How the church can cure the moral failure of leaders

It has been a while since my previous post. I have been occupied with a variety of things, including a Biblical Theology and Interpretation course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. It was a great class that will help my writing, and some of the ideas are present in the article below.

As I have written before, I tried to help resolve moral failure in our local church for almost two years. One of the frustrations I had was that the leaders did not determine the problem’s root cause. They seemed to chalk it up to the belief that we’re all going to sin, so confess it and move on. Sadly, the church didn’t resolve the results of the abuse with the victims. Also, they never told the church what the core spiritual issues were, and how they were going to solve them.

If you have read my articles, you know some of my opinion on this matter. Nevertheless, I would like to approach it from a different perspective. I believe leaders in the church are victims of their own doctrine and teaching. A prevalent theme in the evangelical church (at least the church with whom I spent most of my life) is that we are still sinful after being born again. By sinful, I mean it is taught that we still have a sinful nature that makes sinning a certainty in our lives. I believe this is a distorted biblical view of the Christian life. To solve this problem, we must discern what the Bible says about our identity in Christ. I believe a short Biblical history may help in this regard.

God created the earth and all that is in it. Humanity was the pinnacle of his creation. Man and woman were made to steward the earth under his rule. They walked with God but decided to make themselves gods and fell under the power of sin. This disobedience brought death to mankind and a curse on the earth. But God did not abandon humanity; instead, he started His reconciliation process. By His grace, he chose people for himself and promised that he would bless them and be with them. These promises are referred to in the Bible as covenants. He made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel (through Moses), David, and, finally, believers in Jesus Christ.

Through Moses, God gave his people, Israel, commands with blessings and curses. This is commonly referred to as the Mosaic Law. We may think of laws as restrictive, and they are, but we also recognize that our modern laws are intended to guide and protect us. This was also the intent of God’s Law. It helped the people understand God’s holiness and his expectations for the best way to live. These laws were a gift to his chosen people and set them apart from the rest of the world. Part of the Law even included a mechanism to deal with sin so the people could be forgiven if they failed to keep God’s commands.

This mechanism was the sacrifice of animals. Forgiveness of sin required the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22). These sacrifices were only for “unintentional” sin. Those sins which were stumbled into or ones that the person didn’t even realize they had committed. Other deliberate sins were willful acts of disobeying God that required punishment and could not be forgiven through sacrifices. Often the penalty was death, which was deserved for all sin.

God told his people that his expectations for obedience were not too hard for them (Deuteronomy 30:11-20). Nevertheless, time after time, they disobeyed, failed to love God, and suffered judgment for their actions. God was relentlessly gracious and restored the people each time they realized their error and repented of their evil ways. After hundreds of years of grace and patience on God’s part, it became evident that the chosen people could not overcome their sinful nature to be holy and righteous. The sacrifice of animals, day after day and year after year, could not take away their sin (Hebrews 10:1,11).

God showed that our efforts to love and obey Him were not enough; people were incapable of keeping his laws. He further revealed through his prophets his ultimate plan. He would give His people new hearts and put his law within them (Ezekiel 36:19–28, Jeremiah 31:1-34). This was the only way his people could please Him. This plan required the intervention of a truly righteous person. The prophet Isaiah wrote about this person, known as the “suffering servant” (Isaiah 53). Only this person could redeem the people and take away sins once for all.

At just the right time, God fulfilled the promises through his Son Jesus, the Messiah or Christ (Galatians 4:4). Jesus is God, but He also became a man to fulfill God’s plan. The chosen people of God were waiting expectantly for the messiah, but most did not recognize him. They also misunderstood God’s prophetic words about him. Still, he laid down his life to redeem his people. He offered himself as a sacrifice to “put away sin” (Hebrews 9:26). He then rose from the dead so that his chosen people could have new life (Romans 6:4). Jesus solved the problem of sin once and for all:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4, NRSV)

This story is epic! Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s law and predictions of the prophets. We, believers, are the people benefitting from the work of the suffering servant. This is the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood that we celebrate through communion (Luke 22:14-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). We have new hearts and God’s law within us. We not only know the right things to do, but we can do them.

Under the law, good behavior and sacrifice were required to achieve righteousness. But true goodness was unattainable under this system. Christ’s perfect sacrifice took away sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Consequently, our behavior is the fruit of His Spirit within us (Galatians 5:22-24). Read what the author of Hebrews says about Jesus’ completed work:

And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. (Hebrews 10:12-14, bold added for emphasis)

So, I think there are two things we must do to solve the root problem of moral failure in the lives of leaders and our own lives.

First, we must believe. We must believe that we are dead to sin and no longer its slaves (Romans 6). Jesus’ work regarding sin is finished. We must stop assuming that we still have a sinful nature. God changed our hearts when He birthed us as new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). We must understand that just because we can sin doesn’t mean we have to sin or that sin is inevitable for us:

But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:17-18, bold added for emphasis)

Second, we must stop sinning, not because we should, but because we can. Our lives are no longer characterized by sin:

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12-14, bold added for emphasis)

You may be thinking, “this sounds good, but it doesn’t seem realistic. I seem to sin all the time.” Perhaps your perspective is real, but maybe it is because you have been told that you sin all the time. Maybe you don’t realize the difference between sin and temptation. Or perhaps you haven’t been taught how to deal with sin. The author of Hebrews has a remedy:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

If we approach every moment by looking to Jesus and what He has accomplished, we will not be focused on things that burden us. We are free to live by faith in him (Colossians 2:6-7). We can stop worrying whether we sin or not, knowing that He has taken away our sin and we are completely forgiven. When we are faced with a decision to do right or wrong, we know He gives us the ability to do right (1 Corinthians 10:6-13). However, if we sin, we also know He is our advocate (1 John 2:1-2). If you think this gives us the freedom to sin, I suggest you read Romans 5-6. When we are free from sin, we are free not to sin. More positively, we are free to be righteous.

What is the significance of the “great cloud of witnesses” in the Hebrews 12 verses above? Well, if we look back at Hebrews 11, we see that those who came before us have a common characteristic – faith. They believed God and were looking for the day he would make things right. We are in that day. So let’s live by faith in Jesus and what he has accomplished.

At the beginning of this article, I proposed that we are victims of our own way of thinking about sin and our nature as saints. I hope you see that we who are in Christ are the recipients of new hearts and God’s law in our minds. Jesus’ sacrifice is complete, and we are no longer obligated to our old life of sin (Romans 8:12-17). We are righteous and holy now and can live that way as we focus on Jesus. We also know that he will return, and our salvation will be complete:

But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:26b-28, bold added for emphasis)

I hope and pray this article has been helpful. You may be wondering if we are free from sin, why does it seem so pervasive. In my next post, I will take a more detailed look at sin to better know what it is and how to deal with it.