The recent revelations concerning Ravi Zacharias have spawned all sorts of responses and observations from Christians, many of them trying to figure out how a prominent figure like Ravi could've had such a longstanding and grossly sinful "dark side" to his life. What has struck me, though, is how the words Ravi spoke, the apologetic and philosophic truths he preached all over the world, did not keep him from the persistent sexual sin in which he was so deeply embroiled. Ravi's life illustrates that the truth, by itself, the facts and propositions constituting the Christian faith, have no power in-and-of-themselves to keep a person from evil.
This is no great revelation. We all know, both in our own lives and in observing the lives of others, that we don't always act in accord with the truth. I had a good friend who was a chain smoker for the entirety of his adult life. He knew this toxic habit would cause him grief - likely fatally - but this did not convince him to quit smoking. Even after five open-heart surgeries, and on kidney dialysis, and surviving several strokes/seizures, his lungs shot, my friend would not give up his smoking. I suspect, as he approached his end, he couldn't any longer see the point of quitting.
I've been something of a procrastinator. A deadline for something is drawing near and I will not act to complete whatever it is the deadline is for. I know that waiting will simply pressurize unpleasantly what needs to be done; I know the result of rushing to meet a deadline will badly affect what must be done; I know procrastination is a poor time-management practice. And yet, I still sometimes procrastinate.
Ravi, too, knew that his gross sexual sin was wrong, that it fundamentally violated what he was publicly espousing as a Christian apologist. He knew he was being a terrible hypocrite; he knew his evil behavior deeply dishonored his God and his family; he knew he was taking selfish, wicked advantage of women in his employ; he knew, if his sin - willfully repeated over decades - was ever exposed, it would destroy all that he had done in his role as an apologist. And yet, none of this was sufficient to keep Ravi from sexual sin.
Ravi could quote a great deal of Scripture from memory and share the Gospel with great oratorical force. He could argue very effectively in favor, not only of a Creator, but of the revelation of the Creator in the Person of Christ. But none of this prevented Ravi from falling into sexual sin.
So, I ask myself, "Why?" Many possibilities rush to mind but the core of the answer is always the same, I think, for all of us who know the truth but don't live in accord with its light.
We're selfish.
All human beings are pathologically self-centered. It's the Big Problem we all labor under and that keeps us from God. We want our own way; we want to satisfy ourselves above all else; we want desperately to be gratified and lauded. This inordinate selfishness makes us deeply and incorrigibly wicked creatures:
Jeremiah 17:9
9 "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
Matthew 15:19
19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
Romans 3:10-12
10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Romans 7:18
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
Romans 8:5-8
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Few of us are as bad as we could be, of course. We can even turn charity and philanthropy into a means of satisfying ourselves. We can seem to be, like Ravi, paragons of virtue. But our flesh is sin-cursed; we are easily persuaded to satisfy our natural physical impulses illegitimately and inordinately; the "Adamic nature" we all possess is ingrown, self-obsessed, even to the point of self-destruction.
When a believer loses sight of this fact, when he thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think, when he is not sober and vigilant in guarding himself from the World, the Flesh and the devil, it will not be long before he is overcome, a dog returning to its own vomit.
We're liars.
A man who has taken to deceiving others has first deceived himself. Ravi was able to deceive those around him only after he had accepted certain lies about doing so. Like Ravi, we all of us possess a prodigious capacity for self-deception which we use to justify our selfishness and sin. There is no sin, really, that we take up that isn't in some measure associated with a falsehood we've adopted. As Ravi has shown, we can be very adept at self-deception, creating enormous incongruities between what we claim to believe as Christians and how we live, justifying those incongruities with all sorts of convoluted, self-deceiving "reasoning" (aka: lies).
While the light of God's truth, of His word, can expose and challenge these self-deceptions (Hebrews 4:12), the lies we tell ourselves work in tandem with powerful impulses and habits, overwhelming the illuminating, exposing effect of divine truth. And the longer we dwell in falsehood, the more we invest in living that rests on falsehood, the more momentum such living acquires, eventually moving us along irresistibly, deeper and deeper into sin and destruction. The Bible calls this "hardening" and warns repeatedly of the danger of it.
Hebrews 3:7-8
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts...
Hebrews 3:13
13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Romans 2:5
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
2 Timothy 3:12-13
12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
(See also Romans 1:18-32)
We can't fix ourselves.
