How should we respond when a Christian leader falls into sin? - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 4

Welcome to the GotQuestions podcast. I'm Shea Hoodman, the president of GotQuestions Ministries, and I'm here today with Kevin.

Good morning, Shea. Good morning, Jeff.

And Jeff.

Hello, how's everybody doing?

Responding to a Christian Leader’s Fall with Humility

So today we're going to be talking about a difficult topic. It's something that's very relevant due to fairly recent events. I want to talk a little bit about how Christians should respond when a Christian leader falls into sin.

I've had a pastor who was very close to me fall into the sin of adultery, and that was very painful for both our church, for us personally. And some of the questions that come up are, do I have to throw out everything I've ever learned from this man?

What aspects of his ministry were actually worth still emulating or following or learning from? Things like that. And so those are some of the topics we want to talk about today. For me, I look at incidents like this and they serve as a reminder that no one is above falling into sin.

And we need to keep that in the forefront of our mind that, you know, we can fall into the same thing. If there but for the grace of God, so go I. That sort of attitude and just having the appropriate levels of accountability, having appropriate boundaries around you just to recognize that I'm not immune, that you're not immune.

And for me, the most powerful biblical reminder is when the prophet Nathan confronted David after his sin with Bathsheba and came to him and essentially said, You want the King James Version? Because you have done this, you have given the Lord's enemies opportunity to blaspheme.

To me, that's the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do. Trust me, I hear from the Lord's enemies all the time. And the last thing I want to happen is something that I do give them more opportunities to blaspheme the Lord, to attack the cause of Christ, to say, look, all Christians are fake.

Why should I listen to the claims of Christ over my life? Why should I care about the gospel? When all these Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites. So to me, that's the most powerful reminder is I'm not immune to this.

I'm not above it. So I need to keep myself accountable. And also the motivation to not give the Lord's enemies opportunity to blaspheme, to not give anyone the ability to say, look, Shea claimed to be a Christian and look what he did.

That's the absolute last thing I'd ever want to do in my life.

And you're right, Shea, that we all we all stumble and we all fall. In fact, guys, I had like the perfect illustration of this just just today as I was coming into the building to do this podcast. I was carrying all my equipment and I had my arms full and I was coming up some stairs outside this building that I have walked up I don't know how many times.

And I got up to the top step and I tripped on that top step and I just wiped out. There's no other word for it. I wiped out. Glasses were gone. All my equipment was gone. I was flat on my face. I'm sure it was very humorous if somebody had been recording it, you know, America's Funniest Home Videos, that kind of thing.

But but I like how I fall upstairs and not downstairs. Maybe you have that trouble, too. But there it was. I have this perfect opportunity now to to be reminded that we all stumble. We all fall. I've got the I've got the skin palms to prove it this morning.

But I'm just glad it was a physical fall in my case this morning and not a moral fall, which is kind of the subject today. But when we knowing that we all stumble, we all sin, we all we all have things in our lives that that we have to confess to the Lord and receive his forgiveness.

I think one of the things that we need to always keep in mind is that we respond with humility when we get news of a Christian leader, for example, who falls into sin. Christians are always called to humility, never to pride.

One of the fruit of the spirit is meekness. And we need to be characterized by meekness in every situation, including these times when we hear news of a of a failure, a moral failure of some kind in a Christian leader.

First Corinthians 10 and verse 12 says, if you think you are standing, take heed lest you fall. And so there it is. We we need to be careful, take heed, watch out, because especially in those times when we think that we are standing firm, you know, we have the enemy of our souls that is very tricky and very subtle.

And he knows what will trip us up. We need to respond with humility, knowing that it's all because of grace that we that we have what we have. You know, really, the only only difference between me and a pastor or a missionary that has fallen into sin and lost everything, only difference is the grace of God in my life.

And really, to extrapolate that, the only difference between me and an atheist is the grace of God in my life. We owe it all to grace. There's there's no pride in the Christian life at all. We we we walk by by faith and we live in grace.

God is good. We also I think when we hear of a Christian leader who has fallen into sin, we need to respond with prayer. We need to be truly praying for this individual. We pray for repentance that that would be granted and restoration.

