← Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast
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Caller
SA.
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Greg Koukl
Hello, friends, and welcome to Stand to Reason. That's our show Greg Show. Greg Koukl, your host here. And I have good news and bad news. And the good news and bad news are the same. The good news for those who have signed up for it is that the Dallas reality, regular seating has completely sold out. And the overflow, which holds about 400 people only, is a half full. In other words, there's only about 200 tickets left. And that event is coming up on February. Oh, my goodness. 21st and 22nd is still three weeks out. So if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, it's bad news for you, unless you want to grab a few of those 200 seats that are left. It's going to be a great event, obviously, and our whole team is there, along with Jay Warner Wallace and Jason Jimenez and Megan and Trip Allman. And it's just some have said this is the best one yet. I like some other ones a little bit better, but they all been fabulous. This is Reality Student Apologetics Conference. You want to sign up? That's the website, realityapologetics.com the Philly event that's in March 21st and 22nd. So we're still, you know, a couple of months out from that. We've almost sold out the main auditorium. I think it holds a thousand, and we have 951. There's a bit of an overflow there, but that's still available. And Dayton, of course, we're just getting running. In fact, the early bird ends in a month, February 28th. So you got four weeks to sign up for the Dayton, Ohio event, April 25th and 26th. I don't even know what the capacity is there. I think we have a pretty big venue, but we expect a lot of people. So our first time doing a reality in the kind of middle America, as it were, Dayton, Ohio, April 25 and 26. So I, I encourage you to, to, to sign up soon as possible for any of those events. There's still room in Dallas, not too much left, though. Incidentally, we also are doing live streaming for that. So if you're not able to make it and you're outside of striking distance and you have a group of people or just your own family, you want to be part of it, you can sign up for live streaming and the pay scale or the cost is graded depending on the size of your audience. So if it's just a small group, you alone, or maybe you and your kids or whatever, we make it happen. If you're going to have a larger group. Well, it's going to be a little bit more. But all of that information is available@raceity apologetics.com of course, reality is such a huge part of our, our effort of passing the baton to the next generation, which, by the way, is always the most important one. Right? The next generation is always the most important generation. And so this is what we're doing. Obviously, we're doing a whole lot of other things, too. In fact, I was thinking about speaking events. We got John Noyes going to be speaking at First Baptist Church in Justin, Texas. Justin, Texas Saturday, February 1st. And other things are happening. I just thought I'd mention that it's on the list here. I'm not doing some things right now because I've got surgery coming up in about a week and just tossing it out. So I'm trying to have my back fixed again. If you'd like to pray for me, that'll be on the 6th of February. Okay, just tossing it out. Last week I did something with a text giving some insight on a challenging text. I'd like to do something similar as I kick off the session here today, but for a different purpose. I just earlier today saw a challenge to Christians by a trans person, or maybe a trans activist, I think was that person's role. And he was interested in getting he said, this is a very serious question and I'm interested in a serious response. As it turns out, Tim Barnett's going to give him a more thorough response on Red Pen Logic. So if you want to turn there sometime in the next week or two, whenever Tim gets that posted, you're welcome to see that Tim will do a great job in responding to the full thing. But the basic challenge was that the main teaching of Scripture is love thy neighbor, which that's not entirely accurate, but nevertheless, this is the way it was characterized. And love thy neighbor involves protecting people who are being persecuted. And what Jesus always did, the claim went, was he was willing to stand between the, as this person put it, the religious conservatives and those who are being persecuted. And he's telling the religious conservatives to stop persecuting the ones they're persecuting. And that was something that Jesus did in his lifetime and a major part of his ministry. And the question then is, if Jesus was loving his neighbor in that way, why aren't more Christians being, like Jesus, loving their neighbor, pardon me, by standing up against the religious conservatives and defending those who are being persecuted. Now, this individual, as a trans activist, was referring, of course, to those who are trans now there's a lot embedded in that challenge, but I just want to speak to one aspect of it. And something I notice with these kinds of challeng and something you can be aware of too is that when people invoke Jesus on their behalf, on behalf of these different causes, it is very clear to me that these who do that have virtually no idea of what Jesus came to do. They couldn't possibly be students of Scripture or the Gospels at least because the claims that they make are so inconsistent with what the text actually says. So just take for instance, part of the challenge here was that Jesus consistently stood between the religious conservatives and those who were being persecuted and he said stop, stop persecuting them. This is the way Jesus presence or teaching was being characterized. Now I have a question at this point and it goes to the comment I just made. Where do you see that in the Gospels? Now I am a student of the Gospels. In fact, I just finished the Gospel of Mark a couple of days ago, maybe yesterday, and I'll be reading more, of course. But