Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P521 (03-19-20)
Synopsis
Many questions can be answered once you really understand what salvation is, what the complete gospel is, what biblical repentance unto salvation is, and that there is a New Covenant of grace we are now living in. Salvation is being saved from the consequences of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is the resurrected life in Christ Jesus. There is an Old Covenant of law that has been set aside. The Jews were under that system of law. The Gentiles never were. But all were under sin, and know right from wrong, conscience bearing witness to that. The real issue is not sins anymore, since Jesus took all the sins of the entire world upon himself, so God will never see sins again. Yes, sin caused our death, for the wages of sin is death, but the issue really is that man is spiritually dead and in need of life.
Understand also that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really belong in the Old Covenant, since those books are about the life of Christ Jesus on earth. The New Testament was ushered in only after the death of Jesus. Jesus walked the earth, walking in perfect love and dependence on God. He got under the skin of interpretation, addressing attitudes of the heart, that looking lustfully at a girl is the same as adultery, for example. He exposed the intent of the law, so man will recognize his unrighteousness so he can see his need of righteousness. Jesus showed us what pure righteousness is, living a sinless life by living a life of love. By seeing and hearing a message concerning Christ, the hope is we may desire to come to Him for His righteousness, having seen our own unrighteousness. Once he died on the cross, taking away the sins of the entire world, he now offers eternal life to all men. Listen as Bob George explains this in more detail from the scriptures.
Andy from Monterrey, CA
I am trying to understand 1 John 1:9. Many people think that as a believer, when you sin, you need to confess your sins to God, so as to keep short accounts with God, to get your sins forgiven, so as to stay in fellowship with God. Can you explain this passage in a simple way?
2 Corinthians 5:19
19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
What are you going to do with God reconciling the world unto himself, not counting your sins against you? What are you going to do when Jesus cried out on the cross, it is finished? What do you do with the fact he died not only for my sins but also the sins of the entire world? If you think about this in a rational way, you cannot talk out of both sides of your mouth. When Jesus took away the sins of the world, never to see them again, then how can you also say that if you confess your sins, Jesus will forgive you? One has to be true. Either get rid of 1 John 1:9 or get rid of the fact God was in Christ, reconciling world to himself, not counting your sins against Him.
1 John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
People tend to read just one scripture, but fail to read it in context. Also ask the Lord to reveal the meaning of it to you. If you never read the scriptures, you would never get hung up on 1 John 1:9.
1 John 2:4
4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.
If somebody was claiming to be without sin, the bible says he is deceived and the truth is not in him. Who is the truth? Jesus is the truth. So who isn’t in them? Jesus.
Go also to 2 John.
2 John 1:1-2
1 To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth – 2 because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever
So what do we know about the truth there? It lives in us and it is with us forever. Can we agree on that?
Andy said, “The Spirit guides us into all truth, but I do not believe we have all the truth when we become a Christian” It does not say that. Truth lives in you. You have not accessed it yet. You certainly do not believe a half Jesus lives in you. If Jesus lives in you, how much truth does Jesus possess?
How can you think of a person in 1 John 1:9, of a person proclaiming to be without sin, a person who is deceived and the truth is not in him? Would that be a believer or a lost person? He is talking to people whom the truth is not in them. So he is talking to lost people. This is a passage to teach to a person, that if you are claiming to be without sin, and many people do, and the Gnostics certainly did, then Christ Jesus, the truth, is not in you, and you are not saved.
Looking at the Greek, go back and look what it says. The “if”, means “I do not know if you are ever coming to your senses or not, speaking to the Gnostics or people today, but if you do, then realize something.”. If you do come to your senses, and you agree with God concerning your sins, which is what confess means, to agree that you are a sinner, then He is faithful and just to not forgive but to have forgiven your sins and to have cleansed you of all unrighteousness. When you have been cleansed of all unrighteousness, how much unrighteousness has not been cleansed? None.
Once you have been cleansed of all unrighteousness, there is no more unrighteousness to be cleansed of. If we agree with God concerning our sins, then what is there to ask God to forgive you of? Even there it is not even asking God to forgive you. You are agreeing with God you are a sinner. He is faithful and just, not because you agree you are a sinner, but because Jesus already did this while you were yet a sinner.
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
The issue is, if we agree with God concerning our sins, he is faithful and just to have forgiven you and to have already cleaned you of all unrighteousness. If you claim that you are not a sinner, then you make God out to be a liar, and the word has no place in your heart, and you are lost. This is a passage written to those who are lost.
This passage is not written to a believer. This is not a Christian bar of soap to keep you in fellowship. If you are in Christ, you are in fellowship.
1 John 1:7
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If you are in the light as he is in the light, the result of being in the light is that Jesus and you have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus continually keeps on cleansing you of every sin imaginable. It just all ties in to the fact it is a once and for all sacrifice. It is finished. It is done.
