is to go to Facebook. There's a Facebook page, Steve Gregg, The Narrow Path. You can send us text messages through Facebook to let us know you'd like to talk to us about setting something up. Again, the Facebook page is Steve Gregg, The Narrow Path. All right, our lines are now full, so let's talk first of all to Jason calling from Beaverton, Oregon. Jason, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Jason: Yes, I just had a question about the fall, and that is, can we choose to be sinless or is it impossible? Is it like we can't be sinless or is it that we won't be sinless?
Steve Gregg: Well, I have to say this. The Bible doesn't talk about our original condition as infants, for example, whether we're born slaves of sin, but the Bible makes it very clear that everybody who's mature enough to be hearing the gospel and considering it is already a slave of sin. Because, now some people think we're born that way, others believe it's an acquired condition. The truth is that we're all born, frankly, as all animals are born, with an interest in self-preservation, eating, sleeping, meeting our needs. And there's nothing wrong with those things. The problem is, animals can do that in any way they want to and there's nothing immoral about it. They are amoral creatures. We are moral creatures. Therefore, satisfying our needs, there are legitimate and illegitimate ways to do that. If I'm hungry and I go out and buy some food or go out and work for some food, that's a legitimate way of meeting my need. There's nothing wrong with me wanting to eat. It's a very natural thing and it's not sinful to want to do it that way. But if I'm hungry and I decide to steal somebody else's food, that's not a legitimate way. Here's the thing: it's the same thing in one sense, that is feeding my appetite. Animals feed their appetites all the time. Again, they never sin in doing it because they can't sin. We can sin. And the problem we have is that our flesh, which has these desires, does not in itself distinguish. Our flesh doesn't have the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong ways. That's our soul or our mind or our spirit that has to decide, "Okay, I'm hungry but it's not okay to do this to get food." In other words, there's a part of us that's not our flesh that has to govern the desires of our flesh. Everyone's born with desires of the flesh and one could argue that's a sinful nature because the flesh has only one interest and that's self-gratification. That's a sinful way to be. But it doesn't really result in sin until we actually commit sin. Because, again, animals want to gratify their appetites too, but they're not sinning by doing that. That's not really a sinful thing to want. It's when our flesh just says, "I want, I'm going to take," and this is true in the area of sexual drive, food, whatever, sleep, many things. In all our relations with each other and with God, we have to govern those natural drives in accordance with God's principles and God's laws. People who aren't Christians, and that would include everyone who's born because no one's born a Christian, their flesh is really all there is to direct them. Babies are very selfishly, they can't help it, they don't know any better, but they very selfishly will seek what they want at the expense of anybody else's interests. They don't know better, but they're still doing that. When you do that, when you commit sin, you become a slave of sin. That's something that humans have a vulnerability to that animals do not. If we do something that is wrong, we are wrongdoers. Some people put it the other way around. There's a certain kind of theology that says we're not sinners because we sin, we sin because we're sinners. That's kind of a talking point in some theologies. They say, "Listen, you're a sinner from birth and therefore you commit sins." And therefore they say you're not a sinner because you sinned, but your sins arose from the fact that you were by nature a sinner. This is the doctrine of total depravity, which some Christians believe and some don't. The Bible doesn't actually explicitly teach total depravity, but some people read it into some passages. And so they would say there's no way you could live a holy life without the grace of God. But see, even those who don't hold that doctrine of total depravity would say by the time you're old enough and mature enough to make responsible moral choices, you've already been indulging your lusts for years. Therefore, you're already in bondage to them. So no matter what one thinks about total depravity and the original sin doctrines, the truth is by the time anyone is confronted with the gospel in any responsible sense, they're already accustomed to sinning. I believe it's Jeremiah who said, "Can a leopard change its spots or an Ethiopian change his skin?" He says if they can do that, then so can you who are accustomed to sinning change your ways. You're accustomed to sinning. You can't just change. It's now who you are. It's now your nature, just like for a leopard to have spots, that's natural. It can't change that. You can't change your sinful nature once you've become accustomed to sinning is the way it's worded. So I would say that everybody is a slave of sin until Christ sets you free. When Jesus said, "If you continue in my words," this is of course John 8:31 and following, he said, "If you continue in my words, you're my disciples indeed, and you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free." And the Pharisees said, "We're not in bondage to anybody. What are you talking about making us free?" And he said, "Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin." It