I've been reading the Gospels for decades, almost half a century, no, a half century. And I don't know of any place where Jesus stood between the persecutors and the one being persecuted and said, stop persecuting this person. Now I have a feeling I have a pretty good idea of which passage this individual is referring to, but it's the only passage that I can think of that might even be construed as that because he said the individual making the charge said as characterizing Jesus, stop persecuting her to don't stone her, stone me. Now he must be Referring to John 8, the woman caught in adultery. And so I want to talk about that passage because it's the only passage that bears any resemblance to the characterization the challenger is offering of the kind of thing that Jesus did regularly. In other words, he didn't do this regularly and in fact he didn't even do it in this circumstance. So what's going on in John 8? Let me start with this. More of a technical issue which I think to most people isn't going to matter, but it is relevant. John 8, the woman caught in adultery is a very well known passage, but it's also well known among academics as being a non canonical insertion into the text. In other words, this is a variant. The entire account is a variant. The earliest accounts in the Gospels do not contain this event. And when it does show up later in the Gospels it shows up in different places. Now it finally found a resting place in the beginning of John 8. But any Bible with a marginal reference is going to let you know that the earliest manuscripts do not contain this account. So strictly speaking, it shouldn't even be in your scripture. Nevertheless, it's there. And I will add, though I'm convinced it's non canonical, that is, that is not inspired writ. I actually think it's a veridical characterization of something that actually happened. I think this took place. I think there was a woman caught in adultery under the circumstances described in John 8 and Jesus responded in the way that's described there. I think that really happened. But I don't think John wrote about that, nor any other gospel writer wrote about that. I think that was part of oral tradition that ended up being placed in the scripture by a later scribe. All right, and there's a reason though that I think this amendation, this addition is actually a description of a real event and it has to do with what happened there and what happened. Even though there are people who are familiar with, with the broad strokes of the event, what happened is what actually took place. And the significance of it is missed by most people who read the passage, especially those who read it in a cursory way or are looking for an opportunity to pit Jesus against religious conservatives. Okay. As this gentleman did in this particular challenge online. All right, so let me make an observation. This is the woman caught in adultery. Now, who caught her? Well, the religious leaders. The text says early in the morning he came into the temple and all the people were coming to him and he sat down and began to teach them. So he's in the temple. And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman, brought a woman caught in adultery. And having set her in the center of the court, they said to him, teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act. Now, in the law of Moses, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What do you say? Now the text says here they were saying this, testing him so that they might have grounds for accusing him, because they expected that he is going to show mercy to this woman, because that's his standard, characteristically. And then if he showed mercy, then he's not doing what the law said he would do and they could have grounds to find fault. So this is entrapment. But it's not the first entrapment in this encounter, it's the second entrapment. Notice the text says that the people said, the leaders, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. So the text says, the law says to stone her what do you say? So I looked just a few moments back in Exodus 20:10, and yes, it does say that adultery is punishable by stoning, but it is clear. It says if a man commits adultery with a woman, then they are both committed guilty and both should be stoned. In this particular case, it's only the woman brought before Jesus, the woman who is caught in the very act. So there was a man present with her committing adultery with her who is not brought before Jesus. Why not? Well, it strikes me as pretty obvious that the reason they didn't is because this woman was entrapped by. By a man at the behest of the religious leaders to set this other trap for Jesus. And so they let the guy go and they dragged the woman out here. So that's the first little glitch. Where's the guy? The guy is just as guilty as the gal, but he's not there. Now, Jesus, of course, is aware of this. He can figure this out immediately, and he does not respond immediately to them. Instead, it says, jesus stooped down with his finger, wrote on the ground, and when they persisted in asking him, he straightened up and said to them, he who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. And then he again stooped down and wrote on the ground. Now, the text doesn't tell us what he wrote, but I want you to think about the sentence. You know, he who is without sin cast the first stone. Is that good theology or is that bad theology? Well, it's not good theology, because in Exodus 20:10, it never talks about that the only person that could oversee an execution of a sinner is a sinless person. Well, that's not going to happen. But Jesus was aware of the trap, and so he says this thing that isn't good theology, and he writes in the sand. Now, we don't know what he's writing, but I saw a movie once that characterized it this way, that what Jesus was writing in the dirt is the names of the people who were there as this woman's accusers, who entrapped her to trick Jesus and the names and also itemizing the sins they committed. Jacob adultery, Matthew theft, Levi murder. And he's writing this