We want to see restoration in fellowship with God and fellowship with other believers. Even if this individual doesn't get the ministry back exactly how it used to be, we still want that restoration of fellowship.

And that's we need to be praying for. We should also pray for the family of this fallen individual and the friends, because there are always people in this individual circle who have been affected by what was, without a doubt, devastating news.

You know, need to be praying for their spiritual standing as well and how they can work through this whole situation. So we respond with humility. We wish we respond with prayer. And we also, I think, need to respond with faith.

By that, I mean a couple of things. One is we keep our eyes on Jesus, who's the author and finisher of our faith. The attention-getting situation is always the Christian leader, possibly a Christian celebrity, who has fallen into sin.

That's what's grabbing the headlines. But we really need to get our eyes off the headlines and on to the author and finisher of our faith. The Lord Jesus never changes. His truth, His purity, His word never changes.

People in this world will let us down. They'll fail us. But Jesus is that constant. He's the cornerstone. He's the solid rock. Our foundation for our faith is Him and not anybody here in this world that may let us down.

So we respond in faith. And by that, I also mean we put on the full armor of God. We're in a spiritual war. That war is very real. Our enemy, who seeks to destroy us, is very real. And we need to be taking seriously, Ephesians 6, the whole armor of God.

Do we take seriously our salvation and our righteousness and the truth and the faith and the preparation of the gospel of peace and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God? Are we taking these things up on a daily basis?

And are we walking circumspectly in this world? Having done all, we need to stand. Are we standing firm in the grace of God, using the tools that He has given us to withstand the devil's attacks and to extinguish all those fiery darts?

So humility, prayer and faith. We need to be responding in these ways when we hear news, the tragic news of a Christian who has fallen into sin.

Truth, Grace, and Accountability When Leaders Fail

Yeah, I think it's what you're talking about with that understanding of humility is especially important when we consider that there are so many different ways and so many different levels that a person can fall or have these issues.

To what Shea was saying about the conversation with David, you've given opportunity for God's enemies to say bad things, to say negative things. And that's just a sad reality of how that happens. As soon as somebody who is identified either in a family or at work or in a local area or around the world as a Christian, when that person says or does something or is found to have done something that's counter to the claims that they were preaching, that gives God's enemies an excuse to want to say, oh, well, we're going to look at this instead of looking at the truth of what's actually happening.

One of the things that I see that a lot of people struggle with is how do we then deal with the things that I learned from that person? How do I deal with the writings or the music or the teaching or the ministry that that person had?

And that's a difficult question for people to grapple with. And there isn't necessarily any one blanket answer for that. I think that it's important for us to realize, like Kevin said, that our faith and our emphasis is in truth.

It's in Christ. It's in God. Even if somebody is a sinner, even if somebody is evil, if they say something true, that's true. Even if that person themselves is immoral or amoral, that doesn't make it easy.

But we can remember that if somebody is preaching the gospel, if they're preaching truth and they fall into sin, that does not automatically mean that everything they said about the faith is now invalidated or tainted or automatically needs to be turned upside down and considered to be false.

That doesn't necessarily mean that we should be careless or blasé about that. There's Christian leaders who've recently had revelations that people look at and say, boy, that's very disturbing. That's very difficult.

Personally, as much as that individual that I'm thinking of, as much as that's meaningful to me, the ministry was meaningful, the impact was meaningful. I also recognize that that makes it very difficult for me to recommend those specific resources or to quote specific words from that person, because I understand that now we've brought baggage on board that has to be explained in a certain context.

So humility is definitely a good idea. I think if we focus on remembering that when these people fall, when these people fail. And I didn't say if, I said when this is a part of living in the world that we live in.

We need to remember that the truths that people talk about and the things that they mention cannot be totally divorced from the way they live their lives and the things they say. But they are also not one in the same and identical.

Sinners can tell the truth and good people can be incorrect. And we're supposed to judge those things separately and individually. I'm curious from your perspective, Shea, if you've seen a lot of questions in that specific regard or a flow to that in the last few years, anything more or less that we've gotten.

Ravi Zacharias, Recommended Resources, and the Cost of Public Sin

So the most interesting thing I've noticed with, let's go ahead and say the name. So with Ravi Zacharias, shortly after the revelations came out of the horrible things he was involved in, people started recommending that we take off the books we have on our site of his that we were encouraging people to purchase.