says in Matthew chapter one, when the angel is speaking to Joseph about the impending birth of Jesus, "His name shall be called Jesus because he'll set his people free from their sins." That is, from the bondage of their sins. In Romans 6 it says, "Thank God that you once were the slaves of sin, but now you're slaves of righteousness." So being a slave of sin means you're not really free to stop sinning, I think. Some people think being a slave of sin is so severe that a person enslaved to sin can't even want to be free, can't even choose Christ, can't even choose or to repent. But this is certainly going far beyond anything the Bible would affirm. A slave can want to be free, even if he doesn't have the power to free himself. A person who is enslaved to sin can desire to be set free. When they hear that Christ is here to set them free, they can choose him. This is what I've just said is totally contrary to Calvinism, but Calvinism, in my opinion, is contrary to the Bible. What I just said, I believe is not only biblically true, but it's an obvious thing about slavery. Slaves can want to be free. Calvinism says if you're a slave of sin, you can't even want to. They don't have any biblical basis for saying that. That's just their philosophy. So I think that a person cannot just stop sinning because they want to. Now, if a person becomes a Christian, then they receive the Holy Spirit. And the Bible says if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, which means we won't be sinning. That's in Galatians 5:16. And Paul said the same thing essentially in Romans 8 verse 4. He said that the righteous requirements of the law may be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The Bible indicates that the Spirit of God is given to help us live the life that Christ desires us to live. And if we're walking in the power of the Spirit, we won't be sinning. The problem is we don't walk in the Spirit all the time. I don't know anybody who walks in the Spirit all the time. But if they did, they wouldn't sin. In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 that there is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able to endure, but with the temptation he'll provide a way of escape that you might endure it. Paul says the Christian will never experience a temptation that they have to succumb to. You can never say "the devil made me do it" or "the flesh made me do it." No, you did it even though you didn't have to. Because you do have the Holy Spirit. God does give grace and ability and strength. And he does give a way of escape. When we sin, it's not because God didn't make it possible for us to get away from sinning. It's because we didn't take that escape that he provided. So that would be a matter of we're not willing not to sin. But I would say that one of the marks of a person who's a true Christian is that their heart is changed so that they want to live a holy life. When they stumble and sin, it's a great frustration and grief to them. And they determine that they want to live a holier life and they make every prayer and attempt and seek to be filled with the Spirit so that they will not continue doing so. But God knows our frame. It says in Psalm 103, he remembers we're dust. And he also knows, as Jesus said, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." So although we could, if we perfectly walked in the Spirit and if we perfectly availed ourselves of every escape that God provides from temptation, we could theoretically live as Christians a sinless life. But I don't believe anyone is there. Now, if there are people there, they probably are older Christians who've fought a lot of battles and conquered a lot of territory and overcome a lot of the bondage in their life. But I don't know. I would not be willing to say that I know anybody who doesn't sin. But thankfully, I don't believe as I once did, because my church I grew up in told me, "we must sin many times in thought, word, and deed every day." And they said that if you don't think you're sinning, you're sinning by thinking that. So the idea was I guess this is just some way of keeping us humble. I'm not really sure what the point of saying it was because it's not biblical. The Bible does not say we have to sin. The Bible says we have to not sin. There's no place that says in the Bible that we have to sin. But I guess it's a relief to Christians who sin far too much to be told that we have to sin many times in thought, word, and deed every day. It's a shame that that is taught since it's contrary to the gospel. But it's also somewhat realistic that because we don't apparently we don't have the attentiveness or the determination to walk in the Spirit at every moment, it's very commonplace for Christians to fall into sin. But if you're really a Christian, you don't want to. And you want to stop. And you do all you can to stop. It's a great frustration to sin if you're a Christian. The opposite is true if you're not a Christian. Sinning is fun. It's not fun for a Christian. It's attractive, but when you do it, you realize that wasn't really fun. I wish I hadn't done that. Christians are different than non-Christians that way. Non-Christians are always looking for opportunities to sin and indulge themselves. Christians' very nature is to say, "I want to avoid sin. I want to live a holy life. Not because I'm afraid to go to hell, I just hate sin."
Jason: Great, great responses. I appreciate it.
Steve Gregg: All right, brother. It's great talking to you. Thank you for your call. Bye now. All right, we'll talk to Dawn in Sacramento, California. Dawn, welcome.
