Is the gospel just a ticket to heaven? (Dr. Nijay Gupta)
Faith Lab
Nate Hanson
4.6 • 583 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Summary
Most of us were taught the gospel is a ticket to heaven. New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta says that is not what Paul was actually preaching.
Nijay Gupta is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and author of Paul for the World. He, Shane Rosenthal, and Nate work through what Paul's gospel actually was, where "I'll fly away" theology came from, and why he thinks C.S. Lewis got heaven wrong.
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| 0:00.0 | So he says, chapter 6, verse 4, we've been buried with Him with Christ through baptism into death. |
| 0:05.3 | So that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might |
| 0:10.8 | walk in the newness of life. |
| 0:13.5 | This idea of newness, like, this is what we're hungering for, you know, in our souls. |
| 0:19.6 | Not to get away from this world, but to see it renewed, |
| 0:23.0 | to see signs of hope, to see signs of life. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to Faith Lab. I'm Nate Hansen, |
| 0:28.6 | and joined today by Nije Gupta, Dr. Nijay Gupta, New Testament scholar at Northern Seminary. |
| 0:34.6 | And he's got a new book out. It's called Paul for the World. And I'm also joined today by another guest that's been on the show before, Shane Rosenthal. And we're trying something new. We want to chat about what was Paul's actual gospel? Like, what did Paul actually think? We had NT write on recently. And Tom was talking a lot about, you know, his new book and how we're not going to, it's not about leaving this earth and I'll fly away, all glory. And but that's the picture we've had. And you say that's, that's not, that's not what's actually going to happen. Yeah, well, first of all, guys, thanks so much. I love having these conversations. And, you know, my, my passion is I hate when people say, oh, the Bible is not relevant. |
| 1:14.8 | That's, you know, I always go back to like Hamilton the musical. |
| 1:18.4 | If you were to pitch a musical about the founding fathers, you know, it would be very easy to pitch it in a way that's going to sound very boring and dull |
| 1:27.9 | and to have a wonderful story about forgiveness and love and family and hope. And when I look at |
| 1:37.3 | the Bible, I see the same thing that, oh yeah, thousands of years ago, but gosh, it's about |
| 1:41.9 | family and love and hope and beauty and justice and truth. |
| 1:46.8 | So thanks for leaning into this conversation. So you ask a good question. I grew up in the 80s and |
| 1:52.9 | 90s, the era of progress. And I grew up believing I could be an astronaut, you know, |
| 1:58.8 | fighter pilot, president of the United States. |
| 2:02.1 | And I had a conversation on my youngest daughter a few years ago. |
| 2:05.2 | We were at the dinner table. |
| 2:06.7 | My oldest was going to college. |
| 2:08.2 | And we said to my youngest daughter, what do you want to study when you go to college? |
| 2:13.2 | And she said, very matter of factly, were the earth still even be around when I go to college? |
| 2:19.0 | Like, that was not in my 1989 brain at all, this idea that things are going down the tubes. |
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