When a Christian Falls

I described yesterday to friends as a kick in the gut. Whenever a congregation member falls into serious sin, it’s devastating , and it ought to feel as such. When the brother or sister is in leadership or is a well known Christian voice, the shock wave is felt further afield, even crossing continents.

For the sake of clarity, I’m using language of ‘fall’, carefully distinguished from ‘falling away’; one implies temporary and significant wrong footing, while the latter implies a persistent and possible permanent direction. The former speaks of serious sin, perhaps moral failure or doctrine error, but the believer is held to account, they confess and begin the road of repentance, as opposed to the professing Christian who walks away from the faith by pursuing immoral behaviour or doctrinal error.

All who follow the Lord Jesus will at times take our eyes off Him and trip over or lose our footing. Every single Christian, to various degrees and with greater regularity than we realise, give into temptation. All our transgressing is damaging and offends God, and yet some sins are more grievous, and those in positions of authority are rightly held to a higher standard. Our church is currently preaching through 1 Corinthians and 2 weeks ago we were in chapter 6 where the Apostle states,

‘Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

As the Apostle addresses various sexual sins in Corinth, he has a go at church’s pride. Instead, Paul says, you should be mourning. He then goes on spell out what follows a period of grief over sin, namely correction and aiming to restore the one who is caught in sin.

Sadly, today’s online world isn’t interested in such godliness. When someone falls, the mood is often one of gloating. Men waves their crooked crooks and yell, ‘I told you so’. The Pharisees come out to play, the wolves circle and a devilish lion begins to prowl. It’s not that our our religious climate differs from the past, it’s just that social media urges the mud to be stirred with a bigger spoon.

My point today is short and simple: don’t be a Pharisees and rejoice when a brother or sister falls. Don’t retweet the wolves who are keen to devour good doctrine along with the fallen messenger. We might laugh at someone falling over, until we realise they are seriously hurt. Taking pleasure in a Christian’s downfall is hardly Christian behaviour. And when a preacher does not live up to the message he has preached, it does not mean the message is wrong, misleading, or powerless. We measure everything according to the word of God.

Photo by Yoonbae Cho on Unsplash

Yesterday, I found myself on my knees and praying, ‘Lord, have mercy’. Lord have mercy on those who fall and Lord have mercy on us, for apart from grace we all fall.

In his book, the Prodigal God, Tim Keller opens both barrels,

“The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.”

In a similar vein, C.S Lewis’ Screwtape describes the ‘spoiled saint’ who leaves behind as much damage behind as the sinner,

“A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in hell than a mere common tyrant or debaucher.”

Don’t be the older brother. Instead be enthralled by the Father’s extraordinary love for his sons. Rather than responding to Christian news with idle commentary, speculation and pontificating, why don’t we leave those conversations in the toilet where they often belong and instead join the sinner in the Temple. After all, who among us dares to doubt the Apostle,

‘So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! ‘(1 Corinthians 10:12)

One of the astonishing goods of the Christian faith is that we have a Good Shepherd. His holiness is more blinding and binding than we grasp and his grace and love is longer than we can calculate. He isn’t like other shepherds and casual employees who care little other than serving their own interests. Our Good Shepherd goes after the wandering and the lost. He goes searching for sheep who are caught in brambles or stuck in the mud. God promises himself,

‘I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. 14 I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak’.

I like to pray to our Chief Shepherd and overseer of our souls, keep watch over us, and when we do stray, help us to listen to your voice and bring us home.