Dawn: Hello. Thanks for taking my call. And first of all, I just want to say thank you for giving such a great answer to that question that just came up. I really appreciate that. My question is about hearing the word of God and believing the word of God. And it goes like this: will a child of God or someone who's called to be a child of God automatically believe the word of God after they hear the word of God? And I'll just listen on the air.
Steve Gregg: All right, yeah, thank you for your call. So it sounds like you're saying if a person's a child of God, they will automatically believe the word of God when they hear it. And I will say this: that should be true and it probably is true to a very large extent. But there is a battle too. There's an enemy who seeks to deceive. He's like a roaring lion going about seeking whom he may devour. He's a liar. He's a deceiver. And even though you are a child of God and you believe the word of God to be true, it is one of the great projects of Satan to introduce doubt and unbelief to your mind, to deceive you, to lie to you, to sow unbelief or deception. And we're not really going to escape that battle until the battle is over, which it is not. In our case, till we die or until Jesus comes. So we're going to always have to fight the good fight of faith as Paul puts it. Now, once you realize, I guess the more you study the scriptures, the more you apply your faith to it and to God, its author, the more invulnerable you will be to these kinds of deceptions. The more you're going to win these battles between doubt and faith. The fact that you have doubts doesn't necessarily mean you're not a Christian or child of God. The question is, when doubts occur, this is the voice, frankly, of a deceiver in your head. You didn't ask for those probably. I mean, a lot of times when people start to have doubts or bad temptations that are ugly things in their head, they start blaming themselves. And really, frankly, unless you like those things, unless you're pursuing those things, these are not your thoughts. These are the enemy's thoughts put into your head hoping you'll buy into them. That's what deception is. A lie is told you. Whenever someone lies to you, human or Satan, their words come into your head. And you could believe them or not. And so you have to decide, am I going to accept this suggestion or not? Now, what a child of God ought to know to do, some children of God are maybe better instructed than others and some don't maybe know what to do, when doubts come to your head, if you know that that thing that has come into your mind is contrary to what God has said, it's simply quite appropriate to just say to yourself, "I will believe God. Period. That's where I stand. I'm standing with God on this." Now, you might say is there any scriptural basis for that? Well, there is. David in the Psalms, on more than one occasion, when he was depressed, when he was discouraged, he spoke to his own heart and said, "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God." You know, "I will again be comforted by his favor and by his face." And you know, in other words, remind your own heart of what you know. Someone might say, "Well, if you have to convince yourself, maybe you're not so sure." Well, at the moment, you are determining to be sure. The thing is you should, when you reach your beliefs, do so on a good basis. You should believe the word of God because you have very good reasons to believe it's true. I mean the same kind of reasons you'd have to believe anything else is true in your life. There's more than abundant evidence that the word of God is true. Tons of it of various kinds. You know, it's impossible for me to doubt the word of God. I mean, I've been of course a believer for what, 65 years or more, and I've been teaching for 56 years. So I've certainly thought through my reasons for belief and believe me, my reasons for believing the word of God is true are far better thought out and far better established than those of any unbeliever thinking about their beliefs that I've ever encountered. And therefore, I know the word of God's true. Now, if somebody suggests to me such and such in the word of God is not true, well, it kind of is like water off a duck's back these days. When I was younger, maybe it wouldn't be, but I've already seen that point before. I've already seen that evidence. I've already heard that before. I've already wrestled with that and beat it. You know, those things just don't have any impact on me anymore. But there was a time when I had to look them up and figure them out. And I don't think we should believe things that we don't have a good reason for believing that the evidence is against it. And so once you've done what is technically your homework as a Christian to discover that the word of God is true, then you've got a solid rock to stand on. And of course, every wind of doctrine, every storm of doubt that comes along, you're going to have a rock you're standing on and say, "Hey, listen, I don't have to re-litigate this. I don't have to re-investigate this. I have done my homework. I know the reasons that I believe what I believe. And therefore, all this nonsense that people who know less than I do about the subject are saying against the Bible, to me I just see it as, like if a little kid was trying to tell me that the moon is made of green cheese." No, sorry, it isn't. Not even slightly concerned about your opinion about that. So Christians do have to fight the battle of faith, but it's, you know, if a person is inclined toward believing God, and that's what a child