There but for the Grace of God Go I

In the age before the internet, there perhaps existed some natural limit to the number of times one could feel betrayed by his or her spiritual leaders. In our time, it sometimes is an almost bi-weekly occurrence. When the news of the “moral failings” of well-known Christian teachers and pastors come across our screens almost as often as that of mass shootings, one begins to wonder which of these two modern tragedies is more successfully eroding our national faith. Nihilistic violence may shock the soul, but continued spiritual betrayal is almost too much for the human heart to bear. For relational beings, nothing—not even death—is so disorienting as the divorce of trust and trustworthiness. 

There are those who will say that Christians, of all people, should be the least surprised by the frequency and profundity of such failures. Original sin, G. K. Chesterton once quipped, is the only Christian doctrine which can be easily observed in the street. In the street, yes. But in the church? Yes, there too, Lord help us. And yet, what are we to make of this fact? Are these breaches of trust by our spiritual leaders simply inevitable? Should we even be shocked? Exactly what degree of cynicism does our doctrine of sin require? 

By now we have become accustomed to the carefully-worded announcements which accompany the fall of a pastor. They have almost taken the form of a modern liturgy with familiar phrases like “inappropriate relationship” and “disqualifying sin.” The modern liturgy of the church is followed by that of the disgraced pastor, who tries, often sincerely, to show just how sorry he is for what he was caught doing. He requests privacy for himself and his family as he seeks help, healing, and the restoration of his marriage. Of course, we lament the stilted, impotent formality of the whole thing, but to some degree we accept it. And though we hate it, we also understand it. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” we say. But there is danger in these words, not because they are untrue, but because we risk making them untrue in our increasingly common misuse of the word “grace.” 

For example, former megachurch pastor Carl Lentz has re-emerged to the public eye after his highly publicized dismissal from Hillsong NYC almost four years ago due to “moral failings.” Before the scandal, Lentz was already highly publicized, but in a much more positive light, rubbing shoulders with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Kevin Durant, Oprah, and the hosts of The View. At the time of his firing, an ongoing affair with one woman outside the church had come to light. Since then, several other extramarital affairs and episodes from the past, within and beyond the church, have been unearthed. In the first episode of their podcast, Lentz addressed the headlines naming him a “disgraced pastor.”

“What’s funny about that is–God bless those people–they don’t understand grace. You can’t fall from grace. You fall into grace…Grace is mercy and favor that you do not deserve but God gives it to you anyway. If anything, I fell into grace. And if people could stop writing headlines like that, I would appreciate it, because it’s inaccurate. I’m not a disgraced former pastor. I am a human being who made huge mistakes. Mine were public. Everybody got to see them. And now I’m a human being that’s trying to rectify my life. But disgraced, I am not. I’m more filled with grace than I’ve ever been. Did I fall from grace? Absolutely not. I fell into it, and I’m grateful for that. You could say what I did was disgraceful. Maybe at times, sure. But I’m not disgraced, because we’re forgiven and I have been able to feel God’s grace more than ever…You can keep writing that headline if you want, but I don’t identify as the disgraced former pastor. No sir. No ma’am.”

It’s a clever turn of phrase, the kind he was famous for in a former life: “I didn’t fall from grace; I fell into it.” Lentz’s style is warm and approachable. His spoken words come across as more modest and less defensive than they might appear to the reader. And for those of us who have grown up as adherents of “the gospel of grace,” it is hard to deny him his point. If grace is God’s unmerited, unconditional favor, how could you ever fall out of it? Even still, I believe that Lentz is revealing here a subtle but profound misunderstanding–-of his role, of his sin, and of the very meaning of grace—which is not his only, but has become pervasive in our contemporary Evangelical context. 

To begin with, sexual immorality, especially on the part of a spiritual leader, is not a “mistake,” as Lentz calls it. The kind of sin that destroys a church, explodes a family and ruins a legacy is not a random ditch you happened to fall into, because, on one occasion, you were a little less careful than you should have been. Sexual unfaithfulness does not strike as a tornado missing this house and that house and hitting yours. It is more like a tree, which has been growing up from underneath your house, which broke through the floorboards years ago, which you and perhaps your loved ones have been awkwardly circumventing for some time now. When it finally breaks your house in pieces, then, you should not be so surprised. 

