And I'll say, before I even mention the specifics, how difficult I find this
question, and I'll maybe mention a couple of reasons. But here's what we have in
mind. Martin Luther and his virulent anti-Semitism. John Wesley was not your
most attentive husband. Neither was Whitefield. Whitefield and
Edwards both owned slaves, Edwards one or two all of his life,
probably. Martin Luther King, Jr., unfaithful to his wife repeatedly in his
sexual misconduct, and of course, the list could go on and on.
One of the reasons this is so difficult for me is because if I just take that
group right there, the sins are so different from person to person.
The times and the morays and the expectations in which they lived were so
different. The levels of consciousness about whether they were sinning,
some believing they weren't, some believing they were, are different in each
of those cases. The level of conflict in their own soul that we can't even see,
but sometimes gets expressed. And the level of contrition that emerges,
maybe at the end of their life. I'm thinking of Luther, in particular,
on that one.
In other words, all of those might be relevant, all those factors might be
relevant for whether you're going to put somebody's sin in the category of I
Corinthians 6:9 and 10, where Paul says, "Those who do such things will not enter
into the kingdom of heaven." So you can say a Martin Luther or a Whitefield or an
Edwards or a Martin Luther King was not saved. They're unregenerate. And that's a
really big call and very difficult to make from the distance of hundreds
of years or decades.
So here's where I wind up. My approach to life would go something like this.
Be a part of a local church, and if you know someone in your church,
in your sphere of influence, who's walking in unrepentant racism or anti-Semitism or
sexual immorality, they're walking, then you go to that person.
You exhort them, and you ask them to repent. And then you follow the steps of
Matthew 18, and if necessary, you lead them into church discipline,
and if necessary, they get excommunicated from the church. That's the way we deal
with real-life sinning in our lives.
Now, what about those who are dead, who've written books that we have found helpful?
I think a few things would guide us here. We need to acknowledge and be ready
to admit the worst, okay? Just if it's possible that a person was unregenerate
that we have admired. And I think we should hope for the best,
and we should be slow to pass final judgment on a Luther or an Edwards or a
King. Instead, I think we should be consciously aware of their sins and call
them out. Call them out, name them. Don't whitewash it. Say the sin.
And we should take that sin and watch out for its effects in their books.
That's really important.
In other words, if we say, "Here's a man who is a racist," well,
what could have possibly, in his theology or in his sermons, been affected by that
so we don't get contaminated by that? So I think, if we're willing to follow that,
then the place to end up is be thankful that we can judge their writings'
usefulness by Scripture and not by their life. If you read a sermon, and say you
don't even know who wrote it, and the sermon ministers deeply to you and then
you find out that the person had serious sin in his life, does that nullify the
spiritual effect of the truth? And the answer is it shouldn't if there's real
biblical warrant for that truth.
And maybe the last thing to say in this inadequate answer is the Bible itself
encourages us that God uses flawed people even to write Scripture.
I mean, I was just blown away recently by rethinking the life of Moses.
The last thing we encounter with Moses is God sternly saying, "You did not believe
me at the waters. You struck the rock. You disobeyed me. You didn't believe me.
You will not enter into the promise land." So here's the man who's writing the
first five books of the Bible forbidden from going into the promise land because
his disobedience was so serious, God wouldn't even let him set foot in the
promise land.
And then you got Peter, who over there in Galatians 2 is deserting Gentile
fellowship, totally out of sync with his own doctrine of justification by faith.
And Paul has to get on his case to set him right again, and I love the book of I
Peter. I love it! It's true. So I think we should probably be slow to judge and yet
never whitewash the sins of any pastor or any writer. Call them out on it.
Be alert to how those sins might've influenced their writings and then profit
from the writings to the degree that they are in sync with Scripture.