And every quote on our website that came from him. And, you know, I don't normally look at those like that and think, OK, well, this person sinned, therefore, and you take everything off. But at the same time, when you have a prominent Christian leader, great teacher of the Bible who has not sinned grievously, why have the quotes or the recommended resources of the one who did?

So we did end up removing virtually every one of Ravi Zacharias' books from our recommended resource section and almost all of the quotes. Again, back to what you said, not because we think everything he ever said and taught are invalidated, but because, you know, I don't want people to think that we're in any sense endorsing what he was up to.

So and I'd much rather recommend a similar godly, strong teacher of God's word who had not sinned grievously than someone who did.

And that's your Nathan thing, where it forces this context on other people of saying, well, now you've associated your name with something that people are going to use as an excuse to criticize.

And I can't imagine, I mean, all the the board members, the people who served with his ministry now, like you can't even say, oh, I spent 20 years serving this ministry when the first thing that's going to come to people's minds is how it ended rather than the amazing things that got accomplished through that ministry over the years.

So that's difficult. It's painful. But again, like I was talking about earlier, it's a powerful reminder, like, Lord, don't let that be me. Help me to be one of the people who was able to live his entire life without sinning in that way.

I sin every day, no doubt about that. But there's a difference between the stuff we all struggle with, with the sins that, according to the God's word, are disqualifying from ministry.

Personal Responsibility, Hero Worship, and Holding Leaders Accountable

And I also think that what, for example, when we talk about something like the board, for example, and obviously the intent here isn't to throw stones. It's not to throw anybody under the bus, spiritually speaking.

But we do need to be able to look at circumstances and things that have happened and know how to respond. What do we do with this information? And I think that we need to look at certain things. We need to look at our own personal lives to what Kevin was saying, humility.

Am I aware that I need to focus on myself? I literally can't control what other people say and do. What I can do is control or at least attempt to control my relationship with God and how I'm living my life.

That's my responsibility. Starting there, what am I doing? What am I saying? But I also think that we need to be careful that when we are looking at other people, that we remember what Kevin said, that this is supposed to be about Christ.

My faith is not supposed to be in that other person. And that's a hard thing for a lot of people to distinguish. But it's an important thing for us to remember.

So in episode three of the podcast, what I just talked about with Jonathan was Christians who abandon the faith. And one of the questions I asked him was, how do we respond if a Christian who is meaningful to us, actually, it's not sinning grievously in the adultery sense, but in the sense of, I no longer believe.

I no longer think the Christian faith is real or true. And his answer was, look, our faith isn't in other people. So it's the same answer to what we're talking about now is that if our faith is in a person other than Christ, there's always the potential that we are going to be let down.

And so, yes, like the Apostle Paul said, follow my examples. I follow the example of Christ. There's to a certain extent we can follow other people. But we should never follow someone so closely or so ardently that if he or she were to fall, that would impact our own faith.

Because our faith is not in that person. Our faith is in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice. So having these two episodes back to back, I think, are really good at pointing us back to who is our faith in.

And sure, we can't help but be sad, to be discouraged, even be angry when stuff like this happens. But it shouldn't impact our faith because our faith isn't in other people. Our faith has got to be in God and his word.

We do have to watch out for hero worship, unless our hero is Jesus, the ultimate hero. And then, of course, he is worthy of our faith. But it's important also to realize in all of this that the gospel never changes, that whatever the actions of fallible humans, that the gospel itself is unsullied.

The gospel itself is still the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. And that's the answer to the sin problem. The fact that Jesus died for our sins, the fact that Jesus rose again on the third day, that's the answer that people need.

And that message doesn't change regardless of the fallible, the foibles of people here in this world.

Faith in Christ, Not in Fallen People

And that's not to say that we don't take those issues seriously or that we brush off or we shrug off what those people are doing. But yes, it is simply a fact that certain things are either true or false.

And even if an imperfect person brings those things up, they're still true. To one thing that you were saying, Shay, about hero, Kevin was mentioning hero worship and we talked about other issues. I do think that we have to be careful of the issue of accountability.