in. Now, we don't know that that's the creative thought of the filmmaker, but it's a pretty good guess in my view, because what it says, when they heard what he said, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones. And he was left alone. Of course, he wasn't totally Alone, he was with the woman who had been accused, but all the accusers were gone. So now Jesus asks her a question. And the question is, woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you? And she said, no one, Lord? No. Why not? Because they're gone. Whatever Jesus wrote in the sand was enough to humiliate them and scare them all away. And then Jesus famously says, I do not condemn you either. Now he adds more in just a moment. I'll tell you what that is. But why didn't Jesus condemn this woman of adultery? I'll tell you why. Because he was not a witness to the act. The only way you can condemn somebody of a crime like that is if you were a witness to the act, to the crime, two or three witnesses. There were no witnesses left. So therefore Jesus thwarted the trap and fulfilled the law at the same time. He never had to answer their question. What do you say? He just wrote the sand and said something rather odd. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Which certainly is not a biblical principle at all. Nevertheless, it was enough as he was writing to humiliate all of those who were charging him. So nobody who was charging her was left. But he had a final comment. Go and sin no more. Go and sin no more. So this wasn't a persecution by religious conservatives. This was a prosecution by those who were seeking to enforce the law, albeit under twisted and distorted circumstances. Nevertheless, the woman was still guilty of of adultery. And Jesus addressed that in an appropriate way. But he did not fall prey to the trick. That's why I think this is veridical, why I think this is a true account. Because who I mean, that's got Jesus written all over it, right? That's the way Jesus works. He gets out of the tough spot in a very clever fashion. And that's what happened here. As it turns out, by the way, nothing. What turned out to actually take place was nothing like was characterized by the challenger. It was completely different. And this, of course, Tim will deal with when he does his RPL red pen logic. And by the way, if you've never watched Tim on RPL, just go to YouTube, type in red pen logic and have a blast. Because he takes these kinds of challenges and then he unwraps them very carefully. Being a teacher himself or a former teacher, he red pens the presentation and he tells you what's wrong with it and what went south. He does it in a nice way and in a funny way, and you're going to learn a lot in the process. And there's a lot of things wrong with this particular challenge, but there's the big one right there. This wasn't Jesus habit to do this kind of thing, and that wasn't what was going on there in John 8 anyway. And anyway, John 8 isn't even in the Bible. Legitimately I do think it happened like I said. But no, Jesus was consistent about calling people to repentance and the repentance had to do with sin. That was consistent with the law that even legalists were reflecting in many cases accurately. There wasn't anything wrong with the law. It was the motivation that the legalists were using the law for. That was the difficulty in the entrapment of this gal. And so Jesus thwarted that. So little fun passage. Let's take a break and we'll come back for your questions when I return on Stand to Reason.
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Announcer
Do you have a passion to train people in apologetics but you don't know where to start? You may be interested in starting an STR Outpost STR outposts are local communities of Christians seeking answers to the hard questions about Christianity. Each outpost is led by a qualified director who trains others with STR content and curriculum in their local church. By becoming an Outpost Director, you'll be equipped with the content and coaching you need to lead your own outpost. We currently have around 160 outposts spanning 38 states and in eight other countries, and we're adding more each month. If you're interested in learning more about starting an outpost or you want to find a current outpost in your area, visit str.org outpost you can also email me trippallman@postposttr.org do children need to consent to puberty?
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Greg Koukl
Some transgender ideology advocates think they do, and I offer two reasons why they're mistaken in the latest episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schliemann. Look for this episode on itunes, Spotify, your favorite podcast app, or at the top of the homepage@str.org friends if you like this broadcast, I know you'll love Strask. It's our shorter 20 minute podcast where I am paired with the wonderful Amy hall, and together we answer the questions you send us on Twitter. Strask is released twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and it's only about 20 minutes long, so it's perfect to listen to on your morning jog or while driving around running errands or cleaning your garage, or just plain loafing at home. Amy and I tackle your questions on theology and ethics and culture and lots more, offering our insight on the questions you're asking or the challenges you face. You can listen on Apple podcasts or wherever you download your own shows. Just remember, send us your questions on Twitter using the name of the podcast. Strask. That's Strsk. All right. Amy and I were just talking about what to do, how to title the piece commentary I just offered. I don't know exactly how to do it, but what came to mind is a little knowledge can get you in trouble. Especially when the thing that you think is knowledge is not knowledge at all. It's mistaken. All these people who cite Jesus, and they have never even clearly, in my mind read Jesus. They've just listened to what other people have said he's all about. Anyway, let's go to you guys. And first on board is John in El Granada. Is that California John?