of God is, someone who's decided to believe God, then they can work through doubts when they come through. But the more they've settled the question through their own responsible investigation that Jesus is the Son of God, he did rise from the dead, the Bible is true, well, the more they are in a very solid position to swat away the insects of doubts that are thrown your way. You know, it is important to note though, a person is either inclined to believe or inclined to disbelieve the word of God. And that's a decision they make. If someone's inclined to disbelieve, it may be because they don't know the evidence for belief and therefore they should do their homework and figure it out. Then they won't be inclined to disbelieve. But I do meet Christians who every time they read something in the Bible that causes question marks, they see two statements that sound like they might contradict each other or something, they underscore those things. They look hard at those things. They get puzzled. They get in trouble. They start to doubt the word of God. Instead, once you know the word of God is true and once you know God is true, then when someone brings something up like, "well, why would a good God tell the Jews to kill the Canaanites?" Well, that's a really challenging question. It's not one I haven't thought through. And I happen to have a very satisfying answer, maybe several satisfying answers. But some people, the question itself just throws them into a crisis of faith. I think there's two ways to stand. You can stand with the presupposition that God is true, let every man be a liar. Or that God is still a little bit tentative about whether God is true or not. Still waiting for God to really prove he's true. If we're in this second position, then we will be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and doubt. But if you're inclined to say, "Listen, God is true. Who is a man to question God? Every man is a liar. God has never lied once. So if I don't understand God's actions or his statement here on some subject, he's not the one who's got the problem. I am. I'm the one who's deficient. I'm the one who's got to sort it out. I'm the one who has to figure it out. But in the meantime, I trust him." Just like I would hope a child who doesn't quite understand why his father is doing something would just say, "Well, you know, my dad's a lot older than me. He's done this kind of thing a lot. He knows what he's doing. I don't understand it, but until I do, I'll just trust in him." And that's really the basic attitude of a child of God too, according to your question there. I appreciate your call very much. We have a break coming up here and then we'll hopefully take all the remaining calls that are on line right now, that is those who are on our switchboard at this point. We're halfway through the program and every day we just like to take a break to let you know The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We pay radio stations lots and lots of money. It'd blow your mind to hear how much money we do. And we don't sell anything. We don't have any sponsors. We don't allow commercials on the program. And all we do, we don't even have a newsletter. We don't have any fundraising apparatus. What I do every day is what I'm doing right now, saying The Narrow Path, we spend money to put the show on the air. We don't pay any salaries. We have no expenses. All the money that we have goes to buying airtime. And all the money we have comes from people like yourself. If you'd like to help us pay those radio bills, if you'd like to help us stay on the air, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Or you can go to our website. Everything's free at the website, but you can donate at thenarrowpath.com if you want to. I'm taking a 30-second break and we'll have another half hour together. Don't go away. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking calls. Our lines are full, so there's no sense in me giving you out the phone number. If we take all these calls and still have time, I'll give the number out again. Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy other people's questions and the way that we interact on the topics they bring up. And the first of those questions is going to come from Gil in New York, New York. Hi Gil, you don't have to remind me who you are, just get to your question. Welcome.
Gil: Yes, hi. I just, before I ask my question, I just want to let the listeners know that I almost died a few times recently. I've been having a lot of health problems and I've been on psychiatric medication. They lowered it. I'm doing so much better now. I'm sleeping better. I had terrible pain in my eyes, you remember me telling you that. All the pain is gone. I don't have any more pain in my eyes. And the reason I say that is because Psalm 126 verse 1 says letting us know all the things that God is doing for us. I can't remember how it goes now, I just forgot it. But I just want to let people know that I grew up Catholic. I didn't know anything about the Bible. I did not know how to read well. I used to be a DJ. I used to make club music, rap music, disco music.
Steve Gregg: Hey, brother. Hey, listen, my lines are full. Do you have a question for us?
Gil: Yes. My question is, you had mentioned a while back, I think it was less than a year ago, that you were on Catholic Answers and you was debating and all of that, which is very interesting. How would I be able to find that on your website? Can you instruct me how? Maybe somebody can help me find it because I'm very close with them. They know me and they admire...
