Should Adultery Permanently Disqualify?

Disqualifying adultery. Obviously, this is in the news. We're confronted by it.

You know, we can talk about what sexual sins disqualify a man for life. A man commits adultery and repents. A man that is genuinely repentant, is there a way possibly back into the ministry, back into leadership, back into preaching, back into pastorate? I don't know.

Some of you might have seen. Some of you see Justin Peters, his statement that he made after the Steve Lawson fall. He said something akin to this, in our circles, you disqualify yourself.

Sexually, you're done. That's it. It's over.

It's done. My thing is this, brethren, these things hit a lot closer to home than you can imagine. And I'll tell you my own intention.

You know, a lot of things are easy to be kind of the armchair quarterback. I just want to say this, scripturally, does our Bible give us any specific example or instruction on restoring a man who has fallen into adultery back into the ministry? It doesn't. The thing is, because it doesn't directly address these things, then what happens is we obviously all recognize there are qualifications.

Whether it's preaching, where do you get a general preaching qualifier? What would be a verse that tells you just when it comes to preaching, you better be careful? James 3.1 Obviously, there are qualifications given in Titus 1. There are qualifications given in 1 and 2. Timothy, both. 1 Timothy 3 is one where we often go. I like 2 Timothy as well because it talks about faithful men.

Here's the thing, faithful, faithful men. You know the text I'm talking about? Paul tells Timothy specifically that he should be targeting faithful men. Do you know where that is? Anybody have any idea? 2 Timothy 2. I think it might be verse 2. Somebody read that.

"...And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also." I'll tell you this, that is one of the highest... I mean, look, when you look at those qualifications, it says a man must be blameless. These are not negotiable. A man must be faithful.

Do you recognize when a man... Listen, I hope you all are on the same page. That basically what we did when we were lost, does any of your hearts jump when we sing, remember not the sins, the sins of my youth. Anybody say, Amen.

Brethren, I hope that you recognize that what we did when we were lost is not... I mean, I recognize, you may have done something when you're lost that makes it very difficult for people to ever place you in leadership. I recognize there are things you can do that are so pronounced, so bad, so destructive, that it might taint your reputation right on in to your Christianity. I recognize that could be the case.

But by and large, I can tell you this, that as I'm assessing men, I'm looking at their Christian life. When a man falls into sexual sin as a Christian, do you recognize what has just happened? Do you recognize what has happened with Steve Lawson, a man who studies this book and has the light of this book, and to fall and fail? Do you recognize what that says about his faithfulness? His faithfulness to his wife? His faithfulness to his church? His faithfulness to the Word of God? His faithfulness to God Himself? Brethren, this just shatters a man's faithfulness at the deepest level. There's qualifications.

And can a man be restored? Here's the thing, if he's genuinely repentant, well, I guess that would depend. Listen, sometimes people have this idea, well, you haven't forgiven me. Wait, wait, wait, we can forgive you.

That doesn't mean you're qualified. And you don't want to confuse those two. And oftentimes those get confused.

Oftentimes the men that fell, they're ready to tell us they're repentant, as though they are the perfect judge of themselves. Do you recognize what goes on when men fail? When men fall? When men are unfaithful? Do you know what they've done? It's kind of like we were talking about with the deception thing. It's like they've played this game where they've just honed deception.

What do you think they're doing with their life? They are honing hypocrisy. And now they're going to come along and tell me they're masters of discernment with regards to their qualifications to be back in the ministry. Brethren, I would say this, that any man that fell into adultery, are we going to say in our circles, no way, no how, can we say that? Here's the thing, we can look at God as holy, we can look at God as righteous, and we can say this man dishonored God.

Much like was said to David. And we can look at the holiness of God and we can say how bad this is. But you know what? On the same hand, I'll tell you what I have not been able to get over all these years.

Is Peter. You can say to me, sexual sin is different than denying the Lord. You can say that.

I'm not sure you can prove that. Nobody has sufficiently proved to me that somehow Peter's denial of the Lord is in another category from sexual sin. Now there may be realities about how much a man in calculated fashion succumbs to this relationship, gives himself to this illicit relationship over against Peter.

