With Greater Power Comes Greater Temptation
Yes, with great power comes great responsibility. Also, with great power comes great opportunity to abuse it. There is something about bigness—and everything that comes with it (money, fame, accolades, access)—that can seduce anyone. Not a single one of us is immune to this great temptation. And if you give the devil a foothold, he will take more.
With power also comes the temptation to more pragmatic thinking, where we will justify our own decisions in service of “the greater good.” How did Whitefield justify his sin? Perhaps the same way many try to justify it today—his good outweighed his bad. His sin is put in the context of his success, effectively reducing it to an incidental blip on the massive radar screen of his exemplary evangelism.
We must all be on guard against this seduction to pragmatism in our own lives. Power-hunger can lead us to functionally deny what we intellectually affirm.
There Is No Hero But Christ
All Christians admire different figures from church history, for a variety of reasons. There is nothing inherently wrong with admiring the gifts and accomplishments of those who affirm Christian orthodoxy and who have contributed to advancing the cause of the kingdom of God. But we must beware of whitewashing our heroes, sanding off their rough edges, excusing their unrepentant sins, dismissing the things in their lives that might bring their profession into question. The kinds of things we routinely discipline church members for today often get waved away with a swat of the hand when it comes to our “heroes of the faith.”
As Christians, we believe in the truth. This means looking at history with wide open eyes, being honest about the past and the sins therein. We gain nothing from lionizing our historical heroes and we lose nothing by being transparent about their besetting sins. Why? Because the Christian faith and the church it has birthed are not built on the foundation of any man but Jesus Christ. The gates of hell can prevail against any of our legacies. But nothing prevails against Christ.
This doesn’t mean we have to condemn figures from church history whose sins are obvious and glaring and heinous and hellish. But it does mean we have nothing to fear in condemning their sins. Unless you’ve asked George Whitefield into your heart as your personal lord and savior, you lose nothing in admitting his terrible sin.
Christians Can Nevertheless Have a Hermeneutic of Grace Regarding History
One of the million benefits of having the entirety of the Spirit-breathed Scriptures in the Christian Bible is that we are able to see how the Lord himself regards the great sinners of historical faith. The vantage point of the Old Testament shows us the heinous sins of so many of the patriarchs, many we often consider “heroes” of the faith. And the New Testament perspective on the Old shows us a reading of them in the language of grace. Think of how many of the sinful patriarchs—whose collective sins include adultery and sexual exploitation, abuse of power and drunkeness, even murder—are lauded for their faith. Very few heroes of the Old Testament would not be able to find their sins listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
Please hear what I’m saying (and not what I’m not). This is not a whitewashing of sin or justifying of sin. If that were the case, we would not have clearly before our eyes the honest depictions found in the Old Testament. But with both Testaments testifying to both the reality of grievous sin and the reality of a great Savior, we see the grounds for reading history with a “hermeneutic of grace.” Again, this doesn’t mean acting like men like George Whitefield weren’t horrific sinners. But it does mean believing, at the very least, that no sin is outside the scope of Christ’s redemption. We can affirm both that sin kills and is deserving of condemnation from a vengeful God who has, among other things, said man-stealing is wrath-deserving (Ex. 21:16) and that enslavers will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Tim. 1:10), and also that the blood of Christ “speaks a better word” (Heb. 12:24) for those who will, in faith, claim it for themselves.