Steve Gregg: All right, I believe, now I don't go to our website that often because I don't use our resources as often as some people do, but I believe if you go to thenarrowpath.com, I think if you look under topical lectures, there is a section of debates on lots of things. Now, there are five debates I had with Tim Staples, who works at Catholic Answers. And there are five debates I had with Jimmy Akin, who also works at Catholic Answers. And these were many years apart from each other. But some of the subjects overlap. But they are at the website. I believe it's at the topical lectures tab. My wife is nodding right now. She looks those things up when I say them. And if you have the app, maybe you don't, but those who have our phone app, there's a thing that says debates and it'll take you right to them. But there's lots of debates with atheists, with Calvinists, dispensationalists, with Catholics, with different people. And there are, as I said, a series of five debates with Tim Staples and a series of five debates with Jimmy Akin. These are on the subject of Roman Catholicism. All right, well thank you, brother. All right, let's talk to Charles in Fishers, Indiana. Hi, Charles, welcome.
Charles: Hi, Steve. Thank God for your show. I like to listen to it every day and on the weekend sometimes too, if I can. I have a question. So the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, they're one, right? In a certain sense, yes. And so since God knows the end, my question is, so the Holy Spirit, he's included in the Trinity. So that same God that knows the beginning from the end, how is it that if the Holy Spirit still beckons me or tries to get me to do the right thing every day if he already knows what's going to happen in the end?
Steve Gregg: Well, let's just put it this way. Some people think that if God knows what's going to happen, it might as well not even happen because he already knows. But if it's not going to happen, then he doesn't know that it is going to happen. God's knowledge of the future is based on the fact that there is a future. And the content of his knowledge of the future is based on the fact there is a content to the future itself. In other words, if the Holy Spirit's trying to get you to do well, and he already knows whether you're going to do well or not, well, the way he knows it is because he knows that you're going to do it or not. And because the truth is you are in fact going to do it or not. When we try to get into how does God know the future, we're really way above our pay grade. We can't even imagine how you'd know the future. I mean, we could imagine how one might predict what the weather's going to be if you go to the weather channel. They can tell you what the weather's going to be maybe in the next 10 days with some accuracy. But when you're talking about things hundreds of years off, geopolitical movements and ups and downs of kingdoms and so forth that are centuries off, we have no idea how God could know that. Now, one way he knows some of those things, of course, is that he makes them happen. God is intervening in Earth's history in many ways, but not in every detail. For example, when Jesus told Peter, "Before the cock crows, you'll deny me three times." Well, we cannot assume that Jesus made or God made Peter deny him three times. The Bible's very clear, God does not tempt anyone with evil. So there's no possibility that God would have forced Peter to sin when Peter in fact was determined to do good. If someone says, "Well, didn't he kind of harden Pharaoh's heart so he would sin?" Well, first of all, Pharaoh was not determined to do good. Pharaoh was a bad man. Hardening his heart was simply a judgment on a man who was already bad enough to deserve to be judged. In Peter's case, Peter was a beloved and sincere disciple. God doesn't take a sincere disciple and force them to sin when they otherwise wouldn't. Jesus' prediction that Peter sinned cannot be that Jesus predicted and then made it happen. Jesus knew it some other way. Now some people say he knew it because he saw the trajectory of the evening and how things were going to go and knew how Peter was and knew what Peter's limits were and what his weaknesses were and he could make this kind of a prediction. Well, I guess one could say that if they want to, and I'm sure that there's truth in that. The only thing is that once Jesus predicted it, it couldn't have happened any other way. In other words, there was no way that Peter was going to do anything other than what Jesus predicted he would do. You could almost say it was determined. Now it wasn't determined by God. It was determined by the flow of history, by Peter's actions and so forth. But God and Jesus apparently were able to foresee that flow of history. And Jesus could predict it simply because it was in fact going to happen. Now how does he do that? Well, I don't know. He's God. God can do stuff that other