As Ravi clearly demonstrated, knowing the truth - and proclaiming it to others - is not itself the means to freedom from sin. We can't overcome ourselves; we are too strongly inclined toward selfishness and sin and too weak to resist this inclination. And knowing the truth, while crucially important, cannot replace what we really need to be spiritual overcomers: the transforming power of God. The truth that emanates from God cannot accomplish what God Himself can accomplish. It is the truth of God suffused with His power that has the freeing, transforming effect Scripture describes.
Too often these days, credentials and religious knowledge are assumed to be indicative of spiritual maturity and wisdom. If a pastor has a Ph.D. in biblical studies, he must be a godly, spiritually-mature man. But, as Ravi has illustrated, knowledge does not equate to a holy, wise, transformed life. Credentials do not confer spiritual depth.
It is the life of Christ infusing the Christian by the presence of the Person of the Holy Spirit within them that is the sole means by which a sinner's life (credentialed or not) is transformed. It is the work of the Spirit within us that we absolutely cannot do without. No amount of Scripture memorization, no facility in apologetics, no determined self-effort, no accountability group, no fasting or prayer, can make up for the Spirit's filling us and conforming us to the Person of Christ. And His filling of us happens only as we submit to Him, day-in, day-out, at every crossroads of choice between our way and God's (Romans 6:13, 22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12;1; James 4:7-10; 1 Peter 5:6, etc.). It is God, after all, who changes us; we don't change ourselves for God.
John 15:5
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Romans 8:13
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Philippians 1:6
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Ephesians 3:16
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
1 Peter 5:10
10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Jude 1:24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Philippians 4:13
13 I can do all things through him (Christ) who strengthens me.
The key to seeing God work in your life in the way these verses describe is your submission, your yielding, to Him to do as He wishes in every area of your life. Not your religious doing, not your striving, your surrender to Him as a living sacrifice. Only as we submit ourselves to God does He act to transform us. He will not force us to change; we must constantly be agreeing to His alterations of who we are. But as we yield ourselves to His will and way, consistently and persistently, the Spirit fills us with the life-giving, fruit-producing "sap" of the Vine, and, imperceptibly, like the growth of a tree branch, we are changed, enlarged spiritually and made fruitful.
Learn from Ravi's horrible failure. A truly transformed, Christ-like life is not obtained in the realm of knowledge, of philosophy, of reason, but in the Person of the Holy Spirit who alone can produce in us a life that is truly pleasing to God.
This is no great revelation. We all know, both in our own lives and in observing the lives of others, that we don't always act in accord with the truth. I had a good friend who was a chain smoker for the entirety of his adult life. He knew this toxic habit would cause him grief - likely fatally - but this did not convince him to quit smoking. Even after five open-heart surgeries, and on kidney dialysis, and surviving several strokes/seizures, his lungs shot, my friend would not give up his smoking. I suspect, as he approached his end, he couldn't any longer see the point of quitting.
I've been something of a procrastinator. A deadline for something is drawing near and I will not act to complete whatever it is the deadline is for. I know that waiting will simply pressurize unpleasantly what needs to be done; I know the result of rushing to meet a deadline will badly affect what must be done; I know procrastination is a poor time-management practice. And yet, I still sometimes procrastinate.
Ravi, too, knew that his gross sexual sin was wrong, that it fundamentally violated what he was publicly espousing as a Christian apologist. He knew he was being a terrible hypocrite; he knew his evil behavior deeply dishonored his God and his family; he knew he was taking selfish, wicked advantage of women in his employ; he knew, if his sin - willfully repeated over decades - was ever exposed, it would destroy all that he had done in his role as an apologist. And yet, none of this was sufficient to keep Ravi from sexual sin.
Ravi could quote a great deal of Scripture from memory and share the Gospel with great oratorical force. He could argue very effectively in favor, not only of a Creator, but of the revelation of the Creator in the Person of Christ. But none of this prevented Ravi from falling into sexual sin.
So, I ask myself, "Why?" Many possibilities rush to mind but the core of the answer is always the same, I think, for all of us who know the truth but don't live in accord with its light.
We're selfish.
