When a Leader Falls

Recent news reports have communicated yet another story of a prominent Christian leader who has fallen into sin. The story of Pastor Ted Haggard and his confession of immorality has been broadcast around the world.

How should Christians respond to the news of a Christian leader's fall?

1. We ought to grieve. In the Old Testament when Saul was rejected as King because of his repeated acts of disobedience, we read in 1 Samuel 15.35,

         Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul       again, though Samuel mourned for him.

   In fact, the prophet Samuel grieved so long over the fall of King Saul that the Lord had to correct him for mourning so much. We read in 1 Samuel 16.1,

         The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you mourn       for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over       Israel?

   When the Corinthians had a situation of immorality in their midst, the apostle Paul exhorted them saying,

         And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have gone       into mourning and have put out of your fellowship       the man who has been doing this? (1 Cor. 5:2)

   It is appropriate for us to grieve whenever a person destroys themselves. It is all the more so appropriate to grieve when a well-regarded ministry is destroyed. We grieve not only for the leader, but we grieve for the leader's family and the price the family has to pay for the leader's sin. We grieve for the pain caused to the leader's church. And we especially grieve that the name of the Lord is dragged through the mud by the enemies of God.

   Grief, not joy or self-righteous superiority, is also the emotion we ought to have when we are forced to discipline someone who is involved in unrepentant sin. The apostle Paul modeled the correct emotion every Christian ought to have whenever we have to correct A Christian brother or sister (2 Corinthians 2.4).

   For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.

2. We ought to fear God. The fear of God is not just something that was taught to the Jews in the Old Testament. Jesus taught us New Testament believers to fear God. Thus, we read in Matthew 10.28 these words:

         Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but       cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who       can destroy both soul and body in hell.

   Everyone who claims to know God ought to stand in reverence and awe of God's holiness and power. We ought to fear turning away from God and having our hearts captured by God-substitutes such as lust, greed, ambition, or an addiction. Throughout the Bible we are taught that the God who is our lover and friend is a jealous God. He does not tolerate competitors for his affection in our lives.

   In cultivating a fear of God, it is always appropriate to remind ourselves that everything we do is done in the sight of God. And every offense we commit is not only committed against ourselves, but also is committed against God. So, when the Prodigal Son squandered the inheritance he received from his earthly father on loose living and prostitutes, he didn't only confess his sin against his earthly father, he confessed that also he sinned against God saying, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you." (Luke 15:21)

3. We ought to repent of our own sins. People came to Jesus and told him of two great tragedies that had occurred in their day. One was that some innocent people had been killed by Pontius Pilate; a second involved eighteen people who were killed when a tower fell in Siloam. Jesus used these two reports of tragedy not to underline the sin of those who had perished, but rather to call all of the rest of us to repentance. So Jesus said in Luke 13.5,

         I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all       perish."

   In other words, it is not just the fallen leader who needs to repent. All of us need repentance. We must not think that just because someone else's sin has been disclosed (and our sin has not yet been disclosed) that God is more upset with them than with us. We all need a deep inward change of our minds and hearts regarding our love affairs with our own pet sins. The news of a leader's fall is a wake-up call to the rest of us to repent.

4. We ought to guard ourselves against hypocrisy. Jesus said in Luke 12.1, "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

   In other words, just as yeast spreads and impacts a whole lump of dough, so hypocrisy can spread and impact our entire way of life. What is hypocrisy? Very simply, it means to play act. Hypocrisy means pretending to be better than we are. Hypocrisy involves us living one way before people and another way in private before God.

   To some degree, we are all hypocrites. We all play pretend. We all wish to appear better than we are. We all wear masks.

   But the fact that each of us is, to some degree, a hypocrite should not serve as an excuse for us to indulge in more and more hypocrisy. Rather, we are warned to turn, as fully as we can, to Jesus who alone can deliver us from the sin of hypocrisy. As we see men and women get trapped by sin (including the sin of hypocrisy), we need to kneel at the feet of Jesus and ask him to reveal to us big and little things, significant and insignificant things, which may be offending God.

5. We ought to pray. It is always appropriate for us to pray not only for ourselves but also for our Christian leaders and churches. But we ought to pray all the more whenever we hear of a leader's fall. We know that Satan does paint a target on leaders. We know that every leader is vulnerable and that every church is upheld only by the grace of God. Pray for inward holiness for ourselves and our leaders. Pray for protection from the work of the evil one. And pray that God would weave even the tragic news of a leader's fall together for good: the good of the fallen leader, the good of his family, the good of his church, and the good of all who hear this news and take it to heart by repenting!