He's being sifted by the devil and he's immediately put in a situation and he crumbles and his repentance is fairly quick thereafter. I mean, you could possibly find some differences. But you know what? I recognize that because there is not a specific word in Scripture about how to restore a man, sometimes people are going to have a tendency to want to go in the direction of, well, isn't God forgiving? Isn't God compassionate? And didn't Jesus Himself restore Peter? And you would say yes.

On the other hand, there's qualifications. Can a man ever get to the place where he's blameless when he falls like this? Honestly, I would just say this, I would be really uncomfortable if the man was trying to put himself back in that position. My expectation would be that if it's going to happen, it's going to be because there is a watching context of the church that he is living.

Basically, he fell into this sin. He's got no demands. Brethren, if there's something that indicates to me a man is riddled with self-righteousness and cannot see himself correctly, it is when a man falls and then he demands that he be forgiven.

He demands that the church respond a certain way. That is not humility. That is not humility at all.

When a man recognizes, you're alright to be offended. And you know what? I mean, you're right. Anybody that says anything negative about me, they're right.

And if that church in that context of the family of God, if they watch this man's life over an extended period of time, brethren, you know, none of us have lived a perfect life. Obviously, in our lost days, we had all sorts of sin. But what happens when a man gets put in a position basically what the church is doing is they're looking at his life and they're evaluating it as a whole.

Does he have a testimony? Is the resounding testimony about his life that he is a man that is blameless? And listen, if you don't think that a man can ever get to that place, I can understand. And you know what? If this man's part of a church, and even if a big chunk of the church they could never see him back in that position. Sometimes after people commit sins like this, they need to go on to different churches.

Is it possible that if they're in a different church, they could be regarded that way? Perhaps. But that man should not even after such a fall, he shouldn't even be thinking about ministry. That should not be... If a man is talking that way already, it's just so plain.

He is not... The man is so far off base. He needs to recognize what he's done. He's not qualified.

He needs to go get a job he is qualified for. He needs to go on with his life. Listen, brethren, if a man falls like that, or a man falls any number of ways, whether it's you, even if you're not in the ministry, brethren, any time we fall into sin, you know what the best thing to do? The best thing is to repent, and the best thing to do is, you can't undo the past.

You never can. But you seek to repair it in the ways that God tells us. You confess sin where it's appropriate.

You try to mend things wherever it's possible. Brethren, the best way forward is not to sulk in your failures of the past, or to multiply failures in the future because of failures in your past. The best way forward is integrity now.

Pure hands. Pure lips. It's pure actions.

You can't undo the past. But the best way forward is to seek to live to God's glory now going forward. And brethren, trust.

Trust is earned. I can forgive somebody, but that doesn't mean I trust them. Why? Because if the man doesn't deserve my trust, you can't just tell people, demand that people trust you.

You can't do that. Trust is earned. And trust is earned by an extended period of time of showing yourself to be of a certain character.

Brethren, these seminaries that are mass manufacturing preachers, pastors, and then these guys go out and they basically send their resume. And then some church hires them who has no idea who these guys are other than they graduated from master's or they graduated from Louisville. And they got the credentials, but they have no idea who they are.

Brethren, that doesn't meet the biblical pattern. And so, anyway. Anything else to be said on that? So, just trying to think through Scripture here.

The list of qualifications for an elder contains more than just faithfulness in marriage, but rather not a drunkard, not violent, not quarrelsome. So let's just say an elder falls into a two month episode where he attends the bar and he gets drunk every night, or he becomes quarrelsome for a time in his life and it seems consistent. Shall we not be able to restore them either? What do you think? Well, I'm not saying that it's impossible to restore the guy that's fallen into the sexual sin.

Right. I would just say this, every situation has to be examined independently because 1 Timothy 5 would seem to indicate to me that if you're an elder and you're habitually committing some sort of sin, there may be a place to publicly rebuke you in front of all. Well, wait a second.

If the man is so guilty of a sin that we need to publicly rebuke him, isn't he so guilty of a sin that disqualifies him? Apparently not. Now you can read the text and you can wrestle with whether you believe that it's specifically elders being dealt with there, but can there be a place for a man to be rebuked by the church? Apparently there is. Can men have weaknesses or give themselves... I think that has to be evaluated as to the nature of the sin because here's the thing.

