If Jesus Wasn't Enough for Philip Yancey, Is He Enough for Me?
Answering a question recently posed to me
A few days ago, I shared an article at Christianity Today titled “Church Scandals Don’t Negate God’s Faithfulness” by my friend Myles Werntz on Twitter. It’s a compelling argument that puts church scandals and God’s faithfulness in their historical context. But given the recent news of Philip Yancey’s unfaithfulness to his wife, everyone who read the article was reading it in context of that moral failing, including my Twitter followers. One of the first responses to my post was from a man who asked, “If Jesus wasn't ultimately enough for someone like Philip Yancey, why should I believe he's enough for me?” That’s a fair question. One that deserved more than a “tweet.” So I’m going to address it here.
All of us base our lives on models of living. We do this whether we want to or not. We look up to parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, teachers, neighbors, elders, mentors, influencers (sadly), pop stars (sadly), and peers, to figure out what it looks like to live. Christianity takes this as an anthropological fact, and has discipleship built in to its bones. In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul tells the church to imitate him as he imitates Christ. So it is natural and I think even healthy for us to look at others as examples of how to live a godly life.
The problem comes when those who we have set up as godly examples end up failing us, when someone like Philip Yancey, who seems like righteous man, turns out to be hiding an affair for eight years. If that well-known model of godliness cannot persevere, how can I? I think that is really the question being asked.
First, in 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul says “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Which means that we are to follow elders in the faith only insofar as they follow Christ. The expectation is that they are going to fail. We need earthly models to remind us of what to act like, but those earthly models will always let us down, so we need to be discerning enough to acknowledge when our models fail. Sometimes those failures will be minor, sometimes they will be major and we need to find a new model to follow. This requires the virtue of prudence to discern.
Second, this also means that our ultimate, real model is always the one who lived the perfect life, Christ. How can Jesus be enough? Because he is the one we are truly aiming at, not Philip Yancey. And while we might take encouragement from models of godliness in this life, they are only human, and they will fail us at one time or another. Christ lived the perfect life. By reading Scripture and studying his perfect life, we see how to live.
Third, as visible and visceral as Yancey’s fall may be, how many faithful, devout, godly men and women are living their lives for Christ quietly in the church every day? We tend to focus our attention on modeling those with large platforms and dramatic stories, but maybe that’s our fault. Maybe our models for faithfulness ought to be local, virtuous men and women who stay faithful in their marriages and friendships in the church and serve God devoutly. If Jesus is enough for them, why shouldn’t he be for us?
I fear that we allow high-profile cases of moral failures to color our perception of faithfulness and the sufficiency of Christ.
Fourth, Jesus is enough for Philip Yancey. He lost sight of that by seeking after an idol of an affair, but in repentance, Christ is enough for him. And this is our story, too. We are going to fail Jesus. Like Peter, we are going to deny him. We are going to seek after Worldly idols and get distracted from the Cross. Hopefully our sins will not be disastrous and too consequential to others, but we will sin as Christians. But as a patient Father, God will bring us back to him, because he loves us. Our sins don’t mean that Jesus isn’t enough for us. It means that we battle sin, but there is forgiveness, and God will complete the good work he began in us (Philippians 1:6).
Unfortunately, some of us will fall mightily in this life. Our task is to pray, devote ourselves to obeying the Holy Spirit, surround ourselves with accountability, and commit ourselves to regularly confessing and putting to death our sins so that by God’s grace we can avoid abiding sins. (More on the issue of affairs here).
The beauty of Jesus is that he remains enough no matter how many times we fail, no matter what famous figure fails, no matter who else is faithless. Will his faithfulness keep us from falling into an affair? That is up to us. Will we choose to see idols as more attractive than Christ? Will we choose to harm those we love because we feel unattached, unfulfilled, and lonely? Will we choose to pursue our passions over our promises?
It’s worth remembering that just as Philip Yancey was a model of faith for many, you are a model of faith (or unbelief) for others. Will you doubt the sufficiency of Christ, who died for you, over the weakness of mortal men? Or will you choose to be a model of faith yourself, someone others can look to encourage them in times of weakness? Will you accept that you have a responsibility to not just keep your vows to your spouse but to God, and not just for the sake of your spouse, but for the watching world?
A better question than “If Jesus wasn’t enough for Philip Yancey, why should I believe he’s enough for me?” is “How can I show others how Jesus is enough through my life?” The former puts far too much weight on the importance of Philip Yancey, as if he were a Super Apostle. The latter reminds us that all of us have a duty to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27) and that because we are now adopted sons and daughters of God we can walk in a manner worthy of the gospel!
It is always heartbreaking when a Christian falls into sin. It grieves us, and it should. It hurts more when the figure seems to be a model of piety. But their sin is not evidence that Jesus is insufficient. It’s evidence that they lost sight of his beauty. In those situation we should not grow weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9), but remind ourselves of Christ’s beauty and our own responsibility to act as witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that others do not lose hope.
This is going to sound terrible, but I think you only have one point that's worth making: we are going to fail. Some of us in big ways, some in small ways, some publicly, some not.
You say this, and you know it, and you believe it, but that's really the only thing you should be saying.
None of us are allowed to move on to any of your other points until we have really and fully faced this.
The real choices that we have are a painful awareness of our failure and weakness, or we become monstrous Pharisees who lie about our sin to ourselves and to others. We live lives of condemnation without ever honestly facing ourselves.
If we don't go through this painful process first, all of your other points are reasons to accuse others. And they are motivation to deny our own sin and lie about it to ourselves.
So I think you need to chew on that one point until there's nothing left of it. And of course, not just you, but all of us. When I say you, I mean you as a writer who is publishing things.
That whole, but but but Jesus is always enough stuff actually is just a Pharisee talking until we are painfully aware of how he hasn't been enough for us. How we haven't let that happen. How none of us ever let that happen consistently and sometimes really ever.
And I'm talking about Christians only here.
Everything we say is nothing but pride until we go through this process.
Timely and encouraging. thank you brother