I think that one of the things that we do need to do as Christians is understand that the Bible never expects us to have this slavish, blind, worshipful attitude towards our fellow Christians, even our Christian leaders.

We're supposed to have respect for their knowledge and for their learning. We're supposed to obey within a certain context our Christian leaders. But at the same time, we're also supposed to be aware that they are not the ones that we are worshiping.

So I think that once we establish in our own lives the sense of humility, am I saying and doing that which I need to do? And then we look outside of ourselves and say, am I being careful to put my faith in Christ and my trust in the Bible and not in other people?

I think it is important for us to take the next step and say, am I reasonably, lovingly, rationally holding accountable those who claim the name of Christ? I think in circumstances that we've seen in some of these situations with Ravi Zacharias as an example.

And again, this is part of the tragedy. You're not throwing somebody over a cliff. We're just acknowledging realities that things went on. Things happened. Things were said and done that didn't represent a level of accountability that I think would have been very helpful in curbing some of those things.

And I think we can see this in our personal lives. We see this in our churches. We can see this with a lot of people that when we just sort of push accountability off to the side and we don't attempt to hold people to certain standards, especially when we are truly close to them and we have the ability to do that.

I think we open up a lot of these cans of worms. And the danger in that, obviously, is that we're going to start sticking our noses in other people's business where it doesn't belong, which we really do have to be careful of.

But I think that we do need to take these three individual steps. What is going on in my own life? How am I responding to the world around me? And then am I being my brother's keeper? Am I holding other people?

Or is there somebody holding me accountable? Do I have legitimate accountability from somebody else to do this? And I think that when we see leaders fall, I think we need to respond with something more than just grief and care for the people who've been harmed.

I think we should be looking and saying, OK, what am I doing? What can I do to not contribute to this or to prevent it from happening in the future? So, so much as I can.

Do Not Believe Accusations Too Quickly, but Do Not Assume Fallibility Is Impossible

So, excellent thoughts, Jeff. I mean, something that this reminds me of is, I don't remember how long ago it was, but the pastor of the largest church in the state of Colorado sinned in pretty much the most grievous way imaginable.

And when it first came out in the news, I was like, no, I mean, yeah, sure, he kind of comes across as kind of a used car salesman type of personality. But no, no, no, no. And then came out as even worse than the media was presenting at first.

So like, wow.

So it's not just like this is a temptation that I did not struggle with at all. So it was unfathomable. How could a pastor fall in that sort of way? So I think that's a big reminder is that, one, I think it's good for us to question such things.

I mean, the Bible says, do not entertain an accusation against an elder, which includes a pastor, unless it comes on two or three witnesses. So don't automatically believe accusations like these, but at the same time, don't necessarily just say it's impossible.

Because, yeah, it is possible that men and women of God who we greatly respect and are true believers and have had powerful, impactful ministries can fall in astounding and depressing ways. So that was a reminder in that at first I was like totally doubting, impossible.

There's no way that actually happened. To then go to, wow, OK, I was probably good to not believe them just because it's in the media. But at the same time, don't put it past someone's sin in ways that may even seem unfathomable to us.

And back to what our main point here today is to keep our eyes on Jesus, because anyone in this world ultimately will disappoint us.

Amen.

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

So I hope this conversation has been helpful. Most people in their lives have had someone in the Christian faith who they love, respect, admire, who has disappointed them. I think our main purpose with this podcast is to point back to Christ, keep your eyes on him.

He'll never let you down. Obviously, in this world, we have pastors, we have leaders that we follow, that we are taught by, that we are encouraged by. And that's important. We shouldn't abandon that and say, well, all Christians are hypocrites.

Therefore, I'm going to go solo. No, that's the wrong attitude as well. But at the same time, we can't give in to hero worship. We can't allow anyone in this world to take Christ's place in our heart.

Our loyalty, our dedication belongs to him and to him alone. So again, difficult conversation, not a fun thing to talk about, but something needs to be addressed. So that's why we decided to dive into this painful topic today.

So again, hope you find it encouraging and helpful. This has been the Got Questions podcast. You can find out more online at podcast .gotquestions .org. And back to our slogan, Got Questions? The Bible Has Answers.

We'll help you find them.