Soiled by sin I am a Mark Driscoll, a Bob Coy, a Peter, an Adam, a David. What do I and these men have in common? We are all men created in the Image of God, yet we don’t want to obey and follow him by nature. Adam may have started this sin thing (or maybe it was Satan), but we definitely are keeping up with Adam in his absence. Stained by sin in Adam, we are not just sinners because of his sin, we are sinners because of our own sin too. Yet, I and all these men alike have tasted of the heavenly blessing in Christ, heard the Gospel preached, professed faith, and have responded in obedience to His Word, so why do we still fail? Besides the theologically accurate, “because we still are in sinful bodies” it is also because practically we take the Gospel for granted, ignore the means of Grace that Sanctify us, love the world too much, and ultimately because we don’t have the accountability of the Word being preached to us, by others and ourselves, quite often enough. Other voices and messages often take up the airwaves of communication and distract us from the most important message in the Gospel, yet not all these messages are bad just distractions.
Most recently Mark Driscoll reminds us of the false belief in our Christian Culture: that Pastors are more mature, don’t need to be pastored, don’t need to be shepherded, don’t need accountability, don’t need to be submitted to others who will call them on their sin, and are better serving God when their external fruit is magnificently evident to all. Every pastor (and Christian) should read Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Calling-Confronting-Challenges-Pastoral/dp/1433535823 as he explains many of the reasons why we as Christians fail and why so many pastors struggle with sins in-spite of our placing of them on a pedestal, and the most scary thing is most pastors believe their own press, and the result is the list of men I provided.
Continue reading →