I'll give you an example. There's a sister church in town. They had an elder.

This elder simply had a Bible study. I say simply. He had a Bible study and there were several people.

Eventually, it dwindled down to one woman. And he found that he was becoming attached emotionally. He broke it off.

He told his wife. He told his fellow elders. Nothing beyond that ever happened.

They actually made it public to the church. His fellow elders did not believe any further action was necessary. The people in the church found that they could no longer hear him and he had to step down.

If a man does something that so discredits him in front of the church that they find it impossible to be led by him or to have that respect or to hear him teach on something, then you've lost your ability to minister to the people. I think every situation we have to evaluate based on the nature of the sin. But yes, any one of those things could be... The church needs to be responsible to make sure not just when we first bring a man into the eldership, but there needs to be an accountability.

A man needs to toe the line here. He is in a place of leadership. He's in a place of teaching.

He's in a place where he's going to face the greater judgment. He's in a place where we want a man who has a sensitive conscience. Whose integrity characterizes his life.

Because there is a reality to God using clean vessels. We have that truth in 2 Timothy. And when you have a man... I think the thing about one of the pastors that just recently very famously has fallen, Mack told me, I think I might have mentioned this here, but Mack told me that somebody in his church had been at a conference and asked him about his devotional life.

And he basically admitted that he didn't have one. And that his time in the Scripture was preparing for sermons. They talk about these men who fell from such heights.

And a lot of times we don't know how low they already were. I mean, usually these men did not fall from some great height. They had already descended down so low that when they fell, they were already there.

The groundwork was there already for this. And so, we need churches that are going to be faithful to the men. And just because a man has to be rebuked or a man has to confess something or whatever, that is a sign.

Church discipline is a sign of a healthy church. I don't know if we've ever had a situation where somebody's had to stand up and publicly rebuke a pastor. We've had all sorts of stuff happen over the years.

But you know what? These are healthy things. I think the thing that needs to be asked is not so much does it make us comfortable or uncomfortable, but it's the truth of things. I mean, over the years, I've had people level accusations at me.

And you can't just go into the default defensive mechanism. You actually have to think, is there truth to it? There's been various times over the years it's like they're right. That's right what they're saying.

There's a lot of accusations that there's no credibility to it at all. But we have to be honest enough before God to say... And then you need other people speaking too. We can get to a place where we feel like I don't think there's any validity to that.

And you know what? You've got your fellow elders saying, no, there's validity to it. And it's like, oh... In all these things, it's like we just recognize God's being faithful to us. The main thing is to make it to the end of this race.

Not to stay in the ministry as long as we possibly can, but make it to the end of this race. So really, one doesn't... You can't look at this list and go, well, this first one's the highest one. And at the end you do these other things.

Everything, even that one. That must be seems to override not just blamelessness, but all the way down through the list. These are things that have to be.

These are not negotiables. So I guess what I'm not talking about when being an elder, I'm talking about the restoration after a time. So 10 years, 20 years goes down the road, and this one man who was drunk for two months, does he ever get restored? The man that committed adultery 20 years ago, does he ever get restored to that position? I'm more asking about the restoration rather than the qualification of something present.

Yeah. I mean, like I say, every situation we have to... One of the things is, oftentimes God doesn't give us these precise examples or precise statements on how to do a thing because we are people that are called to live in His presence and be guided by the Spirit and acknowledging God in all of our ways. I mean, He wants us dependent on Him.

And I can tell you this, as elders, the kind of situations that we're faced with, whether it's one another or disciplinary situations or people within the church that's dealing with sin problems, you almost never run into a situation that you say, well, that's textbook. It's like there are always these mitigating factors that you find yourself cast on the Lord. And so, I would say that, like, Lord, You of all people know the hearts of men.

Because there's a lot of things, I mean, when it comes to repentance, a lot of times you find people so ready to say they're repentant after their extended season of sin or their fall or whatever it is, it's like you really think after you've been making all these wrong decisions and you've got... It's like MacArthur said to somebody, he got a young couple in there thinking, is it God's will for you to get married? And they're like, yes, yes, yes, it's God's will for us to get married. He says, have you had sex? And they're like, well, yeah, we have. It's like, why would you think that I'm going to believe that you have the ability to discern God's will with regards to whether you should be married or not when you seem like you're having a pretty tough time discerning what His revealed will is in the Scripture.