Hebrews 7:27
27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
Hebrews 10:10
10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
If Jesus had not taken away the sins of the entire world at the cross and gave you life, the next time you sinned you would die. The reason you and I know we have eternal life is because of the eternal consequence of the cross. So when you are dealing with forgiveness, you are not dealing with forgiveness to keep in fellowship. You are dealing with forgiveness as someone already forgiven and as a child of God. God is not dealing with us on the basis of sin but on the basis of a new life in Christ Jesus. He has dealt with sin once and for all, and cried out on the cross, “it is finished”.
John 19:30
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
God said propitiation has taken place. That is, God is satisfied with that offering.
1 John 2:2
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Only the blood of Jesus was of such quality to take away the sins of the world. The blood of bulls and goats covered sin, but could not take it away.
Hebrews 9:22
22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Hebrews 9:12-18
12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. 13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
16 In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
If God says he took away sin, never to see it again, then he has taken away your sin. If he has taken away your sin, then why would you ask him to forgive what he has already forgiven and taken away. That is not faith. It is presumption, presuming he did not take away sin, when he actually already did over 2000 years ago.
Larry from Placerville, CA
If a person claims they received Christ, what would you look for?
You do not look for perfection and you really do not look for anything. The only person who knows you are saved or not is you. When you start being a fruit inspector for somebody, then you are going to be in trouble sooner or later. As far as a person who comes to Christ, you are going to find a person who is talking about Christ. The language of the “good old boy upstairs”, and the “good Lord”, and all that vernacular should go by the wayside, if you have been truly born again of the Spirit of God. You would want to grow. Anything that is alive should be wanting to grow. How are you going to grow is by getting into the word of God.
I have seen people of all kinds. I have seen people, like myself, who came to Christ, where the bible was insatiable thing to me. I could not get away from it. So over the years, I grew. I never stopped reading for over 40 years. For other people, they claim to be in Christ, and had very little interest in the bible. Then something happens, and then the interest comes, and they start growing. It is not for me to decide. My role and your role is for a person to understand the truth of the fullness of the gospel.
What I mean is that if a person has any doubt, share the truth of the gospel. Ask diagnostic questions to discern his understanding. Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt when you leave this world, you are absent from the body and present with the Lord? Absolutely, I know that. Have you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Absolutely. Did you put your faith in Him? Absolutely. Then, I have to take the man at his word. To sit around and say he does not go to church and he does not do this and that, all of that is nonsense. Many a person cannot find a church worth going to, and so does not go. I would not go to church either.
Michael from Tampa, FL
People speak of grace, saying that some advocate dispensationalism, that some of the New Testament was written to Gentile believers and others written to Jewish believers.
1 Corinthians 12:13
13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
The bible says that in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free. If the bible is to be written to Christians, and the bible is written to Christians, then how can you say it is written to one group and not another?
This would be like saying this is written to males but not females, or written to slaves and not to others. That falls short of logic to me. You will have passages in the scripture, that the law was not written to the Gentile world but to the Jewish world. What does it say about that?
Romans 2:14-15
14 Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.
We have become a law unto ourselves because deep down we know what is right and wrong, even though as a Gentile we were never given the law.
On these kinds of things, I stay away from commentaries. A commentary is a comment by a man. In order for a person to write a commentary, hopefully he received revelation from God Himself. The same God that lives in you can give you the same revelation, if indeed it is true.
1 Corinthians 2:19-20
9 However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[Isaiah 64:4] –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
Proverbs 3:5
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
Many times it is not true because what is said does not come as a result of dependency on Christ but comes by leaning on your own understanding. Studying the bible by a study method instead of realizing that we do not worship at the foot of a method or the foot of a man. I just do not pay attention to them. I do not even want to know. Someone might say, “Well, that is not very intellectual?” Well, that is because I am not very intellectual. I rebel against that. My understanding does not come from intellect. It has to come from Spirit revelation.
There is an Old Covenant and a New Covenant. If people want to call that dispensationalism, fine, but I am going to call it what God calls it, a New Covenant and an Old Covenant. That is where I am going to go. As far as dividing the word of God, that is the division I see in the scripture.
Which side of the cross are we on? The Old or the New? If you stick to that, you will be in a lot better shape and less confused with what people try to bring, those confusing doctrines to us.
You can come up with all kinds of things. A staff member was saying how Scofield was a real promoter of dispensationalism, and had 7 dispensations, and this type of thing. All kinds of people that try to dive into that, but the fact is we have two covenants, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant of grace. We are living in the covenant of grace that went into effect on the day Christ Jesus died.
Hebrews 9:17-18
17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
A Covenant, testament or will does not go into effect until the one who made it dies. Then we also know the four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are a record of the life of Christ, not about the death of Christ. The gospels do not belong in the New Covenant. They belong in the Old Covenant because the new did not go into effect until Jesus died.
That makes sense when you understand what Jesus’ mission was. Jesus mission was to enable people to see the meaning of the law, the meaning of righteousness, and the meaning of unrighteousness.