people cannot. But to say, "God knows I'm going to evangelize this person tomorrow and they're going to get saved, so I might as well not do it because, I mean, what's the point? He already knows I'm going to do it." Well, if I decide not to do it, then he knows I'm not going to do it. In other words, he doesn't lay out a script or choreograph our lives every step and then because he did it, we're determined to do it. It's the other way around. There are things that we do and that we will do and things that we're going to do in the future. Those are going to be determined by various factors, including our own choices and other people's choices and things like that. But that God knows that's going to happen is not determining that to happen. We're just suggesting he has access to that information. And you say, "Well, where's he get that access?" Well, I don't know. If I knew how to get that, I'd probably go looking for it and try to get it myself, too, but it's not available to us. We're not God. So, all I'm saying is many people have disputed, even Christians have disputed whether God really knows all future things. There is a what I consider to be one fairly reasonable school of theology, which I do not accept, which is called openness theology, and they don't believe that God knows what we're going to do in advance. And they have good biblical arguments, just not good enough to persuade me. But it's not a liberal or heretical teaching, it's just different. But I'm not saying that we have to know how God can know the future. Your question is more, if God does know the future, why does he try to get me to do the right thing? Well, because he certainly would like you to do the right thing. And if he doesn't try to get you to do it, you won't. And he'd love to know that you're going to do it. But he'll only know that if in fact you do. And you'll only do it if he influences you. But he doesn't make you do it. I mean, the Holy Spirit can convict you. Think of the two cases in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter 2 when Peter preached to those who crucified Christ, it says their hearts were cut to the heart. And they came and said, "Men and brethren, what must we do?" And 3,000 of them got saved because they were cut to the heart. That was the conviction of the Holy Spirit. A few chapters later, Stephen's preaching to the Sanhedrin and they're cut to the heart, too, but they don't repent, they kill him. In both cases, the Holy Spirit was trying to get people to do the right thing. In one case, they did, they repented. The other case, they didn't, they killed the messenger. So the Holy Spirit tries to get us to do the right thing. And we sometimes will and perhaps sometimes won't. The fact that God knows which way it's going to go doesn't eliminate the need for him to influence us and try to get us to do the right thing. His knowledge of it is kind of a very separate consideration and one that we don't have very much understanding of. At least speaking strictly for myself, I don't. I appreciate your call, brother.
Charles: Thank you.
Steve Gregg: All right, bro. Bye now. We're going to talk next to Brian in Pomona, California. Hi, Brian, welcome.
Brian: Hi, Steve. Good afternoon. I'm actually from Pomona, California.
Steve Gregg: Oh, I'm sorry. My call screener didn't hear you correctly. Go ahead.
Brian: Oh, it's okay. I mumble. That's my fault. But here's my question. I know your stance on women in the ministry and I think it's very good and I'm all for it. But I looked at another teacher that I follow and he gave a different view on it and I wanted to run it by you. So this has to do with women in the ministry and the most famous one that they quote, as you know, is Deborah. I was going to go to Timothy, first Timothy, "But I suffer not a woman to teach nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." And then in the Old Testament there was Deborah who was very unusual because she, much like Samuel, I believe Samuel was the only other one who was a prophet and a judge. And she was also the prophet and judge, so she was the spiritual leader and the civic leader of the children of Israel. And then you also have Huldah, who was under King Josiah.
Steve Gregg: Huldah was a prophetess. She wasn't a judge. Yeah.
Brian: Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah, she was just a prophetess under King Josiah. And then the scriptures say that in both cases, it was "the wife of Lappidoth" or "was the wife of Shallum" in Huldah's case. And I love that this teacher was saying it made that point, saying that like other men judges or prophets, you didn't really hear about their wives, but in these cases you heard who their husbands were. So it almost made it seem like the scriptures were trying to let us know that their husbands were still the spiritual leader in their home, yet they had that role as a prophetess or a judge, even the civic leader at times.
