Can I Date a Non-believer If I’m Sharing the Gospel with Them?

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This week we'll be featuring our best shows of the year. We hope you had a Merry Christmas! radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and you can email us at questions at corechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Jolene in Kansas City, Missouri. Jolene, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Yes, I just wanted to ask, is there a scripture that is related to those that may not be able to really fully understand the Gospel, but yet to be able to accept Christ as their Savior?

But, you know, they don't have that real mental capacity to really understand the Gospel like other people do, those with mental challenges. Okay, well, thank you for that question, Jolene. You know, the first text of scripture that my mind goes to is one that we find in Luke, at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, where Mary and Elizabeth are together, and they greet one another, and Jesus, who was in Mary's womb, you know, is growing there. He's a part of the story as well. But in Elizabeth's womb, you have John the Baptist, and we're told that when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that John in her womb leapt. It's as if he was jumping for joy.

Why? Well, because he was in the presence of Jesus Christ, and somehow, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, this baby in utero was able to recognize the God-man, the Word made flesh there in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And so how did this happen? Well, it was by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the only way anyone ever accepts Jesus, embraces the Gospel, it's by a work of the Holy Spirit. And so I think that we can have confidence that the Lord is at work and can work in the minds and the hearts of those who have mental handicaps.

It's ultimately right. Salvation is a work of the Spirit, and so we can pray that the Spirit of God would work. Now, an individual may have a difficult time articulating the Gospel, but that doesn't mean that they may not necessarily understand it or be able to grasp it. I think of what Jesus also prayed in Matthew chapter 11, verse 25. We read, at that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding.

In other words, it wasn't their cognitive abilities that made it so that they could just embrace the Gospel and fully understand it. Jesus says, you've hidden these things, the truth of your Gospel, your kingdom, from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

Jolene, when Peter, just a few chapters later, confesses Jesus as the Christ, in Matthew chapter 16, when he says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus says to Peter, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And so I think we can have confidence that the Lord is able to work, and does indeed work, in our brothers and sisters who have mental handicaps. And we ought to pray to that end, that the Lord would truly work, because ultimately salvation is a work of the Spirit, by the grace of God.

And the wise and the prudent don't always get it. You might have these great cognitive abilities, but at the end of the day, the question is, has the Spirit of God worked in your heart? Have you received that revelation from the Lord himself of the Gospel? And so there's hope, and I think that's good news for all of us, and I appreciate your question.

God bless. You know, we've talked before about that story from the first chapter of Luke, and when you read that, Adriel, I am just struck what a powerful pro-life message that is, you know, for John the Baptist in the womb to be jumping at the fact that Jesus is in the womb right next to him. Yeah, the youngest person ever in the history of humanity to recognize Jesus, right, or the presence of Jesus. You're totally right, a very powerful passage I think that supports the pro-life movement, but also I think one that testifies to the fact that God wants to work in our children and is able to work in our children by the grace of his Spirit, no matter how young they are. You know, sometimes we think, well, you know, once they're older and they can really understand, that's when the Lord is really going to work in their lives.

No, from infancy. David says, you know, you caused me to trust you from my mother's breast, you know, since I was a baby, you know, from my childhood you've been my God. And so also just this beautiful picture of how the Lord wants to work in the youngest among us.

Amen. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, about theology or doctrine, man, we'd love to hear from you.

We'll even take questions about how our faith intersects with our daily lives and with our culture right now. Here's the phone number to call. It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. We'll be taking calls for another 15 minutes or so.

So give us a call at 833-THE-CORE. Here's a question we received from one of our listeners named Anna. I had a question about Corinthians 2, 614. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

Or what fellowship has light with darkness? And my question is, before I came to the faith, I was with somebody obviously living in sin, which we have stopped, although we are still together planning to be married. But he is an unbeliever, but at the same time, he is open. He allows me to share my faith with him in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he comes to church, and he even asks me to go to church, and now we're going to be part of a Bible group together.

Do you think that this is okay, like this is somebody I should be with? I just want to know if I'm doing the right thing, and if there's hope that maybe he'll be able to turn to Christ. Thank you. Wow, hey, thank you so much for that question, Anna.