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Caller
Yes.
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Greg Koukl
Yeah. Welcome to the show.
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Caller
Hi, Greg. I have a question about God's sovereignty.
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Greg Koukl
Okay.
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Caller
So is it ever necessary to pray for God's will to be done someone else's life? When I was laid off from my job in 2007, I was hurt and I was scared, and I didn't want to resent anyone in leadership that had a role in the decision to let me go. And so I started praying for God's will to be done in their life because I knew I could not trust my motives. And I got comfort from that. And I know that it's not God's will when we sin, but for the overarching story of our lives, isn't his will always done?
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Greg Koukl
Yeah, you're making a distinction here between different aspects of the will of God. And Scripture speaks of the will of God in an equivocal way. That is, there's more than one sense. It's not univocal. It's not just one thing. So you have clearly the sovereign will of God, which gets accomplished by God, because God's the one who's responsible for fulfilling that, and there's nothing that can get in his way. And so you see verses like, no one can impose his will. But you have other statements where the phrase will of God is used to describe things, not things that God is going to do, but that he wants us to do. So first, Thessalonians 4 says, and this is the will of God that you abstain from sexual immorality. Well, not everybody does that, you know, But God wants us to be sexually pure. Okay, so in prayer, I don't think you have to pray that God's sovereign will be done, because that's kind of a done deal. All right. Does that make sense? Yeah, but we don't know what his sovereign will is. And sometimes, and this is a little bit speculative, but it may be that God sovereignly determines to do something in response to how he knows we are going to pray. And so our prayer matters to God and it becomes a piece of the sovereign plan. I think sometimes it's easy to think of God's sovereignty in a very fatalistic way. Well, he's all sovereign over everything, so I can't. What effect am I going to have by asking him to do something? I mean, there never was when he didn't know what he was going to do. In this circumstance, his omniscience secures that. All right, so what good is it for me to pray? But it strikes me that maybe in a timeless way, his omniscience is timeless. I'm not talking about God being timeless. I actually don't think that's true. But in his omniscience, he knows everything. So time doesn't pass in God's mind for him to learn things. Okay. In his omniscience, he always knew how he would respond to our prayers, and he always knew why he would respond to our prayers the way he did. But it might be in light of his knowledge that we would pray, that he then decided that he was going to respond in a certain way, and that becomes a piece of his sovereign will. Okay. So I don't think, Pardon me, we have to pray God, do your sovereign will, because that's going to happen, whatever it is. But we are encouraged to pray for particular things and ask God for particular things. And I think that's the way we should pray. So, again, I'm not entirely sure what your prayer was in that circumstance.
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Caller
Well, I didn't want to resent them and I didn't want to have unforgiveness. And so I wanted. I couldn't trust my motives, you know?
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Greg Koukl
Okay, I get that. And so therefore you would pray.
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Caller
I wanted his best for them.
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Greg Koukl
Okay. Okay. So you can pray specifically that God does something good on their behalf. That would be a meaningful prayer if what you are praying is just God, do whatever you want to do or do your sovereign will. I don't know that that's really a substantive prayer. Does that make sense? Yeah, because he's already going to do that. Okay. But I think the idea that you're praying for them to guard yourself from having a wrong attitude, that's really good. I know there was a guy that I used to work with many, many years ago that he was a really good guy, but to me, he was really annoying. And what I ended up doing is thinking about him. And all my thoughts were critical of him being annoying. And so I kind of made a little pact and I said, all right, devil. Every time I think an annoying thought about him or a critical thought about him, I'm going to pray for him. All right? So that was to protect me. And I think the prayers were helpful to him too, but it was self interested first. I don't want to be the kind of person who's thinking this way about a colleague, all right? And so, you know, so I had a season of always praying for him. I don't know if that ever took my critical spirit away regarding him. I don't really know the upshot long term, but this was something that I did. I was praying whatever. I knew I could pray on his behalf for blessing or strength or whatever, just so I'd be thinking good things through my prayer instead of bad things through my critical attitude about him. And I think it's appropriate for us to pray God's will in the sense that we're speaking of his moral will. I mean, think of the Lord's Prayer. How does that start? Jesus said, pray this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So what will is being done perfectly in heaven but needs help on earth? It isn't his sin. Pardon me?