And so it's kind of the same for a man that falls into sin. It's like you want to see something demonstrated. If a man has a fall, I mean, there's always a place to evaluate.

Is this the kind of thing that's going to discredit him? You know, you have all these principles. Love covers a multitude of sins. At the same time, you're wanting to make sure that the man is still qualified.

We know nobody's perfect. And so, how much are we willing to tolerate a man's weakness? When does that weakness become disqualifying? Because nobody is perfect. And then you can go through seasons where maybe your hospitality falls off.

Maybe nobody's even assessing that anymore. I mean, sometimes we have to live in the sight of God as well. Go back through those things.

Where am I at with regards to this? How am I managing my household? Where am I at? Where am I at with my temper? Where am I at with my anger? Where am I at with... I mean, there's all sorts of... But I'll tell you, when you have a church where people... The thing about, I think, a healthy church is people are communicating. People are watching. People are able to communicate where concerns are.

We're not so thin-skinned that we're all offended all the time and running out the door and leaving to another church because somebody comes and they address us on something. I mean, we need to be able to biblically reflect. Especially in the leadership.

I mean, I've said it before. You guys ought to be able to... You guys ought to be able to ask any one of us, when's the last time you viewed pornography? You know, are you... You ought to be able to ask when's the last time you got drunk? When's the last time you... You fill in the blank. You ought to be able to ask us about that.

Brethren, we're going to be judged with a greater judgment in the midst of all this. I mean, if we can get to the place where our conscience is so dulled that we can begin to live loose and begin to get loose around the edges and you begin to let the foundations go away. That's how you get to places like Lawson.

You don't get there overnight. It's like the foundation begins to give way. And if you've got people in the church that are recognizing that that foundation's giving away and you're not rising up to the occasion, you're not loving the brethren, loving the church, loving that individual as you ought.

Anyways, it's a high calling and the standard is high and we ought to expect that it's going to be high. There needs to be mercy in the midst of all of it. And I think, you know what? Everybody's going to have different ideas.

This is one of the reasons why we recognize there are going to be differences of opinion because it's going to depend on what you emphasize most. I'm sure that if you all followed some of our disciplinary situations, if you knew all the facts, you would think we did not act fast enough. There are other people who absolutely believe that we are using church discipline over the top, excessively.

Different people are going to have different ideas. You know what we have? We have the standard texts to go on that are in Scripture and we have to prayerfully try to figure out how to apply those things. I mean, you sit down with a guy who's pleading with you not to discipline him.

Very likable guy. He's trying to convince you that the safest place for him to be in the church and he's fighting this and he's repentant and on and on and on. But you've been dealing with this thing over and over and it's become years now.

And it's like, persuade us biblically that we shouldn't do this. We're leaving leaven in the church. I mean, these things are difficult.

Putting people out of the church is difficult. Oftentimes, the rest of the church doesn't even know the sin that's going on in their life. It's like we're being seen as heavy handed and we're doing this, and all the time what's driving us is the purity of the church.

We don't want the leaven that leavens the lump. These things are difficult. I mean, we've actually been in a position before where we've removed an elder.

We've been in a position before where we've removed a deacon. Difficult, difficult situations. I don't want to ever go through those things again, let alone be the recipient of it.

But if we're going to be faithful to Scripture, we've got to do what we've got to do even when it's hard to do. Anyway, not going to get to the last one. Let's close.

Father, I pray that You would help us to have a pure church, pure leadership, a purity among the brethren, a godliness, a pursuit of godliness, putting off the things of the old man, putting on the things that resonate with the new man created in the very image of God. Lord, we want that reality to be among us. People, these new creations, supernatural righteousness produced in the people of God.

We pray that the blood of Christ and the power thereof, He that came to basically eradicate the works of the devil, we see what that is. The sin that just authors, leads people, tempts people into. Lord, we pray that You'd help us to be a people that follow in these pure paths of Christ.

We ask it in His name, Amen. Okay, brethren.