All human beings are pathologically self-centered. It's the Big Problem we all labor under and that keeps us from God. We want our own way; we want to satisfy ourselves above all else; we want desperately to be gratified and lauded. This inordinate selfishness makes us deeply and incorrigibly wicked creatures:
Jeremiah 17:9
9 "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
Matthew 15:19
19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
Romans 3:10-12
10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Romans 7:18
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
Romans 8:5-8
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Few of us are as bad as we could be, of course. We can even turn charity and philanthropy into a means of satisfying ourselves. We can seem to be, like Ravi, paragons of virtue. But our flesh is sin-cursed; we are easily persuaded to satisfy our natural physical impulses illegitimately and inordinately; the "Adamic nature" we all possess is ingrown, self-obsessed, even to the point of self-destruction.
When a believer loses sight of this fact, when he thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think, when he is not sober and vigilant in guarding himself from the World, the Flesh and the devil, it will not be long before he is overcome, a dog returning to its own vomit.
We're liars.
A man who has taken to deceiving others has first deceived himself. Ravi was able to deceive those around him only after he had accepted certain lies about doing so. Like Ravi, we all of us possess a prodigious capacity for self-deception which we use to justify our selfishness and sin. There is no sin, really, that we take up that isn't in some measure associated with a falsehood we've adopted. As Ravi has shown, we can be very adept at self-deception, creating enormous incongruities between what we claim to believe as Christians and how we live, justifying those incongruities with all sorts of convoluted, self-deceiving "reasoning" (aka: lies).
While the light of God's truth, of His word, can expose and challenge these self-deceptions (Hebrews 4:12), the lies we tell ourselves work in tandem with powerful impulses and habits, overwhelming the illuminating, exposing effect of divine truth. And the longer we dwell in falsehood, the more we invest in living that rests on falsehood, the more momentum such living acquires, eventually moving us along irresistibly, deeper and deeper into sin and destruction. The Bible calls this "hardening" and warns repeatedly of the danger of it.
Hebrews 3:7-8
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts...
Hebrews 3:13
13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Romans 2:5
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
2 Timothy 3:12-13
12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
(See also Romans 1:18-32)
We can't fix ourselves.
As Ravi clearly demonstrated, knowing the truth - and proclaiming it to others - is not itself the means to freedom from sin. We can't overcome ourselves; we are too strongly inclined toward selfishness and sin and too weak to resist this inclination. And knowing the truth, while crucially important, cannot replace what we really need to be spiritual overcomers: the transforming power of God. The truth that emanates from God cannot accomplish what God Himself can accomplish. It is the truth of God suffused with His power that has the freeing, transforming effect Scripture describes.
Too often these days, credentials and religious knowledge are assumed to be indicative of spiritual maturity and wisdom. If a pastor has a Ph.D. in biblical studies, he must be a godly, spiritually-mature man. But, as Ravi has illustrated, knowledge does not equate to a holy, wise, transformed life. Credentials do not confer spiritual depth.
It is the life of Christ infusing the Christian by the presence of the Person of the Holy Spirit within them that is the sole means by which a sinner's life (credentialed or not) is transformed. It is the work of the Spirit within us that we absolutely cannot do without. No amount of Scripture memorization, no facility in apologetics, no determined self-effort, no accountability group, no fasting or prayer, can make up for the Spirit's filling us and conforming us to the Person of Christ. And His filling of us happens only as we submit to Him, day-in, day-out, at every crossroads of choice between our way and God's (Romans 6:13, 22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12;1; James 4:7-10; 1 Peter 5:6, etc.). It is God, after all, who changes us; we don't change ourselves for God.
John 15:5
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Romans 8:13
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Philippians 1:6
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Ephesians 3:16
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
1 Peter 5:10
10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Jude 1:24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Philippians 4:13
13 I can do all things through him (Christ) who strengthens me.
The key to seeing God work in your life in the way these verses describe is your submission, your yielding, to Him to do as He wishes in every area of your life. Not your religious doing, not your striving, your surrender to Him as a living sacrifice. Only as we submit ourselves to God does He act to transform us. He will not force us to change; we must constantly be agreeing to His alterations of who we are. But as we yield ourselves to His will and way, consistently and persistently, the Spirit fills us with the life-giving, fruit-producing "sap" of the Vine, and, imperceptibly, like the growth of a tree branch, we are changed, enlarged spiritually and made fruitful.
Learn from Ravi's horrible failure. A truly transformed, Christ-like life is not obtained in the realm of knowledge, of philosophy, of reason, but in the Person of the Holy Spirit who alone can produce in us a life that is truly pleasing to God.