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Caller
Yeah, his moral will.
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Greg Koukl
His moral will, that's right. So that's. That's a directive by Jesus to pray that people live morally appropriately. There may be individual instances of that. When I have my prayer time in the morning, I don't always start this way, but a lot of times I do start with that. And I think your will be done here on earth. In my mind, the very first person that's important to do his will on earth is me.
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Caller
Amen.
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Greg Koukl
And I think of myself as a husband, and then I think of myself as a father, and then I think of myself in other contexts. But I'm making an appeal in applying that principle of prayer that Jesus taught us. I'm applying that principle to my own life. Fix me for first kind of thing. Now I want you to fix other people. But I'm not going to be left out because I need fixing too. So I'm praying for that. And then there are other circumstances. I mean, I pray for my daughter's virtue. You know, I have teenage daughters. One's 20 now, but I pray for their Virtue. I'm not suggesting they're not virtuous. I'm telling you, this is what I pray for. So I'm praying. Why? Because I know that's God's will that they be virtuous in a range of ways. So I pray for that for my daughter. So it is fully appropriate to pray for things for people that really amount to asking God to help them fulfill his moral, ethical designs for their lives, and that can consume our prayer life for other people. But when it comes to praying about God's sovereign will, that's his business. He's going to do what he's going to do. And so I don't have to in a sense, pray for him to do what he's already decided to do. And there's another aspect of prayer that this might affect. Well, people will just pray regarding this thing your will be done and this guy's sickness. Lord, I pray that your will be done and this thing, whatever. Well, I don't think that's a helpful prayer because you're not asking God to do anything but to do whatever he wants. And that to me is not a meaningful petition. Now, I think thy will be done is useful. The way Jesus prayed it in Gethsemane, Father, here's what I want, but not what I want. What you want. In other words, you're free to say no. I get that, and I'm going to go with it. I'm going to trust you if you say no. And that's a healthy prayer. But notice that prayer of submission comes after the request, which is a substantive request in Jesus case he knew that the request was not going to be answered because he understood the plan of God for him. But that's a good example of Jesus pouring out a heartfelt sentiment to the Father in prayer, a genuine anguish that he knows isn't going to be heard, but he's still expressing his anguish. If there's any way. Oh, Father, if there's any way. I know there's no way, but I'm just saying, oh. And then that prayer of submission, which set him up properly, I think, for what followed in the next, what, 20 hours or something like that. Because some would say the victory was gained there in Gethsemane while he was praying. And I think there's a lot of merit to that. And so that's a place for us too. We could say, lord, here's what I want, okay, I don't always get what I want. I get it. But this is what I'm asking for. And Here are the reasons I'm asking for it. Okay? J.P. moreland taught me when you pray, you want to pray intelligibly. In other words, you don't want to sound silly when you pray. And a lot of people sound a little silly, okay? And you don't want to use God's name as a punctuation mark. And you want to pray not just intelligibly, you want to pray persuasively. In other words, give God the reasons why. And he said that because there's a lot of prayers in Scripture that are just like that, where people are wrestling with God and saying, here's why you should do this, and that should be a good part of our prayer. But in the end, not my will, not what I want. This is what I want, God. But if you want something different, okay, I'm going to go with that. I'm not going to stop asking necessarily, but I'm going to go with what you answer in the moment, and I'm just going to keep rolling with that. So it doesn't mean you can't keep praying. Paul wanted to go to Rome and he was restrained. Doesn't say why or how, but it's either. Romans 1, I think he talks about this. And towards the end of the book, he also talks a little bit about his desire to go to Rome, but he does say he's restrained, but he's going to keep trying until at last, and here's the way he phrases it, until at last, by the will of God, I can succeed in coming to you. Now the question is, well, what sense of the will of God did he have in mind when he used that phrase in that verse? And it seems to me it's obvious he's talking about the sovereign will of God. In other words, I'm going to keep asking and asking and trying and trying and trying and trying. And so far I'm not allowed to go. There's no open door, but I'm banging on the door until at last I succeed by your will, by your permission, by your willingness, by your letting me do it. But of course, God's only going to let him do it in the sovereign sense. It's not a moral issue that's in question here. So a lot to pray about that's worthwhile. And I think praying for God's will in the sense I described it is great. The moral will for our lives and for the lives of other people that we care about, that's fine. But you don't have to ask. You don't have to ask him to do whatever he wants, and you don't have to ask him to fulfill his sovereign will. I think, you know, those aren't useful prayers. All right, buddy.