A couple of things. While I am just grateful to hear that he's supportive in your own pursuit of the Lord, in walking with Jesus, and going to church, even willing himself, it sounds like, to attend church and Bible study or Bible groups, I think that's wonderful. We are commanded in Scripture, I think of a place like 1 Corinthians chapter 7, you know, when it comes to marriage and being in covenant with someone as a child of the true and the living God, we ought to pursue marriage with those who are in the Lord. That is, someone who doesn't just say like, hey, I'm okay with the fact that you're doing this.

I want to support you. Sure, I'll come to church. Someone who also has apprehended for themselves the grace of God offered to them in Jesus Christ. And the Apostle Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. One of the encouragements I oftentimes have is just saying, don't put the relationship with this person that you're with before your relationship with the Lord, and don't let it progress beyond, you know, what God would have in his word. And so I think that in terms of marriage, that has to be a deal breaker.

It has to be something where this person wasn't just saying, hey, I'm fine with you going to church and I'll even show up sometimes. I mean, you would want this person also to know and love Jesus and have a personal relationship with Jesus. Now, the challenge in situations like this is you don't want this person to make a commitment to Christ simply because they want to be with you.

And this is where things get really, really sticky. And so you want to make sure that you're having honest conversations and just saying, look, the most important thing to me in my life is my relationship with God, my relationship with Jesus Christ. And I want that to be the most important thing for you as well as this person that I'm interested in. But I don't want that to be the thing for you because you want to be with me.

It really has to be a decision that you make for yourself as someone who wants the grace of God, who knows that they need the grace of God. And so I think continuing to have those conversations and maybe putting a hold on the relationship progressing further in terms of marriage and whatnot until this issue, this bigger issue, is settled. You want to be with someone, like I said, who isn't just going to say, hey, that's great that you go to church, I'll come with you too, or every once in a while. You want to be with someone who says, man, I want to follow Jesus with you, and I want us to walk together in following the Lord. And so, again, the passage of scripture where Paul says we're free to be married only to those who are in the Lord is in 1 Corinthians 7. And I think he realizes the challenge, when he was writing to the Corinthians there, there were a number of people who had already been married and then got converted, and now they're in these marriages where their spouse was not a believer. And you talk to friends who are in that same situation, they'll say, look, it's not easy, there's a challenge here, there's some division there. And so I think this is an issue that needs to be resolved first. May the Lord bless you, Anna, and may the Lord open the heart of this guy that you're with and cause him, as we're reading that text at the end of Matthew 11, cause him, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to see Jesus and his glory and his need of the forgiveness of sins. God bless.

You know, Adriel, as a pastor, I'm assuming that this is not the first time you've heard a question like this from someone in your own congregation or someone you know where they say, you know, there's this person I'm dating, they're wonderful, I love them, and sometimes I'm even living with them, but they're not a believer, what should I do? It just seems like that's more and more common these days and a hard situation for a lot of young people and not so young people. Yeah, absolutely. And it is, I think, I mean, statistics are showing that it is becoming more and more common, just cohabitation, not getting married, that kind of a thing. But for Anna, it sounds like marriage is something that she's really seriously considering. I'm so grateful to hear that the Lord has really got a hold of her heart, and we got to be praying for this individual that she's in a relationship with, that the Lord would do the very same thing for him as well.

And so, yeah, tough situation. Yeah, this is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, we'll be taking calls for another 10 minutes or so.

So pick up your phone and call us at 833-THE-CORE. And we know it can be difficult to begin reading the Bible for the very first time. And some Bible reading plans can be somewhat complex and daunting, so we are excited to offer you a special Bible reading plan from Core Christianity.

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Again, that's corechristianity.com forward slash reading plan. Well, let's get back to the phones. Lauren is on the line from Pekin, Illinois. Lauren, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

I'm calling in regards to that lady that called a few minutes ago about a person with mental difficulties. My feeling is if a person is to the point where they can't understand, they would be considered the same as a baby, and in that case, they would just naturally go to heaven when they die. Is that right? Yeah, well, thank you for that comment. And I personally do believe that, you know, children who die in infancy, miscarried, you know, babies, that they are in the presence of the Lord, that they're in heaven by the grace of Christ. And so what you mentioned, you know, that's one way that people look at it. What I was focusing on there, Lauren, was primarily the fact that we sometimes think, you know, we have to be able to have all this cognitive ability to fully understand the Gospel, but it really is for the little children. And it's only by the miracle of the Holy Spirit that anyone is able to lay hold of Jesus. And so if John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth could leap for joy in the presence of Jesus, because somehow by the grace of the Spirit, he recognized that Jesus was there. I mean, again, it's a miracle, and God can do that miracle in anyone.

And so that was my focus, but I do appreciate, you know, your comment. We do in Scripture see this sort of principle that we're judged more severely on the basis of what we know. And so Jesus, you know, he talked about this very thing, about even the judgment of God being more severe for some cities, some places. Woe do you tire inside on if what was preached, you know, to you had been preached in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.

And so there is that principle there, but I don't know that we need to go there. I think we can just say, look, salvation is of the Lord. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit. So regardless of how old someone is or even, you know, their cognitive abilities, we believe that the Lord can work in that person's mind and heart to reveal the glory of Christ. God bless you, brother.

You're listening to Core Christianity. Let's go to Janice, who's calling in from Kansas. Janice, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Well, it's rather long and drawn out, but I'll try to make it really short. I have a really great Christian friend who 40 years ago, we met and had little children. We raised them and what we felt like was the admonition, the fear of the Lord and tried to, you know, live as good Christians and life has taken us down different paths. She's now divorced and she's now living with a man and our friendship has suffered from it. I'm trying not to get involved. I'm trying not to be judgmental, but she's finally asked me about our friendship and I just, is it wrong of me to be judgmental? Is it wrong of me to be honest and tell her that I feel like she is just totally against God's will? And I go back to, you know, I think 1 Corinthians 5, when Paul was talking about, you know, it's okay to judge our Christian brothers.

I just, I really don't know what to do. I want to be a Christian, but I'm really torn. Janice, thank you for that question. I mean, great passage to go to, 1 Corinthians 5. Sometimes people will say, well, Jesus said don't judge and they, one, read that out of context, you know, Jesus' words there in the Sermon on the Mount. He's there really rebuking the Pharisees in this sort of hypocritical judging, but the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 makes it clear that within the church we do make judgments and that's part of how we love each other.

It's not judging in this hypocritical way. It's coming alongside of a brother or sister who confesses Christ and yet they're living in ways that are contrary to what they claim to believe and in those situations it's not loving for us to be silent and just to brush it under the rug as if there's nothing wrong because we know that there's a rift in an individual's fellowship, relationship with the Lord when they're living in open sin and I think of what wisdom tells us in the book of Proverbs, in Proverbs 27, verses 5 and 6. Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. In other words, sometimes a good friend will wound us, quote unquote, you know, not because they're rude or arrogant or judging hypocritically but just because they're honest with us and so I think, you know, you want to be honest with your friend and say, hey, I'm concerned about this relationship that you're in because most of all I'm concerned about your relationship with Jesus and you honoring him and walking with him and loving him because of his great love for us and so I would just encourage you, sister, to prayerfully, humbly have that conversation and obviously baptize that, you know, before you do baptize the whole thing in prayer, pray that the Lord would open the heart of your friend and would cause the conversation to be fruitful. God bless you, sister. I appreciate so much Janice's heart and her concern for her friend and of course those are difficult conversations but she's willing to have that and I think a lot of Christians at times won't have those difficult conversations.

They'll just kind of go, well, it's hard or it's scary or I just don't want to do it and then things often go downhill from there, right, so good for her for having that willingness. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Just a reminder, in addition to our live radio program, we also have a podcast. You can listen to the podcast anytime on the podcast app and if you do listen to the podcast would you consider giving us a five-star review? What happens then is other people hear about the podcast and they'll check it out and be able to really grow in their faith and perhaps even some non-believers will discover Core Christianity and start listening and maybe come to trust in Christ through this program.

So check it out on the podcast app and if you would give us that five-star review, that's a big help. Let's go back to the phones and we have Jose on the line from Nashville, Tennessee. Jose, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Okay, thank you for answering my question. I was driving a few minutes ago and I passed the church and they have this message in the front of the church building, you know, a huge flag with, you know, the rainbow colors and the message says, love is love, black lives matter, climate change is real, no human being is illegal, all genders are whole and holy, and we want to have the right to, I don't know, something about their bodies, you know, they can decide what to do with their bodies. My question is, is that the message we're supposed to be preaching to the world? Is that the way we're going to unite people by preaching that message? I just would like to hear your point of view.

Hey, Jose. You know, I think I've seen that same sign in front of some churches, and obviously they're trying to communicate something with that, and your question is, is that what the church should be communicating first and foremost? Is that what we should be focusing on? Well, let me just say a couple of things, brother. One, in Israel, in the Old Testament, you know, one of the big problems was the false prophets that were going around saying, peace, peace, where there was no peace. They were afraid to call out the sin of the people of God, the sin of Israel. So they were saying, peace, peace, you know, everything you're doing is fine, live however you want, do whatever you want, and that's the message, essentially, that God is communicating to you, and Jeremiah, the prophet, came against that and just basically said, look, what's happening, God was saying, through Jeremiah, what's happening here is my people aren't really being healed, restored.

They're not being called to repentance. Actually, what these false prophets are doing is confirming the people in the sin that they've chosen for themselves, and one of my concerns with, you know, those kinds of messages, or just like, you know, a woman should have the right to do what, you know, really that's a reference to abortion, right, to do whatever she wants with her body, or, you know, stuff related to the LGBT movement, those kinds of things. One of my concerns, brother, is that instead of preaching the truth of God's word and calling people to faith and repentance and offering the grace of Jesus to sinners, people who desperately need it, and that's all of us, we're just saying, hey, do whatever you want, live however you want, think whatever you want, and it seems to me very much like the problem that was happening in Jeremiah's day, where people were saying peace, peace, when in reality there was no peace. If we're going to understand the gospel, the work of Jesus Christ, we need to first understand the law, the fact that we've sinned against God, the fact that we're out of fellowship, out of communion with the true and the living God because of our sins, and that God has done something radical to bridge the gap. He sent his son into the world to pay the penalty for our sins, and that's the message that we need to be proclaiming to the world, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and from that message of being justified freely by the grace of God, we should go out into the world and offer that grace to all people, but offering that grace does not look like, hey, live however you want, and God doesn't care. It looks like God commanding all people everywhere to repent, to turn to himself and to his son because of the love that he's demonstrated for us in the gospel, and so that's my concern. It sounds like that's your concern as well. And oftentimes, you know, the sad reality is there are quote-unquote churches that have rejected that message, that are no longer preaching that gospel, and I say quote-unquote because if we're not preaching that message, we have no right to call ourselves a church. Jose, God bless you. Thank you for that question.

You know, a couple of years ago we were having a discussion like this around the dinner table with our kids who were younger at the time, and they actually had heard a church preaching that message as well, and their whole question to us as parents was, why would they call themselves Christians? I mean, you're basically saying that, and it's a big concern in today's world. Well, yeah, and I mean, there were a lot of issues there that were mentioned in that sign that Jose brought up. I mean, you have the issue of racism, you have the issue of how we treat, you know, strangers, immigrants. Those are important things. Those are important things that scripture talks about, and the Bible is very clear in its condemnation of racism. We believe, according to God's word, that all people are made in the image of God, worthy of dignity, regardless of the color of their skin, and even regardless of how they identify, but that doesn't mean with some of these other issues that we just sort of say, oh, you know, LGBT stuff, do whatever you want, think however you want, live however you want. We need to be faithful to the scriptures in preaching between us, and we need to be faithful to the scriptures in preaching the truth and loving our neighbor as God calls us. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.