Steve Gregg: Let me address that. You might have more points, and maybe we can get to them, but let me just address that. In the Bible, of course most of the people whose stories are featured are men, but a man is always identified in the Bible by who his father was. And that's because he's carrying on the family name through his father's line. When women are identified, they are typically identified by who their husband is because they are not carrying on their father's family name, they're carrying on their husband's family line. For example, their children will carry on the husband's legacy, not the maternal grandfather's legacy. So I mean to say that this woman is the wife of so-and-so is not necessarily speaking about whether the husband is a godly man or not. For example, Abigail was the wife of Nabal and she's referred to as the wife of Nabal, but Nabal was no spiritual leader, he was a jerk and a wicked man and she was truly the spiritual leader of her home. That is, she was more spiritual than her husband and saved her whole family from being wiped out by doing what she did when her husband was not so inclined. But getting back to the question of women in ministry, you said you know my view on women in ministry. I'm not sure you do. My view on women in ministry is women are absolutely capable of being in ministry, a wide variety of ministry. The only thing I say is frankly the only thing the Bible says on it is women are not to be elders in the church. Now an elder of the church is comparable to a pastor of a congregation. There are many other ministries. There are deaconesses, there are prophetesses, there are evangelists who are women in the Bible and some even say there's at least one apostle who's a woman. Not an apostle like Paul and Peter and James, but what they call apostles of the churches, which means missionaries. But the point is that women can be in lots of different kinds of ministries and not least, servant ministry. Now some woman's going to say, "yeah, there you go trying to keep the women subservient." No, everybody's supposed to be a servant. And Jesus said the one who's the chief is the one who's the most of a servant. So this is not keeping anyone down. This is telling people the direction up. You want to be up, you want to be important in the sight of God, be as much of a servant as you can. And that is a lofty thing according to Jesus. So any woman or man can be a servant. In fact, no matter what other gifts they have, they should use them in service to the rest of the church. So there's really no restrictions placed on women in ministry except as elders of the church. And the qualifications for an elder requires that he's the husband of a wife and he's the head of a household and that he's demonstrated by his ability to govern his household that he's to be trusted in more or less leading the church. And that's not ambiguous in scripture. Even the statement in 1 Timothy 2:15 where it says, "I don't permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man," he's really referring to being an elder. This is in the exact context, the immediate context, of qualifications for elders. To say a woman can't teach a man in any way would go right against Paul's practice. Aquila and Priscilla, a husband and wife, taught a man, not officially, not as elders in the church, but they taught Apollos, corrected him. And Priscilla seems to have had a major role in doing so. It's not wrong for a woman to teach. Timothy was taught the scriptures by his mother and his grandmother and Paul thought that was just wonderful. So Paul didn't say women can't teach. He's saying in the context of Timothy, "when it comes to choosing elders, I don't put women in that position. The people I do put in that position are the husbands of one wife who have these other qualifications." So my position about women in ministry is they should be in every ministry that God hasn't forbidden them to be in, as long as God calls them to those ministries. But if there's anything that he's told women not to be, then they shouldn't care to be that. They should want to be what God wants them to be, I would think. So it's one thing to say, "I kind of wish I could be a pastor, but I'm a woman so I can't, so I guess I'm good for nothing or God hates me." No, it's the opposite. God has something better for you. Something that suits you better, something that suits the church and the needs of the kingdom of God better. And the whole point of being a Christian is that you're not trying to be ambitious for your own self, you're not looking for your own will. As long as you're looking for your own will, you still need to repent and become a Christian. Jesus said, "if anyone wants to come to me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." You won't do that if you're seeking your own will. So you need to get saved if what you're after is your own will and not God's will. I sometimes tell this story because it's true. I was in Korea and this subject of men and women in pastoral roles and stuff came up. And a woman asked me, "Well, do you think you'd feel the same way if you were a woman?" And I said, "Well, if I were a woman, I think I'd be reading the same Bible I'm reading now. It doesn't take a man to read the Bible and understand what it says. It takes a rather rebellious woman to read the Bible and try to make it say something other than what it says because she wants it to say something else." But a rebellious woman is no better or worse than a rebellious man. Being rebellious is the opposite of being a Christian. A Christian is submitted to Christ, submitted to his word. They're not looking for loopholes, not looking for ways to twist it to get what they want. A true Christian says, "God, just show me what you want. Nothing could be better for me than what you want for me." And yeah, if I was a woman, I'd still feel the same way unless I was an evil woman. Because I'd still read the same Bible and it would still say the same thing it says that I as a man find it to say. And there are many, many women who do read the Bible and find it to say that, too. So there's only a certain kind of woman that would say, "because I'm a woman, I'm going to read this differently." And that's the kind of woman that needs to repent and become a Christian. And men do the same thing. You know, if I find a man who insists that he should be an elder despite the fact that he might not seem to be qualified in some ways, and most men don't, by the way, I'd say, "Listen, regardless of your qualifications, I can't recognize you as an elder as long as you're in this whole thing for your own advancement." I wouldn't want a pastor, man or woman, who said, "I insist that you accept me as an elder." The people God chooses to lead in the Bible are usually people who'd rather not. People who are trying to get out of it, people making excuses not to do it, like Moses and some of the judges like Gideon. They're the ones that I would rather be led by because they're doing it despite themselves because that's what God has called them to do. There's a lot of people in the opposite position, God has called them not to do it, but they're doing it in spite of that because they want it. Yeah, that's simply something different than Christianity. I'm not in a religion that's different than Christianity, so I wouldn't accept that. You did have another question I wanted to give you a chance to, but we don't have much time, we have a lot of people waiting. Go ahead, Brian.