And this sheds light on a possible misuse of the expression, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Just as sin is not a mere mistake, grace is not a fickle good-luck charm, which just so happened to keep you out of the ditch so far, while others counting on that same “grace” keep falling in. No, in the Christian view, grace is the power of God, which works in us to will and to act according to his good purpose. It is no fleeting breeze, which sometimes allows a man to be faithful to his wife and sometimes not. It is the very sure gift of the Father, the trustworthiness of Christ, as certain as the sunrise. 

In its truest sense, “There but for the grace of God…” points precisely to this transformative power of grace, which works in and through us, though we carry it in jars of clay. It’s an expression of humble gratitude not only for grace as mercy, but for grace as an effective agent of change. But we have sometimes been tempted toward a cheaper, more generic use of the phrase, as if to say, “Aren’t we all the sort of people, even as followers of Christ, who could do exactly this thing at any time?” The man who speaks this way seems humble, but there is a subtle cynicism in it, a kind of moral resignation. “Sin,” for him, has become little more than a theological abstraction, which has begun to conceal than to reveal his own personal sinful tendencies. And “grace,” far from being a means of holiness, has become a kind of proof of the impossibility of holiness as such. 

“But,” some may protest, “Even the Apostle Paul referred to himself as the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15)!”

Yes, he did. But the common use of this phrase is painfully disconnected from its context. Paul refers to himself as “chief of sinners” not to highlight his untrustworthiness, but on the contrary, to emphasize that he has now been deemed trustworthy.

“I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 1:12-14)

In other words, for Paul, grace makes us trustworthy. If we need further proof, he then exhorts Timothy to persevere in like manner: “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience,” [lest you become like others] “who have made shipwreck of their faith” (vv. 18-20). 

Imagine if Timothy had responded to Paul’s exhortation saying that he may or may not shipwreck his faith, depending on what the grace of God had in store for him. Yet we do speak this way in the wake of church scandals, and appear humble. But the renouncing of personal agency among Christian men regarding sexual sin is no virtue; it is cowardice. Were our marriage vows a promise or only a wish? Did we cross our theological fingers when we said, “til death do us part?” Did we shrug our shoulders and say, “I do...you know, barring the ongoing effects of total depravity?”

Are there Christian leaders who are willing to say that the very notion of wedding vows is disingenuous, since no sinful human could ever know with certainty whether he will betray his bride? If so, let them speak up at the wedding services over which they preside, not years later when they appear unsurprised at the breaking of vows by believers, even leaders in the church. Let them declare in their wedding homily, “If we truly understood the power of sin, we would make no promises at all!” 

This, of course, would be nonsense. But too many Christians, especially men, have grown up under exactly this kind of assumption. We “struggle with pornography” instead of renouncing it. Or else we renounce it—for now—until the next time we “fall into temptation.” “But God is gracious!” we declare amidst the safe, casual secrecy of our peers, even as we preside over families and churches who absolutely rely on our integrity. We forget that Paul has more words to say on the subject:

“Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? […] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Even worse, we who are leaders in the church forget that Paul, as a leader, set an example by declaring, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1) Do we have the courage to say this of ourselves? How, indeed, could Paul say it, having declared himself the “chief of sinners?” He could say it, not because of his own strength, but precisely because of the grace of God. He could say it because grace is the power to keep promises, not merely—not even fundamentally—the ability to be excused when we do not. The grace of God is no mere forgiveness for our inability to love God and others. It includes forgiveness, of course, but it does not simply “let us off” or “let us be.” The gift of grace affords us the salvation of true relationship, of trust and trustworthiness. It affords us the ability, finally, to love Him and be faithful to Him as he has been to us. Otherwise it is no salvation at all, and we are still in the grip of sin and death.

