Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
When news breaks that a Christian leader has fallen into serious sin, the Church is immediately confronted with a grave responsibility: to speak truth without cruelty, to uphold holiness without abandoning mercy, and to pursue justice without surrendering humility.
Sin is real. It is destructive. It wounds families, shatters trust, and brings reproach upon the name of Christ. Scripture does not soften that reality, especially when those entrusted with spiritual leadership are involved.
But Scripture is equally clear about the danger of self-righteousness and the peril of judging others by standards we are unwilling to apply to ourselves, or without a full understanding of the facts.
When failure becomes public, there is often a rush to commentary — condemnations, warnings, confident pronouncements about what should happen. Some of this flows from sincere concern for the Church’s witness. Much of it, however, becomes moral spectacle.
I witnessed this spirit firsthand recently when a well-known minister fell into sin. In response, a very prominent Christian leader forcefully declared, “A man like that shouldn’t be in the ministry. Christ is purging His church.” My heart was both incensed and broken at that response.
Not because sin should be excused. God forbid. But that moment reflected something incredibly dangerous: when a leader falls, the first instinct of some Christians is not restoration but rejection. It teaches fear instead of faithfulness, condemnation instead of correction, and can push the fallen into secrecy, isolation, and even despair. Christ does indeed call out sin and discipline His people. But His discipline is medicinal, not contemptuous. It is meant to heal, not merely to purge.
Christ did not build His Church on spectacle. He built it on repentance, restoration, truth, and love. Make no mistake – leaders will stumble, and some will fall grievously. But we are not justified in erasing everything they have done for Christ, nor in declaring their failure somehow proves they were never His at all. Scripture will not support such conclusions. David committed adultery and murder, yet the Lord did not cast him away (Psalm 51; 2 Samuel 12). Peter denied Christ with oaths and curses, and yet was restored and recommissioned by the risen Lord Himself (John 21). John Mark deserted the mission field, but later Paul would say, “He is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). The Bible is replete with godly men who did ungodly things – and with a God who chastises His children, not to destroy them, but to redeem and restore them (Hebrews 12:6-11).
Years earlier, when I was a pastor, a deacon once told me of a meeting where another deacon’s moral failure was being discussed. The room was full of anger and embarrassment over how the situation reflected on the church. But one man sat quietly with tears streaming down his face. When the meeting ended, the pastor chose that man to go with him to confront the fallen brother – not the angriest, not the most offended, but the one whose heart was broken over the matter. That pastor understood that restoration cannot be carried out by those who are most outraged, but by those who still love.
One of the most striking examples of this posture came after the collapse of the PTL ministry and Jim Bakker’s imprisonment. Many turned away from Bakker. Many spoke loudly against him. Many pronounced final judgments. Unfortunately, much of what was said about Bakker’s behavior was true. Yet Billy Graham responded rather differently from many. He quietly visited Bakker in prison. According to Bakker’s own account, Graham embraced him and simply said, “Jim, I love you.” After Bakker’s release, the Graham family continued to extend kindness and fellowship to him when few others would.
That story does not excuse sin. It does not erase consequences. It does not negate church discipline. Nevertheless, it reveals something profoundly Christian: the difference between accountability and abandonment, between moral clarity and moral cruelty.
Broken circumstances never excuse sinful actions. And most of us rarely know all the facts involved in someone’s fall — only fragments of a much larger story. But broken circumstances often reveal the soil in which temptation grows: loneliness, exhaustion, despair, unaddressed wounds. That context does not justify the act, but it should shape the response. The Church is called to be a hospital before it is a courtroom.
Justice matters. Accountability matters. Consequences matter. But so do confession, repentance, counsel, prayer, and the long and arduous work of healing. Nothing we say or do should make that work harder than it already is. Our words and actions should never complicate the very process of redemption and restoration that must remain the Church’s highest aim for a fallen brother or sister in Christ. If taking responsibility and the steps necessary to address the sin do not ultimately serve healing, they cease to reflect our Lord’s heart.
Above all, moments like these should drive us to humility. The apostle Paul warns, Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.(1 Corinthians 10:12). Scripture reminds us that the human heart is “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9), capable of depths of sin we would never imagine in ourselves. None of us is immune. None – not one of us. Given the right set of pressures, wounds, fears, and circumstances, we are all more vulnerable than we know or care to admit.
When a leader falls, the Christian response should be compassion for the one caught in sin, concern for their soul, and a call to renewed dependence on the incredible grace of God. This is the spirit the apostle Paul commands: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” (Galatians 6:1). Not harshness. Not superiority. Not public severity. But meekness – the humility that remembers how easily any of us could stumble and be overcome.
Truth without love becomes cruelty. Love without truth becomes compromise. Christ calls us to hold tenaciously and faithfully to both.
