Making Sense of the Failures of Godly Leaders, Past and Present

Sinners and Saints

John Owen and Richard Baxter were both giants of the faith in so many ways. When you think about famous and influential figures in church history, there they stand. They really are so impressive. The mere fact that between them they wrote over 200 books—some of them very long. I have not read all those books, but I’ve read a lot of them. As I engage with their writings and I hear what’s coming through, I’m so impressed by their dedication, passion, and commitment. It’s absolutely incredible.

And yet at the same time, as I look at the story of their relationship and how it breaks down between them, I see pride, I see what we would call ego, I see brittleness, I see a lack of humility, I see all sorts of flaws. And I’m afraid that coming out of the story, they don’t look too good. They don’t look like saints. And what do we do with that? How do we respond to that?

Martin Luther said something very helpful: We are sinners and saints at the same time. It’s part of the human condition. It’s part of human sinfulness and brokenness. We are both great and not great all at the same time. And I think that’s a really important thing to grapple with and understand and accept that that’s a reality.

We’re going to have amazing strengths as Christians, as God works in us and as we try to faithfully follow Christ. And we’re going to also have some weaknesses. I think recognizing that is a really good first step.

Then we could ask some questions of ourselves. Self-knowledge is a really helpful quality in a mature Christian—to really know ourselves and to know what’s going on inside of us. We should know what our besetting sins are, what our weaknesses are, and as we live faithfully for God, try and work with those and around those.

We also need to ask God himself to reveal to us what we are not seeing.

But that’s not enough. I think we also need to ask God himself to reveal to us what we are not seeing. I do see in the story of Owen and Baxter a certain level of self-blindness, not self-understanding and self-knowledge.

And this is the really brave step: to ask others. Ask others whom we trust who know us well and say, “What do you see? What do you see in me? What do you see that I don’t see that is just unhelpful and not Christlike? How can I work on that? And could you help me work on that?”

If only Baxter and Owen had been able to demonstrate that kind of self-understanding and humility, their story would’ve played out very differently.

That’s their story, but our story is still playing out. And I think those are good and helpful questions to ask as we try to live faithfully for God, even in a fallen world.

Tim Cooper is the author of When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter.

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