When Christian Leaders Fall

All Christians are sinners, and all can fall big time without God’s grace:

There are always sad cases of well-known Christian leaders falling into sin and scandal. It happens all too often. The most recent example involves a Christian writer and speaker beloved by millions of people worldwide. I just looked, and I happen to own 10 of his books. Over one particularly rough Christmas holiday period I had read through 2 or 3 of them in a row.

I refer to Philip Yancey who has just been publicly found-out about an 8-year-long affair he had. Christianity Today just published an article on this story. It begins:

Christian author Philip Yancey said in an emailed statement to CT that he had engaged in an affair with a married woman for eight years and would retire from writing and speaking.

 

Yancey started his writing career in 1971 at Campus Life magazine, which became a part of CT a few years later. He wrote for CT for decades, reporting and later becoming a regular columnist and editor at large. His books, including What’s So Amazing About Grace?, have sold more than 15 million copies. He often wrote about faith in the face of pain and suffering.

 

Yancey, 76, has been married to his wife, Janet Yancey, for 55 years. He said he was sending the news “due to my longstanding relationship with CT”. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/01/author-philip-yancey-confesses-affair-withdraws-from-ministry/

When I first read this, I could see the whole piece, but it now seems to be behind a paywall. So let me add a few more quick details. He says he is retiring from all Christian ministry. He has come clean and acknowledged his sin, and his wife also offered a brief statement about this.

The bulk of the CT piece can be found here: https://churchleaders.com/news/2211627-philip-yancey-confesses-to-8-year-extramarital-affair.html  

So what are we to make of all this? The reality is that only God fully and perfectly knows the human heart. Only God knows where he is now at, if his repentance is genuine, if he is on the right path in dealing with all this, and so on. So I will not be his jury, judge and executioner. What I can and must do is pray for him.

Indeed, when I posted about this on the social media, all I said was this: ‘I chatted with him briefly when he came down under years ago. Sad news. We can keep him and his family in prayer. See link below.’ Plenty of comments came in all rather quickly as soon as I posted that. And sadly, some infighting broke out among various believers as they shared their thoughts.

The commentators were roughly of three camps. The first was made up of those who basically shared my take on this and also thought it to be quite sad and that prayer was the order of the day. And then there were two other camps – both on opposing ends of a spectrum. On the one hand there were some believers upset by this and calling him out and saying how terrible he was. And then there were those who more or less went with the ‘let him who is without sin cast the first stone’ camp.

The truth is, there is some truth in both of these two seemingly opposing viewpoints, but only when held together in biblical balance. Either stance, when pushed to extremes, becomes harmful and unbiblical. Let me speak to each one in turn.

Judgment without mercy

The first of these two responses, in its extreme and unbiblical form, is really just that of the Pharisees. It says: ‘I am holier than you are. You are a terrible sinner. You stand condemned. I could never sin like this. Stone him and her!’ It is the result of pride and a lack of understanding of the basic truth that we are all sinners and except for God’s amazing grace, we ALL can fall in this or in similar ways.

Not just under my social media post, but in other places, there were no shortages of such folks to be found. They were so very quick to denounce and rebuke Yancey. There was nothing said about the need for prayer. There was no acknowledgement that we all have issues, that we all deal with hidden sins, and that we all can be publicly exposed in a moment.

It is a dark spiritual arrogance wherein a person thinks they could never do something like this. It results in them looking down on such folks and so easily condemning them. It is the very thing Jesus had to denounce over and over again.

We must just love and accept others

The second response, at least in its more extreme form, winks at sin, thinks it is no big deal, and wants us all to just say nothing. ‘We should just love them.’ It pushes the grace of God truth to an unbiblical extreme, and seems to make light of the reality of sin and evil.

It has no understanding of just how horrible all sin is, and how very costly it is. It sent God’s Son to the cross, so we should never think lightly of it. And of course along with this, we need to learn afresh about the holiness, the righteousness, and the moral perfection of God. Too many believers have very little understanding about this.

We must be real here: what Yancey did certainly WAS sinful and evil. It is one thing to sin this way for 8 weeks or 8 months, but 8 years really is alarming. It does show how believers can so easily deceive themselves and think they can get away with murder.

Getting the biblical balance

The story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery in John 8 gives us the biblical balance. On the one hand he showed the woman real mercy and grace. And he also showed the hypocrisy of the accusers. When he said those without sin should start the stone-throwing, they all left. He caught them out big time.

But he was NOT wishy washy about sin. He took it 100 per cent seriously. He told the woman to ‘go and sin no more.’ That is not cheap grace. That is not easy believe-ism. That is not going soft on sin and lowering God’s holy standards.

And when he gives a major teaching as in the Semon on the Mount, he really spells all this out clearly. Jesus never dumped the law or set aside God’s righteous requirements. In fact, he made it even harder! He did not just focus on outward actions, but on inward attitudes and dispositions.

Thus he made God’s holy requirements even MORE stringent and demanding. He could tell us that if we hated our brother, it is the same as murder. He could tell us that if we looked at a woman lustfully, we have committed adultery.

And we must make it practical here folks. I was married for over forty years. Did I ever look at a woman lustfully during that period? Yes of course. I was guilty of the sin of adultery. Did I have hate or refuse to forgive someone as a believer? Yes again. So I am guilty of the sin of murder.

And if I were in Old Testament times, I could have been stoned to death for such crimes against God and man. Jesus demands perfection, but he knows how it can only be achieved: by clinging to the finished work of Christ on the cross in humility and repentance.

Only Christ perfectly obeyed the father, and he died to pay the price for our sins. So when we cast ourselves upon him based on what he did for us at Calvary, he makes us new creatures in Christ. We get the Holy Spirit and we slowly start becoming more like Christ. This is our only hope: admitting that we are lost and helpless sinners, and knowing that only what Christ did for us can make us right with God.

So with all that in mind, he could realistically say to all of us: ‘Be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect.’ We get HIS perfection credited to our account. That is great news, because without his imputed righteousness, we are all doomed.

But all this does not mean for a moment that we can therefore just live like the devil. The one-off act of justification is followed by a lifetime of sanctification. And it is a life-long process. Being saved for over a half a century now, I have seen some real healing and wholeness in some areas of my life, but other areas are still works in progress.

So when I see someone like Yancey fall, all I can do is say this, rightly understood: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ But I can also use something like this as a warning to myself. I must daily fight the good fight and take a stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And this is what the indwelling Holy Spirit helps us accomplish.

This is the attitude we must have. And it avoids the two dangerous extremes that I have been talking about here. It keeps us humble and on our knees. I can fall just as easily as anyone else can. There must be no spiritual pride and arrogance in me that makes me think I am such a super Christian.

But these truths also remind us that we are daily called to say no to sin and self and seek God’s help to stay close to him. Holiness is not an optional extra. We all are required to become Christlike. We are all commanded to die to self and to crucify the flesh.

One final thought: A key thing to do to avoid falling like this is to get into a small accountability group. Being honest with a few other trusted believers is vital here. And confessing our sins one to another is not just some Catholic ritual, but a biblical command that we all need to heed.

I repeat: we must keep Yancey and his family in our prayers.

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