The Narrow Path 09/28/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live, as usual, for an hour at this time each afternoon. The live broadcast is such so that we can talk in real time if you want to call in. If you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, you differ from the host on some subject you'd like to balanced comment about, feel free to give me a call. We're looking at one line open on our switchboard at the moment. The number is 844-484-5737. I want to give a shout out to my friend, a young man named Asher Gonzalez in Scottsdale, Arizona. The reason I'm doing that is it's his 18th birthday and he has called this show since he was probably about seven or eight years old. He has called many times in the past and so I've known him since he was a little kid, and his family—his sisters and brother—and they're a really wonderful, homeschooled, godly family. Intelligently, the children have called in with questions over the years, and Asher's now 18, so he won't be a child calling in anymore. He might call in, but not as a child anymore. Anyway, happy birthday Asher. And for the rest of you, especially those of you in Michigan, I'll be as soon as this Thursday night speaking in Michigan and thus for another week following. I'm speaking in the Grand Rapids area, in the Detroit area, in the Toledo, Ohio area across the border, and some other places, small places and big places. So if you are in Michigan and interested in coming out, the dates, the times, the places, the subject matter and so forth are posted at our website. I'll be doing an itinerary from the 1st to the 8th of October. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. To find information like where I'll be speaking, there's a tab there that says "Announcements." Check there and you'll see all the relevant information at thenarrowpath.com under "Announcements." All right, we're going to waste no more time giving announcements. We're going to talk to real people here. Spokane, Washington. Nate, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Nate: Hey Steve. I've got a question about the Eucharist. I have a friend who said that the first church believed the Eucharist was the actual blood and body. I'm just wondering if that's true, if the first church in Acts believed that. And then if that's not true, when did that dogma begin? And then do you know why they believed that at some point?
Steve Gregg: I can only guess about some of those things. As far as the first church is concerned, the first church was the church in Jerusalem, which was there from the day of Pentecost until about 66 AD when they fled from Jerusalem. So the first generation of Christians, who were led by the apostles themselves, did they believe that when they took the bread and the wine that these literally turned into the body and blood of Jesus? Well, we have no evidence that they believed that, and there's every reason to believe that they would not think that since they were Jewish and they knew very well that at the Last Supper when Jesus took the bread and said "this is my body," he was simply slightly modifying the regular Passover ritual. This was a Passover meal Jesus was having with his disciples. They had had Passover every year of their lives at that same day of the year, and they had had Passover with Jesus a few times previously too, on an annual basis. Now, there's a regular point in the ceremony when the host would hold up the bread and say "this bread is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate when they were slaves in Egypt." Now, everyone knew, of course, that that bread that was in his hand had nothing to do physically with the bread of affliction that their ancestors had eaten 1,400 years ago in Egypt. It's very obvious the wording itself and the ritual was known to reflect a memorial of the salvation that God gave Israel from the slavery in Egypt through Moses and the Exodus. And God told them in Exodus 12 to memorialize this every year after that. Now, he didn't say that when they would do so, that something magical would happen to the bread or the drinks at the table. It was strictly a memorial meal. And they did that for 1,400 years right up until the Last Supper. Now, that was also a Passover meal. In fact, at the beginning of it, according to Luke's version, Jesus got together with his disciples and said, "With great desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." So he saw it as a Passover meal. And of course, they went through the ritual of the Passover as they would; they were Jewish. And instead of saying "this bread is the bread of affliction eaten by our fathers in Egypt," Jesus said, "this bread is my body which is broken for you." In other words, it's my affliction which brings about your deliverance. And this is the point. The Passover meal was celebrating God's deliverance from bondage when Israel escaped from Egypt. But that was a type and a shadow of the ultimate salvation of a spiritual sort that the Messiah would bring. And Jesus is saying now's the time that this has this meaning. Now, when he said "this bread is my body," you say why do people begin to think it turned into his body? Because they don't know very much about Hebrew things. They don't know very much about the Passover, apparently. And frankly, the early church didn't. A lot of the decisions of the early church were made after 70 AD by Gentile converts in places like Rome and other Gentile territories. It would seem that if you didn't know the wording of the Passover ritual, that you might mistakenly take Jesus literally when he said "this bread is my body," though it would be a strange thing to do since his body was sitting there complete when he said it. In other words, his body had not any pieces missing. So the bread, when they ate the bread, they weren't eating his actual flesh. His body had not yet been broken. And when he said the same about the cup, "this cup is the cup of the New Covenant in my blood, which is shed for the remission of sins," well, his blood had not been shed; that cup was not literal blood. And it wasn't supposed to be understood to be literal blood any more than the bread was