Fall arrived, along with the annual neighborhood bonfire. Amid conversations about school beginning and how families were doing, someone lamented the landscape of fallen spiritual leaders. The onslaught of news felt oppressive.
A voice interrupted, “But isn’t it nice to know that we’re not alone, that others mess up too? I find more solidarity when Jonah runs from God than when he gets things right.”
This cultural proverb isn’t new. Almost 300 years ago, Puritan Thomas Brooks warned that Satan prowls like a lion roaring, eager to “make all others eternally miserable with himself” through deceitful devices that encourage God’s people to sin (see 1 Pet. 5:8). One device is that we’ll glorify the misdeeds of Old Testament heroes, allowing them to lull us into spiritual complacency.
Brooks explained we must study closely the full timeline of the saints’ sin and repentance if we want to resist sin. Scripture declares not just the moral failing but also the seriousness of sin, the weight of sin’s suffering, the humility of repentance, and the beauty of forgiveness.
Four Remedies
Brooks provided four remedies for when we miss Scripture’s truer story of sin and repentance.
Remedy 1: Declare the Whole Story
We remember King David’s murder and adultery, but do we remember his cries for cleansing (Ps. 51:2)? We identify with Job’s impatience, but do we identify with his repentance in dust and ashes (Job 42:6)? We joke about Peter’s impulsive speech, but have we forgotten the bitter tears that followed (Luke 22:62)?
Brooks notes that the Holy Spirit has carefully displayed the saints’ fall into sin and their rise out of sin through repentance. These men grieved their sins and threw themselves at God’s mercy.
Too often, we turn our eyes on the sinner and his sin and forget the God who lifts the sinner out of sin. Where are your eyes when you read the stories of biblical saints? Lift them higher, to the God who leads his people to repentance.
Too often, we turn our eyes on the sinner and his sin and forget the God who lifts the sinner out of sin.
Remedy 2: Declare the Story’s End
David seemed immune to sin’s poison for a season, but God mercifully made him sick of it through Nathan’s speech (2 Sam. 12:1–13). Paul declared he did what he didn’t want to do, but he cried out in thanksgiving that God was delivering him from the flesh through Christ (Rom. 7:15, 24–25).
Because we trust in Christ, sin no longer rules our identities or hearts. Paul commands us to consider ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:11). While we still sin, we don’t make a trade of sin—we don’t make it a happy, willful, regular occurrence. Because of Christ’s resurrected life, we have new life, which means new identities (v. 4).
Like Scripture’s saints, we may fall. But we rise by repentance, that we might, in Brooks’s words, “keep the closer to Christ for ever.”
Remedy 3: Declare the Weight of Sin’s Discipline
Not all suffering is because of our sin. But we can be sure that if God loves us and delights in us, he’ll discipline us (Prov. 3:11–12). Scripture shows us that discipline is equally painful and fruitful (Heb. 12:11).
When God thrust Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden, he protected them from taking of the Tree of Life and living in their damned sin state forever (Gen. 3:22–23). When David’s son fell ill, he petitioned God’s graciousness until his son died, then he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped, restored (2 Sam. 12:20). When Jesus looked at Peter after his denial, conviction overwhelmed Peter and he wept (Luke 22:61–62).
We’re like these saints. It’s easy for us, before godly discipline, to consider our sin innocuous and unimportant. We disregard Scripture and hope God will see the “heart” behind it, as if this somehow excuses us from doing what’s right. We forget that sin is lawlessness, unrighteousness, the work of the Devil (1 John 3:4, 8; 5:17). We forget that because of our transgressions and iniquities, Christ was pierced and crushed, dying a criminal’s death on a cross (Isa. 53:5; Phil. 2:8).
Godly discipline reminds us of our sin’s offensiveness and our Savior’s goodness. Still, we must never sever the weight of God’s discipline and the sins of past saints. As Brooks reminded us: If you sin with David, you must suffer with David!
Remedy 4: Declare the ‘Why’
Why has God bothered to share about the fall of his saints? We can open our Bibles and read faithfully recorded accounts of shortcomings and missteps. Brooks suggests there are two reasons.
First, to keep us from sinking under the weight of our sins—as a reminder we’re not alone. Don’t I also need to know that God chose imperfect people who needed him? Don’t I find it comforting that the giants lining faith’s hallway in Hebrews 11 failed along the way? This remedy takes the cultural proverb that invites complacency about sin and alters it; the invitation is now to humility and repentance.
Second, as a warning. Brooks reminds us that God didn’t record his children’s failings so we might be encouraged to sin. Rather, he did it that we might seriously search our hearts, see the ungodliness of sin, and cling to the skirts of Christ.
Are we reminded of others’ failures so our own sins are normalized then trivialized? Of course not. When we hear of the saints’ sin, we’re meant to be sobered. We’re to grieve their sin and watch carefully how they respond. We witness their tears, discipline, and prayers. Then we watch as God exchanges his beauty for their ashes, all for his glory (Isa. 61:3). We remember that he can do this for us too.
Truer Story
Too often, we leave the stories of Scripture’s saints incomplete—we need to finish them. Their stories include sin and repentance, failure and suffering, neediness and dependence on God for forgiveness.
When we hear of the saints’ sin, we’re meant to be sobered.
Friends, we don’t fight Satan’s devices alone or in our own power. We fight with the whole story in our head and in our hearts: the story that declares Jesus victorious over every sin we commit; the story that declares the risen Christ as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30); the story that calls us not to boast in imperfect saints or our sinfulness but in the Lord (v. 31). The hope is that we’d suffer like these saints, repent with them, find forgiveness with them—not sin like them.
The Gospel Coalition