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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Voice in the Wilderness

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Amidst all the twinkling lights, decorations, gleeful holiday carols, festive parties, and holiday sales, a more somber spirit resides. In Ferguson, Missouri, Cleveland, Ohio, and Staten Island, New York there is weeping and mourning for lost loved ones. Not places in the thoroughfares, these are towns on the margins. And for many, these are people who appear to be on the margins. Yet here in these marginal places, the cry for justice goes up and interrupts the mainstream revelry and festivity that is the Christmas season.

Traditionally, the season that precedes Christmas, the Advent season, is a somber season. It is a season that calls for repentance and reflection. For during the Advent season, another voice from the margins of society calls for repentance, righteousness and justice. It is the voice of John the Baptizer crying out from the wilderness.

John’s voice, often forgotten in our hurried, holiday preparations, is crucial to our understanding of this season. His is such a crucial message that all four gospel writers include aspects of John’s story. Mark, in particular, begins his gospel this way: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER BEFORE YOUR FACE, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY; THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT” (Mark 1:1-3).

For the writer of Mark’s gospel, the beginning of the gospel is not a birth narrative, as in Matthew and Luke, but the one who proclaims the Messiah; proclaims his Advent, and proclaims the Advent of his kingdom. Advent, like John the Baptist, calls for preparation, for reflection, and for repentance in preparation for the coming of God’s anointed one. For all who would declare Jesus the Messiah, preparation involves aligning lives with the values of his kingdom.

Luke’s gospel continues where Mark begins by providing the most detailed portrait of John’s wilderness preaching and message. Here the reader learns of the kingdom values. John exhorts his audience: “Therefore, bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’ And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:8-9). As Luke’s narrative continues, three groups come to John asking him what they should do to prepare for the King and his kingdom, and avoid this terrible and awesome fate. John tells those who have an abundance to share food and clothing with those who have none; he exhorts tax collectors to exercise fair business practices, and he tells soldiers not to take money by force, accuse anyone falsely, and to be content with their wages.(1)

I was surprised, as I read John’s exhortations, at the immense practicality of repentance. To bear good fruit involves the treatment of others, generosity, fair measures, the proper use of wealth and resources, and a sense of contentment. This seems a timely word today, as mistreatment of others, perpetual cycles of violence, fear, and the temptation to hoard resources tempts us to turn this season of repentance into an empty celebration of materialism and mindless consumption.

Instead, I wonder if Advent preparations can be practical provisions—bringing forth fruit “in keeping with repentance”? As repentance has its way—literally understood as “turning around” or “turning toward”—might there be a turning away from that diminishes life, and turn toward the One to whom John pointed—One who provides fullness of life? The life that if offered by Jesus can then be poured out as blessing for others.

John’s message of repentance is the “beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” And his call during the Advent season is a call to join him in the margins. As I listen again to John’s voice in this season of preparation and repentance, I hear his prophetic call to me; he calls me out of my busyness, my own preoccupation with comfort, and my own self-interested desires. He calls to me to “bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.” Through the din of the all the other voices, I strain to hear his voice calling to me from the wilderness.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) See Luke 3:1-14; See also Mark 12:28-31 and Matthew 22:34-40.

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Giving Forgiveness – Ravi Zacharias Ministry

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“I need to ask for your forgiveness,” the voice on the other end of the phone said to me. This friend from many years ago called to seek reconciliation with me for an old offense. We had worked together and in the course of our working-relationship our friendship was damaged. More often than I care to admit, I am the one who needs to ask for forgiveness. But in this case, I was the offended party.

I was surprised by this phone call, of course, since it came out of the blue and concerned events from quite some time ago. But I was more surprised by my own response. “Of course,” I intoned, “I forgive you.” And for the duration of the conversation, I really believed that I had forgiven my friend. But as I thought about the exchange, I brought back into the present what I had carefully stored away in my memory. Feelings of hurt and betrayal emerged just as if the event was happening all over again. In my heart, instead of feeling relief as a result of my friend’s phone call, I felt bitterness and anger choke me. And the desire to punish my friend—by withholding genuine affection or by issuing words of condemnation—became preeminent in my thoughts and feelings.

As a Christian, I am pained to admit that I have these feelings at all. After all, forgiveness is at the heart of Christianity, and having just come through the Advent Season where we celebrate God’s compassion towards the world in the sending of his Son Jesus, I should be overflowing with forgiveness. Instead, I felt more like the servant in Matthew’s gospel who even though forgiven of an enormous debt—a debt too large to ever repay—in turn, goes out, finds one who owes him a miniscule amount, and begins to choke this lesser debtor demanding immediate repayment. Instead, of extending the same generosity shown to him, this ungrateful servant punishes the other servant by throwing him in prison.(1)

My unforgiving spirit imprisoned my friend. But it also imprisoned me. An unwillingness to forgive locks us all up in bitterness, and throws away the key. It enslaves us to ingratitude, and chokes out gratefulness. It prevents us from experiencing the freedom that comes with free-flowing grace—both received and given—just as the ungrateful servant neither received nor extended grace in Jesus’s parable. The ensuing desire to punish those who have hurt us belies our smug, moral superiority that designates punishment as more fitting than grace.

Jesus tells this parable of the unforgiving servant in response to a question from his disciple Peter. Peter asks the question, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus answers, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”(2) In other words, Jesus is saying that forgiveness is unlimited, and forgiveness by nature is something that cannot be measured in its appropriation. When we fail to forgive, we fail to recognize our own debt, and we fail to appreciate the reality of the limitless scope of forgiving grace on our account. Peter wanted to know at what point he could cease from offering forgiveness—after the seventh offense. But in answering Peter’s question by telling this story, Jesus demonstrates that none of us are in the position to withhold forgiveness from each other. In the end, we are all in need of forgiveness, and to withhold it demonstrates unparalleled ungratefulness for God’s gracious action towards the debt we could never repay to God.

To be sure, dealing with our human hurts and offenses, and becoming generous people who freely forgive takes time and effort. And for some of us, the hurts we have suffered and endured may never result in phone calls that attempt to reconcile and restore relationship. Nevertheless, the cultivation of a forgiving heart frees us from bondage and opens us to the possibilities of giving forgiveness instead of punishment. For the one who understands first and foremost her own need for forgiveness, and the one who then opens his heart up to forgive others, enters (perhaps even unknowingly) into the very heart of God. “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven us.”(3)

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Matthew 18:21-35

(2) Matthew 18:21.

(3) Ephesians 4:32.