John 10:17-18
17 “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
While on this earth, he got under the skin. Man looks on the outside but God looks on the heart. He got under the skin of interpretation. In so doing, he prepared them and us, who read the gospels, for the cross. When you read the gospels and the life of Christ, the cross does not come until the end of it. Why? It is all preparatory.
Why are you reading the gospels? To prepare you for the cross. To prepare you for the resurrection. It is preparatory for learning about the person of Jesus in order to come to salvation. Not a Jesus that is made up in the DaVinci code, but the real Jesus of the bible that you can read about in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So when you see what his work was, preparatory, you see he was preparing us under an Old Covenant to see what is better in the New Covenant. Just like the desert prepared people to go into the promised land. You should have gotten sick of eating manna to the point you would be ready to go in to eat from trees you did not plant and drink from wells you did not dig. If not for the desert, there may not even be interest in going into the promised land. Those covenants went into effect. Beyond that I pay no attention to the dispensational thing at all.
The gospels are a story of the coming Messiah, of God coming to earth, and from that point on, all of the books of the bible are applicable to all men. In Christ again, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave of free. So I take the bible as it is written. I will see places where, as an example in Ephesians, where he is addressing the Jews, and in other places, addressing Gentiles, but in the final analysis, we are all human beings who need the same Savior.
People also speak of grace who say that just because we have grace and we are not under the law, that does not negate grace by saying we need to continue in our relationship with Jesus and we need to continue believing in Jesus. Such people are countering the once saved and always saved. Such people say that you need to continue in your relationship, and if you do not, then you have fallen away.
Romans 11:6
6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.
Galatians 3:14, 17-18
14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.17 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
Those people are negating the grace message. It is a contradiction of terms. What do you mean it does not negate grace? Grace is the unconditional love of God. If there is one condition connected with grace, then it is no longer conditional.
Anybody that believes you can lose salvation does not understand what salvation is. Salvation is life. Salvation is not getting your sins forgiven. That is a part of it. That is what God had to do for the divine action of bringing life from the dead.
Colossians 1:20 (TLB)
20 It was through what his Son did that God cleared a path for everything to come to him – all things in heaven and on earth – for Christ’s death on the cross has made peace with God for all by his blood.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
There is a consequence of sin, called death (Romans 6:23), that you had to be saved from. The consequence of sin, which is death, is solved by life.
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
The cross reconciled the world unto Him, not counting sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). He not only died for our sins but the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).
2 Corinthians 5:19
19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
1 John 2:2
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Nobody will ever go to hell because of sins. The only sin is the rejection of the Son of God.
John 16:9
9 The world’s sin is unbelief in me
The sins of the world were placed on the back of God never to be seen again. The only sin attributable to man is the sin of the rejection of the Son of God. So, once a person has repented, which is a total change of heart, that there is nothing you can do to ever earn your right to ever stand in the presence of God, except to be clothed in the righteousness of His Son Christ Jesus. When you have changed your mind on that, you are born again (see John 3). What born again means is you have accepted his substitutionary death for you and His life in you.
1 Corinthians 15:16-19
16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
That is why Paul said that without the resurrection we are to be pitied of all people, and still in our sins, knowing full well that a cross had occurred where he too away the sins of the entire world. What was provided for us then is only received in Him, in His resurrected life. You do not come to Christ to get forgiveness. You come to Christ to get Him. In Him you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Ephesians 1:7
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
So where is that forgiveness provided, received? In Him.
We are streaming people down aisles to get sins forgiven when in fact sins are already forgiven (taken away). What people do not realize is that there is the consequence of sin called death that can only be corrected by the resurrected life. That life he gives to us now. The reason it is impossible for that life to be lost is because the only thing that could cause that life to depart from you would be sin. The reason that that cannot occur is because of the cross. So because of the eternal consequence of the cross, you have eternal life in Christ Jesus. There is nothing you can do to add or subtract from that.
John 16:13
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
Ephesians 2:22
22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
So now as a child of the living God, you are indwelt by God, who has now commissioned to lead us into righteousness, to take things of the Lord Jesus Christ and make them known to us, to be our counselor, to be our guide, to be our best friend.
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Now that is the job of the Holy Spirit, to complete the work He began in us. Sometimes we fall on our face and He will be there to pick us up. Sometimes we get into the flesh, and He is there to get us back relying on the Spirit. That is His work. He will complete that work He began in us. That is a promise.
Philipians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
These people that think you come to Christ, getting into the boat, and say “thank God I am saved”. Then you grab a cigarette and he throws you overboard. That is not salvation. That is a reprieve. Salvation has to be that He has taken us out of the water. He put you into a boat and delivered you safely to shore, to the other side. Anything short of that is not salvation. You and I are already seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So he has already delivered us.
Ephesians 1:3
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Colossians 1:13
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,
John 10:28
28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
“Faith That Pleases God” by Bob George is a recommended book that can help address many questions you might have.
Order from our online store: Bible Studies, Books, Witnessing Tracts, Audio Cds, DVDs and More.
Purchase and download Bible Studies, the Closer Look Series & more.
</h4<>