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Caller
Thank you so much.
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Greg Koukl
All right. You're welcome. Good talk to you, John.
- [36:51]
Caller
Absolutely.
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Greg Koukl
Okay, Take care.
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Caller
You too.
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Bye.
- [36:55]
Greg Koukl
Let's see, I got Trent here in Kansas City. Trent. Kansas City, Mo. Right. Okay. Hey, congratulations for one of the AFC champs. Yes, sir, the Chiefs. I was rooting for you guys on Sunday. My daughter, she hates the Chiefs. She's a 49ers girl. And of course she got, you know, aced out last super bowl for the 49ers. Went down. Her Chiefs, Chiefs went up. But I'm, I'm rooting for Mahomes. It's just, you know, my deal. And it was a tight one. It was a bit of a squeeze there at the end. Just saying for sure.
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Caller
I'm a little bit more concerned about the super bowl given the Eagles score. Like, that was impressive.
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Greg Koukl
Yeah, yeah, they were. You got to give the nod to them. They did a great job. But that's not why you called. So what's on your mind, Trent?
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Caller
Yeah, absolutely. So my question is if I'm having a conversation with someone who's lgbtq, have same sex attraction specifically.
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Greg Koukl
Okay.
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Caller
And I'm able to convince them that, hey, the biblical sexual ethic is correct, and they're like, okay, now what do I do still? Same sex, attracted. Like, do I like, how do I work through that? Like, what are some things you might tell the person? Whether it be like, hey, God still loves you. It's not that God doesn't love you because you feel this way.
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Greg Koukl
Sure.
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Caller
Celibacy. Like, you know, what are the things that you would tell them? Like, maybe from a pastoral kind of style, like trying to help them encourage.
- [38:20]
Greg Koukl
Sure. Okay. The answer is easy, but the application is hard. And Christopher Yuan. Yuan has written about this. And what is Christopher's book on holiness? Amy. She's going to get that for me. Holy Sexuality and what Christopher says now, Christopher, Christopher as a same sex attracted individual. He doesn't identify as gay like a gay Christian. He came out of a gay lifestyle, a very radical one. And his biography, talking about that is titled In a Far Country. Is that it? Out of a Far Country. Written with his mother who prayed him out of a far country when he was in prison and back into back home. Great account. But simply put, what Christopher focuses in on is what any Christian, regardless of the nature of their sexual attraction, has to do and that is to live a holy life. It is not Christopher's responsibility regarding his same sex attraction to try to generate other sex attraction. It's Christopher's responsibility that in the midst of whatever temptation he faces that he live in a godly fashion. And by the way, that takes us way beyond sexuality. And so this is what he develops in his book. Now he understands that this is not easy. And so I think his book is meant to help people struggling with same sex attraction or any sexual attraction for that matter. And how do you deal with it as a single person who doesn't have the appropriate means to fulfill the sexual desire? They're not married to a member of the opposite sex. And so this would mean people who are same sex attracted. And there are lots of people who are followers of Jesus who struggle with this. This means that they are facing a circumstance where they have a very genuine and legitimate desire that is a sexual desire. And they will not be able to satisfy that under the current set of circumstances. And maybe that current set of circumstances will last for their entire life. That's why I say the answer is an easy one, but it's a hard one in application. It's very straightforward what we are to do. Flee sexual immorality. Paul says in 1st Thess 4, this is God's will for you that you abstain from sexual immorality. There's your answer. No. Think. Oh man. Well, that's kind of hard. Well, I get it. But I was single until I had my 48th birthday on my honeymoon. Now I wasn't a virgin when I became a Christian, but very soon after that I got things squared away and I went for 20 some years as a, you might call it a, I don't know, secondary virgin or whatever. I was not sexually active in that way. And so consequently my desires were not being met. So I am, when I make this offer, this counsel to someone who's got same sex attraction, I am not asking them to do anything different than I would say to a heterosexual attracted person who wasn't married. Just say no. It was the same answer. And it's the same thing I said to myself until I got married. And if I never got married, then I would be sexually unsatisfied. And I'll just say this. There's a whole lot of people who are married and are sexual. See, look, I didn't have to finish the sentence, did I?
