Recently, a prominent black pastor from Atlanta, Ga. was accused of infidelity, not with another woman but with young boys. By now we should all know of the public sins of Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard and Bishop Earl Paulk.

One of my favorite pastors in California even resigned his pastorate about a year ago due to adultery and fathering a child outside of his marriage. All of these high-profile ministers and pastors have been involved in some form of infidelity. Many pastors today have had at least one divorce in their lives. What is wrong with this picture?

I have been a Christian for 27 years now, and I have seen many things in the Christian world. But nothing disturbs me more at this point in my life than what I am seeing now: marital unfaithfulness from ministers of the gospel. Yes, we are all still human and will not be sinlessly perfect until we leave this earth or are glorified in “rapture.”

But I still can remember these powerful words from the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:13 given to all of us: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

The Spirit of God through Paul could not have been clearer. In other words, we are all tempted, but with God’s faithful power working within us, we don’t have to fall to the temptation. For the Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit, there is no such thing as a temptation so strong that we must fall into sin because of it.

Knowing this can be a source of comfort and strength, but with all that has gone on among leaders in the pulpits, one would think that this passage either did not exist or that it has been totally ignored.

This is not to say that some of the same public sins in the pulpit are not also being committed secretly in the pews, but there is the valid and Scriptural presumption that Christian leaders should uphold a higher standard of conduct in Christian ministry.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul the apostle said to the believers in Corinth, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” This is a clear indication that Paul, as a leader in the church, was setting an example for other believers to follow him as he followed Christ.

Christ is the head example, church leaders follow His example, and the rest of us should be able to imitate leaders as they imitate Christ, and the world, through this process, gets to see a glimpse of the Christ in us — or at least that is how it should be.

While it is not totally unexpected, it is a disturbing time in the history of the church when we have laymen in the pews who are leading stronger moral lives than many prominent leaders who seem to be great preachers in the pulpit.

As I examine this phenomenon, it makes me wonder how on the one hand people can rely on the Spirit for knowledge, and the ability to teach God’s word, but on the other hand, those same people can’t seem to use the power of the Spirit to sustain loving, godly marriages. This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The same Spirit who empowers us to preach and teach also empowers us to resist temptation and keeps us from moral failure and infidelity. God does not call us to just preach the gospel, but to live it as well.

Our preaching and our living need to be consistent if it is to be more effective in the church as well as in the world outside the church — all of us disdain hypocrisy. When we as leaders preach “do not commit adultery,” and we ourselves break this law, we not only break a solemn covenant before God and the person we committed our lives to, but we also bring shame on the gospel and give unbelievers more reasons to blaspheme our God (Romans 2:22-24).

As future ministers and preachers of the gospel studying here at Talbot to enhance our ministry gifts and refine our calling, let us be ever mindful that we are not only called to preach the gospel, but to live it out.

While we are not able to live sinlessly perfect lives, we can live better than headlines seem to indicate, because we have God’s clear word that we can resist temptation, and we also have His indwelling Spirit to help us embody Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19 and Romans 8:9-11).

Yes, we know that where sin abounds, grace further abounds as Romans 5:20 and Hebrews 4:15-16 say, but let me offer words of encouragement from one of my favorite gospel songs by The Winans called If Ever I Fall: “It’s good to know you’ll be there if ever I fall. But it’s better to know that I don’t have to fall at all, because he’s able to keep me.”
By God’s word and our willingness to listen to the Spirit within, we can do better as we fight the good fight of faith.