literal body. Again, Passover for the 1,400 years before the Last Supper had always simply been recognized as a memorial meal. Nothing supernatural was ever thought to happen. No specific salvation or grace was given to people by taking it. Now, when Jesus came, he didn't say that anything like that had changed. He just changed the subject of the memorial. Basically, he said, "You're going to from now on, whenever you do this, you're going to remember me." He didn't say, "From now on, whenever you do this, you're going to eat and drink me literally." He said, "No, you're going to do this to remember me. For 1,400 years you've been remembering something else when you were doing this meal; you were remembering salvation from Egypt. Now you're going to remember salvation from sin and my role that was played in that through the broken body and shed blood that brings this about." Now, there's nothing in the Bible ever that suggests that something supernatural ever happened to the bread or the wine, either at the regular Passover nor at this particular Passover when Jesus instituted a new meaning of the feast. Now, in my opinion, since the Jews knew this—since the Jews were very familiar with the expression "this bread is," and knowing that it's not really saying "this actual piece of bread is actually becoming the bread that our fathers ate in Egypt," no, obviously "this bread is" means this bread reminds us of, this bread is the token of, the memorial of the suffering our fathers had in Egypt. And in exactly the same way, they would have understood Jesus's statement: "this bread is my body now," meaning it's the token of or the memorial of my body broken for you. When you do this, remember me instead of remembering the Passover Egypt. Now, more than this, we have very good reason to believe that the first church in Jerusalem did not think that the bread and wine became actual body and blood. Because frankly, eating human flesh and drinking human blood, or any blood, even animal blood, was forbidden to the Jews. Human blood would have been more obnoxious than any other kind. Think about Peter years later, years after the Last Supper. He's on a housetop in Joppa. Jesus himself shows him a vision of unclean animals and says, "Arise, Peter, kill and eat." Now here Jesus is telling Peter to eat these animals that are unclean. Peter doesn't just obey; he is revolted at the idea. He protests, "Lord, not so, I've never eaten anything unclean." In other words, "I have never violated the dietary restrictions of our law as a Jew." That's what he said. And yet, according to Catholic teaching, he had been eating unclean food at every Passover meal, at every Lord's Supper, because certainly blood, any kind of blood, human or otherwise, is unclean to the Jew. Now, we might say, "Okay, but Jesus makes it different. I mean, Jesus gives permission in this particular case to eat flesh and blood." Well, maybe Jesus did give that permission—I don't think he did; I don't think that's what he was talking about. But what's interesting is Peter, who objected so strenuously in Acts chapter 10 to eating unclean animals, certainly at the table, if he thought for a moment that Jesus was saying "what's in this cup is now my human blood, you're going to drink it," Peter would have revolted at that even more seriously than at eating unclean animals. "What, human blood? A human body? I'm going to eat that?" The fact that Peter didn't say any word of protest, but just went along with it, means that he didn't think for a moment that that was really human flesh and blood. He knew it wasn't because he knew about the Passover. If you say, "Why did people later on come up with the idea that the bread and wine turn into body and blood?" I think it's because they didn't know about the Passover. But the first church, if that's the term your friend is using, was the church in Jerusalem led by Peter and the others, and there's not a reason in the world to believe that they thought that these elements turned into something supernatural, least of all blood and such to eat. Because it was long after that that Peter was saying to Jesus, no less, "Lord, I've never eaten anything that's unclean, that's not kosher." Well, certainly human flesh and human blood would be as un-kosher as anything that a Jew could imagine. So whether it does turn into the body and blood of Jesus or not, we have to say the apostles didn't have any knowledge of this. And if they had, we would have seen some reaction to that when they saw it that way and Jesus told them to do it anyway. So, anyway, I think it's the lack of understanding of the Jewish ritual that Jesus was simply modifying that has led people to mistakenly think "this is my body" means "this is turning into my body." And by the way, it's one thing to say "this is my body," it's another thing to say "this is going to turn into my body." It isn't, but it is going to turn into it; I'm now going to change it into that. I mean, if that's what he was saying, it seems like he would have said something like that. The fact that he simply gave the same language that was always used to speak of the memorial nature of the bread and the wine indicates that he did not expect his disciples to see it any differently, his statement any differently, than the statement would normally be understood. These things symbolize those things. All right. Now, by the way, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox will both tell you that the early church fathers believed in transubstantiation or that they believed that these elements changed. And that cannot be proven. I've read all the statements from the church fathers that are brought up. What we do see is they use exactly the same language that Jesus used. When they say, "The bread we eat, this we're eating the body of Jesus," okay, to a Catholic that says, "Oh see, they believe the bread literally was the body of Jesus." However, they're just using the same language Jesus did. And the fact that Jesus used it non-literally, and they knew it, would mean that when they used his language, they probably meant it exactly as he did, as non-literal also. So that's the wording.