- [42:38]
Caller
Yep. No, you're right.
- [42:39]
Greg Koukl
Who are sexually unsatisfied. Now, I'm not going to take your chuckle as autobiographical. Okay, Trevor, no, but I'm just saying. But the reason you chuckle is because you just know that this kind of thing happens a lot. Now, does that give liberty to married men in a circumstance where they're being denied by their wives to go out on them to commit adultery, to go to pornography? No. The answer is still the same. The provision that God has made for the fulfillment of our sexual desires is an opposite sex spouse for life. And that's very clear in, well, you look at 1 Corinthians 7, first four or five verses. I mean, Paul is so explicit there. Husbands, your wife owns your body. Wives, your husband owns your body. It belongs to each other for the purpose of sex, to keep you from sinning sexually in some other way. So the ethic is the same for all of us, no matter what we are facing or the nature of our circumstances or the nature of our sexual attraction. The answer is the same. Fulfilling the godly imperative is not easy. And it's especially hard when it appears that there is no legitimate way for an individual's sexual desire to be satisfied. And that would be same sex attracted people. I don't know what to say. I know that sounds harsh certainly to the secular culture because they never say no to anything certainly sexual, but nevertheless, this is what God requires. And I know single people that are single for a long time that are sexually celibate just as I was. And it ain't no fun in some ways, but it's right and it's good and it's honoring to Christ. And this life is not the only life there is. This life is preparing us for an eternity with God and the way we conduct ourselves on this side matters on the other side. Godliness is a means of great gain, for it holds a promise not only for this life, but also for the life to come. That's one Timothy, I think, chapter four. But yeah, it takes, it takes a stout hearted person, a grown up, to be willing to say, okay, that's not what I want, but that's the right thing. And by God's grace, I'm going to seek to do the right thing. And I think Christopher Yuan in his writing is in a particularly helpful place to be an encouragement in this issue, partly because that's the exact same circumstance that he faces himself.
- [45:43]
Caller
Well, I really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much. That was very helpful.
- [45:47]
Greg Koukl
Well, it's a hard word, I know that, but holiness is a hard word for everybody, no matter what the issue happens to be.
- [45:54]
Caller
Trent sure, but it's worth it. Jesus is worth it for sure.
- [45:58]
Greg Koukl
All right, buddy. Thank you for calling.
- [46:00]
Caller
Of course.
- [46:01]
My pleasure. Thank you.
- [46:02]
Greg Koukl
Okay, take care. Bye Bye. Let's have a quick break and then we'll come back with more callers on Stand to Reason.
- [46:09]
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- [46:49]
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- [47:48]
Greg Koukl
Okay, Greg Koekel here and also Will in Mississippi. Will welcome.
- [47:56]
Caller
Thank you.
- [47:57]
Greg Koukl
You're welcome.
- [47:59]
Caller
I was calling to get your opinion on whether or not you thought would think it would be a legitimate way to argue or make a point to use Jesus's or God's name interchangeably.
- [48:17]
From.
- [48:18]
What it has in the Bible. And if you if you think it would be legitimate, would it only be in places where the Bible does it itself, such as when John talks about the Word being present in creation so in the creation story? Or would it also be okay to do so and other were other places specifically in the Old Testament like when God is giving the law, would it be okay to make the point and just and say Jesus was giving the law? Or to say God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were giving the law?