Brian: Oh, yeah, yeah, I know you have people waiting. So the main thing that I also listened to this other teacher, he brought up the qualifications of an elder in 1 Timothy 3, saying "husband of one wife," as you alluded to earlier, and then even children, basically children in subjection with all gravity. And so this one teacher, he made it seem like, okay, so an elder had to be married, had to have one wife, spoke against polygamy obviously, and had to have okay, I mean, if you want to look at the Timothy scripture and look at it as absolute, you have to have children plural, which means that you couldn't have one child because the scripture says children and you had to be married.
Steve Gregg: Works for me. Yeah, I mean, so he's saying if you're going to take Paul seriously, then you're going to really have to take Paul seriously. And I'm going to say, fair enough. That's exactly what I want to do. Who doesn't? I realize there's a lot of elders, men elders in churches, who don't qualify as elders according to what Paul says in Timothy. Well, that's not on me. If they ask me, I'll tell them to hold out for Paul's instructions. Of course, in principle, one might say, well a person who has only been able to have one child and that child is in subjection and so they don't have children plural, well, okay, technically they don't have children, but they've got as many as they can get and their child qualifies them. That's fine. If people want to be nitpickers and they're not looking for the mind of God, they're looking for an end-run around the obvious mind of God, these are not the people I want making the decisions in any church for me. Anyway, brother, I appreciate your call. I'm very much aware of all these people who hold different views and I can see where their motives are pretty easily, and I think anyone can who reads them. Listen, we don't have much time. Let's talk to Mike in Cool, California. Welcome.
Mike: Good afternoon, Steve. Hope you're having a blessed day. So I'm going to piggyback a little bit on the lady who you talked to right before the break. As I've studied and researched, and you're one of the few people I hold strong to, but what she said when you read the Bible do you believe it's true. Well, of course through my years and years of studying and believing and reading, of course I've changed my theology a few times, some pretty drastically. And recently I'm reading the book by John Piper, who I don't exactly agree with, but I like to see what the other side says, I guess, would be the best way to put it. So how do you know or what, where do you draw the conclusion about their theology? Where do they get it? Is that brought on just by their flesh or by Satan trying to deceive the people they listen to, or how does that work?
Steve Gregg: All right, well, the lady's question was if you're a believer, if you're a child of God, don't you naturally believe the Bible. And I would say people like John Piper, I think he believes the Bible is true, and so do I, but we understand the Bible differently on some points. Now the points that Christians have to believe correctly to be Christians, John Piper and I share the same view. We both believe you have to be devoted to Christ. That's what the Bible teaches. Now he's got doctrines on election and perseverance and limited atonement and stuff that I wouldn't share with him. But you say where does he get his doctrines. Well, I don't know him, but I would say lots of people have the same doctrines he does, and I think a lot of them get them from their Christian heroes. Calvin, Augustine, they taught these things. Spurgeon taught these things. In other words, Calvinism has a lot of heroes. And there's a certain sense that some Christians are brought up in Calvinist churches or are converted into them, and maybe they go to Calvinist seminaries, and the heroes of their faith are Calvinists. I mean the Puritans were Calvinist, I'm pretty sure John Bunyan was a Calvinist, lots of great men have been Calvinists. I don't believe they were correct in their Calvinism, but they've been great men. So I think these people just were taught it, they're taught to look at it this way. And here's the thing that many people don't understand. The first people that teach you the Bible, whether you're aware of it or not, they are forming a grid for your perception of the Bible. A grid like a screen. And once this grid is in place, which is based on the interwoven strands of their propositions they make theologically and that you accept, then you tend to read the Bible through that grid. And what it means is the stuff that gets through to your brain when you're reading is the stuff that passes through the grid, and the stuff that won't pass through that particular grid kind of just gets sloughed off, kind of goes over the head. You don't give it much thought. That's typically how people are. And the great challenge for people who want to be right is to recognize what grid it is they're reading through and do their best to read around it and say, "What if I didn't see it this way? Is there another way to look at this that makes sense?" And that would help a great number of people. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. I'm out of time. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow.