Should We View Ravi Zacharias Like David?

I've been reading about the sexual abuse accusations against apologist Ravi Zacharias.

Shouldn't we view him like Moses, David, and the other figures in the faith who committed major sins? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the 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 our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. You can check us out on YouTube. And of course, you can always email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Hey, Bill, I wanted to open up today's program, picking up on a question that we received at the end of yesterday's broadcast from Sheila.

She called in really towards the end of the broadcast and wanted to know about dating and singleness. When is it right to pursue that? How do we know we're in God's will? Do we wait upon the Lord to bring the right person into our lives? There are a few things I wanted to say.

I just didn't have the chance to say. Number one is that singleness isn't a curse from God. Actually, some people are called to singleness. I think within the church, we have to recognize that.

I think that that actually has been minimized at times in Christian circles. Some people are called to this. Not everyone is called to it.

How do you know if you're not called to it? Well, do you want to be in a relationship? Do you desire to be married?

It sounded like Sheila did. So that's something that we as Christians are free to pursue so long as the person we're pursuing is in the Lord. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7, so long as we're not unequally yoked. That is, pursuing a relationship or in a relationship with someone who is not a believer disagrees with us about the most important thing, who Jesus is.

So I think we have some freedom here. A lot of times believers are confused. They're sort of waiting for the Lord to just drop someone in front of them and they're praying for it and they don't know if they can pursue a relationship.

Do I do the dating app thing or that kind of a thing? Well, we're free to pursue someone if we want to be married so long as they're in the Lord. Right, Bill? Yeah, I think that's a really good assessment, and I could think back to my own life. I wasn't married till I was 41, and there were times where I wondered, you know, is God withholding this from me? I want to be married.

I want to find a life partner. And finally, I think what happened with me, Adriel, is I had dated quite a bit, but when I got my priorities straight on the sort of woman that God would want me to marry and I started putting—you know what I put first? I put the fruit of the Spirit first. And I said, if I can find somebody who manifests the fruit of the Spirit in her life, that's the person I want to get serious about. And man, all of a sudden, God delivered my wife, Lisa.

And literally, if you look up the fruit of the Spirit in the Bible, there's a picture of Lisa right next to it. Yeah, well, I guess that's great, Bill. Wonderful. So yes, it was really a miraculous thing, and I'm so thankful. Yeah, that you found a wife. I know, Bill. Yes, and that she accepted me, that she took me in.

That was a big, big issue. Hey, let's go to our phone lines right now. If you've got a call, a question for Pastor Adriel, here's the phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. John is on the line from Iowa. John, welcome to CORE Christianity. Morning or afternoon, whatever it is. Hey, John.

Yeah, good afternoon. What's your question? So how do you leave a legalistic church without getting excommunicated?

Well, first, I'm not entirely sure what your situation is exactly, John. I mean, I think it'd be helpful to define legalistic here. When I think of legalistic, I think of the book of Galatians, for example, where there were people, these agitators who were coming in and they were adding to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were saying, look, if you want to be saved, if you want to truly be considered a Christian, that's great that you've accepted Jesus, but now you need to follow these extra rules and regulations. And they were going back to the old covenant law. And so that's legalism.

I mean, that's how I would define it. It's adding to the gospel. And if a church is doing that, that's absolutely horrible. I mean, that ultimately is failing to preach the gospel faithfully. And so I would say that we shouldn't be in churches that are doing that. And the issue then is, well, if you leave a church like that and they try to put you under some sort of church discipline, or they use their authority to sort of punish you, how do you handle that? One of the sad things I've seen over and over again, heard about even, is people who want to leave some of these cults. You think of the Jehovah's Witnesses and others, and they're just completely cut off, ostracized, made to feel terrible because they disagree with the false doctrine that is being proclaimed in these groups. And so it's a devastating thing, John, when a church uses its authority to abuse members or to coerce them to stick around when they're preaching a false gospel.

And if that's taking the place, I don't know, if that's what's taking place, I don't know that there's anything that you can do. I think that you bring up the issues, you talk about the pure gospel of Jesus Christ and how that's what you want to hear, and if that's not being proclaimed, you're free to leave. And again, it's a tragedy, but I don't think you have to feel bad about getting out of a church that's not faithfully proclaiming the word of God. Thank you for your call, John. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Give us a call if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life. The number is 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. By the way, there are some radio stations that air us on a delayed basis, so I should mention the time to call us if you want to talk to Pastor Adriel live is 1130 Pacific Time, 1230 Mountain, 1 30 Central or 2 30 Eastern Time.

You can call that number and talk to Pastor Adriel. Let's go to Lacey from Springfield, Mississippi. Hi, Lacey.

Welcome to Core Christianity. Hi, thanks so much for taking my question. Thanks for calling, Lacey. What's your question? So my question is, as a godly wife, how do you show grace without tolerance to a husband who continues to struggle with sexual addictions, including pornography?

Yeah. Well, Lacey, first, I know that you're not alone with this question and that there are many who have this same question. What I would do is I would point to a couple of passages in scripture. One, Galatians chapter 6 verse 1 says, Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. And so, you know, our approach to others when they fall into sin, when they give into sin, should be one of humility, one of gentleness, considering ourselves because we recognize that we too are sinners. And I think another passage that I would go to is in Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 29, the apostle Paul said, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you.

Along with all malice, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. And so how do we show grace to the people that we love, who sin in ways that hurt us? That grace comes from the gospel, from the forgiveness that we've received in Christ.

And it's channeling that grace that we've received from the Lord to our loved ones, to your husband. And that does not mean, Lacey, minimizing the sin. I think it's really important that there's accountability, that there's transparency, that there's repentance, confession. But specifically to your question, the grace, it has to come from the Holy Spirit because so often when we're sinned against, when we're hurt, our natural reaction is going to want to be to hurt the other person, to make them feel as we've been made to feel. And so we have to look to Jesus. We have to remember that we too are sinners and to extend that grace of forgiveness to the people who have sinned against us while not minimizing their sins.

And in a situation like this, I think it's really important to get, as I said, accountability, oversight, maybe to get the church involved and other brothers, faithful brothers who could come alongside of your husband and hold him accountable and encourage him and in the process encourage you as well, sister. Lacey, thank you so much for your call. We'll be praying for you.

We know that's a very difficult situation. Let's go to Glory who's calling in from Modesto, California. Glory, welcome to Core Christianity. Hi, thanks again for taking another call from me. I appreciate it. Welcome back to the program, Glory.

What's your question? So as a new Christian, right, former Catholic, I'm curious because I really don't know, how do Christian churches view Lent, the Lenten season and Lenten sacrifices, that kind of thing that's predominant in the Catholic Church? I'm just curious.

Yeah. And for Roman Catholics and some other Christian traditions, we're just entering into that season of Lent. And by the way, if you don't know what Lent is all about, maybe you weren't brought up in the Catholic Church as you're listening to this broadcast. Well, it's a period of fasting, of contrition leading up to Easter. And it wasn't something that Jesus instituted or that the apostles instituted.

I think it's really important for us to recognize that, Glory. So this isn't like a biblical commandment. It was something that developed over several centuries in the ancient church, probably about the fourth century, the fifth century. By then, you had basically this period of 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter. And what a lot of people think is that it came out of essentially the practice of people who were going to be baptized on Easter, typically they were encouraged to fast and to prepare themselves for baptism in the ancient church.

And so a lot of people think it was out of that practice that Lent developed. What I would say is we're free as Christians under the new covenant to fast occasionally. When there's a need for that, and typically in the Bible, fasting was associated with times of calamity, times of repentance.

It's a period of just setting our eyes upon the Lord, setting aside distractions and saying, God, I want to draw near to you because I need you. But it's not the church's job to impose fasts as commandments on the people within the church in order to sort of put these burdens on them. And so I think we're free to think about these things, certainly to think about fasting. I mean, Jesus himself talked about fasting in the Sermon on the Mount. But for example, in the church that I pastor, we don't tell people, hey, you need to observe Lent and sort of put it out there as if it was this commandment given to us by God, because it wasn't. It is a good thing to humble ourselves, to repent of our sins, not just for 40 days out of the year, but really every day of the year. And so I think that that's how I approach it, and that's how a lot of other Protestant Christians approach it as well. And I would say you're free to use this as a time of drawing near to the Lord in fasting, in prayer if you want. And if not, that's also okay.

One last thing. I think it's really important for us to remember the words of Jesus when he said, it's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, but what comes from your heart. These sort of traditions and rituals that are all about how I eat and what I eat, and there's this sense I think that sometimes people can have of, oh boy, this is really making me right before God, the fact that I'm doing these things, when in reality Jesus said, look, it's not what goes in that defiles you, it's what comes out. It's out of the heart precede all sorts of evil thoughts and adulteries and murder and so on and so forth. And so it's a heart issue that Jesus came to deal with and that he has dealt with ultimately through the cross. And so, Glory, thank you again for calling us.

So good to hear from you. Thanks, Glory. Great reminder, Adriel, about the truth of the gospel and that it's not our efforts, it's not our works, it's Christ's finished work on the cross. And that's the thing we always need to fall back on. This is Core Christianity, and we have this really cool resource we'd like to tell you about today. It's called the Core Kit. And if you are brand new to Core Christianity, you will want to get one of these, and they're absolutely free.

That's right, Bill. The Core Kit is our offer to listeners who are wondering what Core Christianity is all about. It's a free resource, as you said, jam-packed with items like our DVD, Finding Yourself in God's Story, answers to the top three questions that we get here on this broadcast and questions that many of you have and have asked, a printed copy of our most read article at corechristianity.com, our Bible reading plan, and even more. And so there's a lot of good stuff in this Core Kit.

It introduces you essentially to some of the best content that we have over at Core Christianity. And we've heard so many people share with us just how blessed they've been by these resources. And so we want to put these resources in your hands.

Again, they're free for you. And so take advantage to receive the Core Kit. All you have to do is go to corechristianity.com forward slash kit and sign up. That's corechristianity.com forward slash kit, K-I-T. And you can also call us for that resource or any one of our resources. Here's the number, 833-843-2673.

That's 833, the core. Well, let's go to a voicemail that we received from Miguel. I'm calling because one time not too long ago here, someone asked you about Ravi Zacharias.

And I had no idea that they were allegations of him having a sexual misconduct. What I'm trying to ask is why is it that David, King David, Saul, Solomon, Abraham, the greatest of the Bible, we preach on them and their deeds and the Lord forgives them. But we seem to abandon our people as soon as they do something and the public finds out or sees it. We don't pull them up like we're supposed to and forgive them and love on them. So my question is why is it that we have removed him from the radio? Because his teachings are accurate and true. And we all have fallen short of the glory the Lord says so not one, not even John the Baptist, not Enoch, Isaiah, nobody, but Jesus was perfect. So I'm just wondering how come we didn't try to remind people that, you know, forgiveness. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you, Miguel. And I hear your question. Obviously, the situation is absolutely devastating. It's maddening. It makes me angry. Not that, you know, people have responded the way that they have.

I mean, I think that the response taking him off the air, if he was on the air, those kinds of things, that was the right course of action. What's heartbreaking is the fact that there was a Christian leader who was praying on the sheep. And Jesus has talked about this.

He talked about this. He warned about this in the Gospels. And so this is something that just is a terrible situation. It's not just allegations either. I mean, there was a whole investigation that came out about Ravi and it was pretty bad, worse than bad. And so the question is, why don't we just say, well, what about David and what about Moses and some of these other people who, you know, they were believers and they sinned in grievous ways and they were forgiven. Well, the problem here, brother, is it was a pattern of abuse and manipulation, spiritual manipulation, using Jesus, the Gospel, ministry, ministry funds in order to abuse people. Now, that is terrifying. And frankly, I mean, we can't make a judgment on an individual soul.

I'm not going to do that. But we do know what Jesus said, beware of wolves who come to you in sheep's clothing. And when somebody is using ministry, Jesus, the Gospel, in order to pray on others, on Jesus's little sheep, man, that should cause us to be filled with fear and trembling. Now, of course, all of us, as you said, everyone is sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but we cannot minimize the sin of Christian leaders because the world sees that.

And it really, I think, discredits in one sense the message that the church is seeking to proclaim, because when we talk about the free grace of God, the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, and yet Christian leaders turn around and live contrary to that, it gives the church a black eye. And so we have to address it and we have to address it seriously. And let me just say this, typically in cases of abuse, the sad thing is a lot of times an individual will get caught and there is all this talk about forgiveness and, of course, there is forgiveness for repentant sinners, but a lot of times in this process, you know who gets overlooked are the victims, the people who were abused.

Right now, the church should focus on caring for the victims, those who have been abused, and coming alongside of them. And that's what needs to happen. And then, obviously, there's nothing that can be done with Ravi.

He's died. He stood before the Lord. God is going to handle that. God is going to deal with that. But our job as a church, but we cannot minimize those kinds of things because they're very serious. Jesus takes them seriously. We can't just say, oh, it was just like David or just like Moses.

No. I mean, frankly, what you had with David, too, is someone who repented, who was confronted, who didn't conceal his sin, but confessed it. And so there is a big difference there as well. I do appreciate your question, but let me just again say we cannot minimize these kinds of things. We need to take them seriously as a church and as Christians, and we need to care for those who have been abused especially.

That's where our focus needs to be. Such a tough situation because a guy that I think all of us respected, his teaching, his apologetics, his brilliance, but man, oh, man, we read these allegations and many of which have now been confirmed, and boy, it's heartbreaking, isn't it? It's heartbreaking, and it's sobering, and it should remind every single one of us of just how deceptive sin is. Take heed, brothers and sisters.

Take heed. Sin, it destroys. It will destroy you, and it will harm the people that you love most, and it reflects so negatively for the rest of the body of Christ. And so we have to consider our own selves, humble ourselves before the Lord, and say, God, protect us, keep us, and protect the Christian leaders who are out there who are vulnerable and who also just need accountability and the grace of the Holy Spirit. So pray for your pastors, pray for Christian leaders, and pray for yourself.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our number is 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. By the way, we want to say a huge thank you to our listeners who have joined what we call our inner CORE. Your financial support makes this program possible. Now, here at Core Christianity, we aren't supported by a particular church or denomination. We rely on people just like you to make donations to keep us on the air. And if you find this program helpful, we'd ask you to prayerfully consider making a gift of any amount. You can do that on our website at corechristianity.com.

Just click donate at the top of the page. Let's go to Esther, who's calling in from Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Esther. Hello. Esther, welcome to Core Christianity.

What's your question? First, let me say I'm so glad I found you on my own Christian, my own, on the Christian radio station here in Kansas City, Missouri. And I find you so intelligent and so scholarly about the Bible.

And let me add the word, wise. Well thank you. Thank you very much, Esther. That's very kind of you.

And I'm glad you found us too. What's your question? My question is maybe two questions. I don't know which comes first, the chicken and the egg kind of thing. But the question is, maybe the main question is, did sin come in the world when the devil was kicked out of heaven and sent to earth, or when Adam and Eve ate the fruit? And is there sin in the world or in a person separate from the devil?

That's a great question. I think there's one passage of scripture that really clearly answers that question. And so I would point you to the book of Romans in the New Testament, Romans chapter five, beginning in verse 12. Listen to what the apostle Paul said. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For indeed, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. And then he goes on to say, but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man's trespass, again, speaking of Adam there, Esther, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.

And so here, it's so wonderful. Paul is setting Adam and Jesus side by side. He's saying, sin came into the world through Adam. There's the answer to your question. That sin spread to all mankind.

Why? Because Adam was, he was our representative. He was the team captain, we might say. Through him, we inherit what theologians have called original sin. That is the guilt and corruption of sin. We're in Adam. We're born in Adam, and that's why the second Adam had to come, Jesus Christ. And when Jesus came through his one sacrifice, he forgave our sins.

And the good news of the gospel spread from him to the rest of humanity, to mankind through his faithful actions. And so go to Jesus. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar, or call us at 1-833-843-2673. 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.