- [48:59]
Greg Koukl
Sure, this is a fair question. I have never been asked this question before and my impulse though we understand that though the Father and the Son and the Spirit are unique and distinct Persons, centers of consciousness, if you will, they are all the same God. They share the divine nature. So that's why we call Jesus God. Even so, I think it's probably safer to use the characterizations that the text uses in the case that you're speaking of. So if the text says and God said, well, usually when the text is referring to God, the reference is being made to God the Father. And in the New Testament we see a similar thing going on. God and Jesus and the Spirit. Well, which God? Well, God the Father is in view there. He's not saying God and Jesus and he's saying the same thing in both cases. He's distinguishing between God who is the Father and Jesus who is the Son. So I think it's safer to use the characterizations that are used in the text. Now I'll tell you how I manage this issue a little bit. For example, I talk about John 1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. So there we have John saying the Word was God, he's with God. So there's a companionship with God in one way, but at the same time he is God. And that sentence makes no sense unless there are distinct persons. And then it says he was in the beginning with God. Okay, there's a with there. And then the next verse, verse three says all things came into being through him, referring now to the Word and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. Verse 14. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. So if I were going to talk about the words role in creation, I'm not going to say and Jesus created the world. I'm going to say the Word created the world. Who became Jesus in the flesh. Just to keep all my categories nice and clean, if somebody says Jesus made the whole world, you're not going to get a fight out of me. Because you're right in a certain sense. That is the Word who became flesh. Flesh in the person we know as Jesus of Nazareth was the one that is the pre incarnate. Jesus was the one who created everything that was ever created. That's John's statement in verse three. So I just personally prefer precision on these kinds of things because sometimes if we lack precision when we could be more precise, we may be miscommunicating something or we may get ourselves a little bit into it, some doctrinal trouble. So I suggest sticking with the characterizations that the text itself uses. Even though we know Jesus is God and the Father is God and The Holy Spirit is God. I'm not going to talk about the Holy Spirit was creating the world. I never even thought to talk about that because the text doesn't describe the Holy Spirit's role in creation as an agent, except for the Spirit is over the deep, but the world has already been created by then, you know, in Genesis 1, 2, or 3, whatever. So it just seems odd to talk that way about the Holy Spirit, even though, strictly speaking, the Spirit is God and God created the world. There is a thing called the economy. Is that the right way of putting it? The economic Trinity. And what that means is that in an economy, you have different people doing different jobs. In an economy, well, in a certain sense, even though you have three individual persons and each is fully God, that they each share the divine nature fully and completely, they have different jobs, they do different things. And the Scripture identifies the different things that the members of the Trinity do. It's one way of distinguishing them one from the other, is that they have different roles that they play. And so the Spirit doesn't play the role of creator God, the Father, created through the Word, who is the Son, and became Jesus. So that's the way I would suggest. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that or maybe a specific instance you want to offer me.
- [53:59]
Caller
Not necessarily. I was just thinking of instances where it's some habit among some Christians today to kind of separate out the God of the Old Testament from Jesus. The God in New Testament.
- [54:16]
Greg Koukl
No, I see. Well, they're not different. They're exactly the same. But what we hear from in the Old Testament is directly from the Father. Now, some will press an issue and they say, look at Jesus. The second person is the Word. And the Word is the vocal instrument of God. And so anytime God is talking in the Old Testament, that's the second person of the Trinity. So they want to press the application of the concept of the Word into. They want to press that particular point to essentially describe all the communication of the Old Testament as coming from the second person of the Trinity. I'm not comfortable with that personally. And it just does seem that it's the Father that is communicating in all those instances in the Old Testament. And I'd like to just. I'm just going to leave it at that. And I think this becomes more obvious in the New Testament passages that quote the Old Testament and are just referring to the speaker as God. Characteristically, in the New Testament, when God is referenced just like that, the reference is being made to the Father. Because sometimes God is distinguished from Jesus or the Son in the New Testament, so they must be referring to the Father. And I think it's just safer to do it that way. But like I said, if I hear people that are mixing up the terms, I'm not going to make a fuss about it unless it has a consequence theologically. And then I might try to gently point that out. Make sense?
- [56:10]
Caller
Yes, sir.
- [56:13]
Greg Koukl
All right. Well, that, that's good because I got like 45 seconds left and we covered the bases. Well, I appreciate your call.
- [56:20]
Caller
Thank you.
- [56:20]
Greg Koukl
Okay. All the best. Never had that question before, Amy, but did I give a good answer? Oh, she doesn't know. You know why she doesn't know? Because she wasn't listening. I know she wasn't listening because she was typing on her computer, probably talking to one of your callers. By the way, my number, 855-243-9975. That's 855-243-9975. You can call in live during the show, which airs, which is live from 4 until 6 on Tuesday afternoons. And that would be Pacific time. And if you are listening during that time, then you can just call in because I'm live to you and you're streaming. So anyway, there we go. That's it for our hour together. Thank you for joining me. Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason. Give him heaven, Friends. Bye bye now.
- [57:32]
Caller
Sam.