Nate: Is that like St. Ignatius? Would he be considered one of the church fathers, do you think?
Steve Gregg: Oh yeah, he's in the second century, though. He was not part of the first church. He was part of probably the third generation, or second—second or third generation, yeah. And by the way, Ignatius introduced a bunch of stuff that is unbiblical. I mean, the way that Ignatius talks about the role of the bishop is totally contrary to Scripture. The bishop in the Bible is simply another word for an elder, and the church did not have a bishop over it as they did in Ignatius's day. And Ignatius speaks as if the church has—each church has a bishop, or maybe there's one bishop over several churches as in the modern Catholic church. If that's what he is describing, then he's describing a situation that's contrary to what Paul described when he talked about qualifications for bishops and the appointment of them. So, yeah, it doesn't take very long for the church to deviate from apostolic teaching. Think about it. Paul on his first missionary journey planted churches in Galatia. By the time he got home from that journey, got back to Antioch, there were already churches that he had planted beginning to be Judaized, beginning to say you have to be circumcised to be saved. That's why he wrote Galatians to them at that point. And this is even before the Jerusalem Council had met, which determined the same question. But the point here is Paul's footsteps from his journey to Galatia had hardly been blown over with sand before the churches were deviating from the gospel that Paul preached. Fortunately, Paul was there to write Galatians and correct it. Unfortunately, when people after the apostles were dead began to change things in the Bible, the apostles weren't here to correct them. And so the church was able to go wrong as long as it ignored or misinterpreted Scripture. All right, Nate, thanks for your call, brother. Let's see, we're going to talk to Alan in Grass Valley, California next. Hi, Alan, welcome.
Alan: Good afternoon. My question centers around Romans 5:12-21. The argument presented draws a parallel between Adam and Christ. But that parallel doesn't make sense if Adam's guilt is inherited apart from our actions, while Christ's salvation depends upon our receiving and following him. The Adam-Christ parallel seems much more consistent if Adam brought sin and death into the world, and we participate in his condemnation by sinning, while Christ brought grace, righteousness, and life, and we participate in that by receiving and following Jesus. But I don't find this being taught. What am I missing?
Steve Gregg: Well, you're reading the Bible instead of Augustine is what you're doing. I agree with you. It was Augustine who said that these verses are telling us that we inherited Adam's sin. And they don't. Part of his mistake was that he didn't read Greek, and he said so. Augustine said he was not proficient in Greek; he read the Latin Vulgate. Now, the Latin Vulgate in Romans 5:12 actually reads differently than in the Greek. Our Bibles follow the Greek, and it says in the proper translation, "Therefore, just as through one man," meaning Adam, "sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned." Now, that sounds like what you're saying, right? Adam sinned first, and his death penalty spread to us all because we also sinned. Now, what Augustine read in the Latin was, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men in whom all sinned"—"in whom" meaning in Adam, he thought. Now, first of all, the sentence doesn't make sense that way, but he thought that Paul is saying we all sinned in Adam. And yet Paul didn't say that. That's a misreading in the Latin. In the Latin it says "in whom all sinned." In the Greek it says "because all sinned." So how come death spread to all men? Because all sinned, is what Paul says. And Augustine said, "No, death spread to all men because all sinned in Adam." And that, of course, was a misreading. Now, it is true that Paul does make comparisons between Adam and Christ in relation to humanity. And it was true that Adam was the first to sin, so sin entered the world, as Paul says. That is, there was no sin in the human race until Adam sinned, so the phenomenon of sin originated with Adam's sin, is what he said. Okay, true. But now all sin. And death came through Adam's sin, so it too was introduced for the first time through Adam, but it has spread to all of us because we've all sinned like Adam did. That's what Paul says. I mean, that's not even interpretation; that's simply what he says. And then there's a long parenthesis. So what he has said, he assumes needs some clarification, but he certainly doesn't clarify it very well because in verses 13 through 17 he goes in a long parenthesis. However, even in the midst of this parenthesis, there's a shorter internal parenthesis which makes the structure of the whole thing very confusing. In short, what he's saying in this parenthesis is, even though there's a comparison between Adam and Christ in the fact that both of them introduced something new to humanity, the comparison's not exact. I mean, that's what he's saying in the parenthesis. He says, for example, in verse 15, "but the free gift is not like the offense." That is, the free gift that Christ brings is not really entirely like the offense that Adam brought. "For if by one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift of grace by the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many." Really hard to understand that sentence, but he also says in verse 16, "and the gift is not like that which came through the one that sinned." Now he's saying, yes, Adam sinned and brought condemnation; Christ lived righteously and brought righteousness for us and life. But let's clarify this: the parallel is not exact. He said the offense isn't the same as the gift, and also he says the gift is not like...