Unfortunately for Carl Lentz—and even more for his wife and family with whom he has apparently made amends, and even more for the countless souls under his pastoral care with whom he has not—it is very possible to fall from grace. I understand his meaning, about “falling into grace.” There is truth in it. The mercy of God knows no end. I do not doubt that he and his wife are experiencing the personal restoration they claim. But I cannot overstate just how far that falls short of the scope of restoration required in such cases. Carl Lentz is not just “a human being trying to rectify his mistakes.” He is also a former pastor to whom tens of thousands of people gave spiritual authority. (And I don’t mean to pick on Lentz in particular. You may fill in the blank.) The point is, none of us are the autonomous individuals we imagine ourselves to be. Even our “private sins” are not as private as they seem. What I do “in the privacy of my own home” does affect my neighbors to the degree to which they are connected to and counting on me. For pastors, priests, and spiritual leaders, this is a very high degree indeed. For famous pastors, even more so. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). When a pastor falls into sin, he does not merely sin against his victim and/or his family. He sins against all those who counted on him to represent the truth and love of God to them. 

When I was eighteen, our youth pastor sexually violated a member of our youth group, a crime for which he was later tried and is now serving time. As is often the case, it was later revealed that this had not been an isolated incident. Before his downfall, there was hardly a person in our community on whom he didn’t have a significantly positive impact. I was one of those people. He was a remarkably talented leader, who taught and showed me the character of God. The fallout was immense, not just for those directly victimized by his actions, but to all under his spiritual authority and care. The list of those in our community who deserted their faith after the incident is long and includes many close friends of mine. Some gave up more than just their faith. In the years following, I remember one particularly common response among those who remained in the church (in fact, I hear it still today whenever leaders fail): “Christians put their trust in Jesus, not in other people. People will always let you down. If you lose your faith over an incident like this, you probably didn’t have much faith to begin with.” It sounds reasonable enough. But the Bible paints a surprisingly different picture.

Christ is our High Priest, but he is not the only priest. We are his body in the world. Through him, our priestly role has been restored. Thus very imperfect Peter is told he will be the rock on which Jesus builds his church. The disciples are told they will do even greater works than he with the help of his Spirit. Such priests are not masters, of course. They are stewards. But stewards represent the Master, for better or worse, and are therefore held to higher account than common servants, as Jesus’s parables reveal in graphic detail. Given the obvious failures of the “stewards” of Jesus’s day, this might appear to be a risky venture. Why not rather do away with the need for imperfect spiritual leaders altogether?

But no, the hierarchy remains. Stewardship remains. Jesus sends out the Twelve with the authority to bind and unbind, to make disciples, teach his commandments, and baptize. In the Epistles, the specialized roles and qualifications of church leaders are discussed in detail, and church members are told to “respect those who…are over you in the Lord and esteem them very highly” (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13). The kingdom of God is the remarriage of trust and trustworthiness, not only between God and his people but among his people. At every level of human existence, from the lowest to the highest, trust is our currency, our food, our drink, our oxygen. If it is trustworthy, we live. If it is poisoned, we die. There is no third option in which we do not trust. 

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). This is one of Jesus’s more famous sayings, but it is rare that we hear it in the greater context of what comes afterward: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (v. 6). 

Why the harsh transition? The answer is simple enough. 

In the first saying, Jesus insists that there is no other way to enter into his kingdom than by means of childlike trust. This childlikeness is required of all disciples. But then he changes perspective, forcing the very same audience to imagine themselves as the adults who welcome and lead these children. He says, in effect, “Now that you know what kind of trust is required—and that there is no other way into my kingdom—imagine the horror if that trust is not met with trustworthiness.” Perhaps it is easier to imagine this horror on a physical level: the mother who abandons her infant, the father who abuses his child. But the same problem of trust and trustworthiness scales all the way up to the spiritual. And when that trust is broken, well, heed the words of Christ. When pastors break the trust of their congregations—and for that matter, when fathers and mothers and teachers and leaders of any kind fall into disqualifying sin—it is not merely a “moral failure;” it is a relational failure and a spiritual failure. In such cases, it is still possible to make amends and rebuild trust. But we must begin by acknowledging the true depth and scope of what was broken. For which of you, desiring to rebuild a house, does not first sit down and count the cost?