Philip Yancey’s adultery still points to Jesus’ amazing grace

By Cassy Benefield | FāVS News Columnist

When I first read the news about Philip Yancey’s confession of an eight-year affair, I thought ‘Are Christians not supposed to have any heroes?’ Because Yancey is one of my heroes. 

His confession forced me to ask what it really means for Christians to have heroes at all.

I’ve not read all of his books. What I have read by him have been pieces of writing that have given me spiritual clarity and insight that still informs my faith today, one of a life closely yielded to God’s grace.

Yancey’s “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” reworked my fundamentalist mindset that I cocooned myself in for about 10 years into something that looks closer to Jesus today. Fundamentalism was my comfort blanket, my “bible” of rules of what not only separated me from the unbeliever, but also the wrong kind of Christian.

This way of thinking didn’t just shape my theology; it shaped what I loved. 

I became hyper-focused on apologetics in a way I now see was very unhealthy spiritually. I was chasing certainty, not a relationship with God or others. Prior to fundamentalism, I thought if God wanted us to follow the truth, why were there all these different religions? 

Once convinced Christianity was God’s truth, I graduated to if God’s truth is found in Christianity, why were there so many types of Christianities? Surely there is one denomination or “faith family” that is still carrying the “real” truths of God according to the Bible today?

Independent Fundamental Baptists are very keen on saying they are the ones who are “God’s-true-church” because they follow the Bible while others don’t. So, I consumed mass amounts of information learning where IFB doctrines were correct (because they had the truth!) and where other beliefs and denominations were not. 

Only, this exercise in my faith really didn’t bring me closer to God. It brought me closer to a human-focused “certainty” that I don’t believe is possible anymore on this side of heaven. This is why Yancey mattered so much to me. He showed me the path of Jesus’ love.

I looked up to his Christianity, especially as a fellow writer. I have always desired a writing mentor. Someone who could take me under their wings and nurture the gift I know God has given me. Call it my version of being a romantic.

The power of a writing mentor

I didn’t just admire Yancey; I trusted him because we walked a similar path.

Yancey’s pen took my dream to another level because he experienced a fundamentalist background like the one I tried on. Yet he was given a glimpse of grace that he shared with and liberated many hearts from their former soul-sucking legalism.

Yancey’s wisdom and the way he processed the hard truths of Christian living were soul giving to me when I needed his words most. I needed the honesty of how he dealt with the painful disillusionment he saw in God’s people. 

I needed to learn from his season of walking away from God, and how he afterward dedicated his writing to God for God’s glory and others’ good, knowing that his writing was God’s gift to him in the first place.

This is what I desire from my life. To dedicate something I know is a gift, but one I still need to practice, nurture and polish, sometimes through blood, sweat and tears, to the one who created it within me.

But to now see his books on my shelves, knowing the richness of the truth and wisdom of God that fill their pages, and that for the last eight years of his life he carried this open sin of adultery not only shocks me, it gives me pause. 

I ask again, ‘Are Christians not meant to have any heroes?’

This question becomes more complicated when power and harm are involved.

Comparing celebrity scandals

Here is Yancey, yet another Christian American celebrity caught in the trap of his own temptation for all the world to witness.

Is his sin different, say, than Ravi Zacharias’ — another Christian celebrity I held as a hero, whose book “Sense and Sensuality: Jesus Talks to Oscar Wilde on the Pursuit of Pleasure,” is still on my bookshelf because of what it taught me on the sanctity of God’s design on sexuality?

I can’t answer that. But I don’t think the response to sin is insignificant.

Sheila Gregorie on her Bare Marriage Facebook page makes a credible argument saying there are elements of abuse in these kinds of affairs by Christian male celebrities for two main reasons, and these are the types of people who are most likely to have affairs. 

“Research shows that men are far more likely to cheat when they: 1. Feel entitled and 2. Have hostile or benevolent sexism,” she writes, dismissing the common “sin-leveling” arguments that arise when celebrities fall. “And unfortunately evangelicalism feeds both of those, by telling men they’re entitled to their wife’s bodies; that sin isn’t their fault really; and that women should give them unconditional respect.”

While not all sin is the same, I think it’s not this idea that someone falls short of the glory of God, because the Bible says we all fall short of God’s perfection. (Romans 3:23) 

This still includes individuals who believe in God and who the Bible says are privileged as sons and daughters to be disciplined by him. This is not to cause us shame, but for the freedom of knowing his grace more intimately and at the same time be fashioned more and more into Jesus’ holy image. (Hebrews 12:4-11)

As far as falling short of God’s grace, we all fall short of that because that’s key to the definition of grace. It is the unmerited favor of God upon our lives despite what we have done, what we do and what we will do.

Perhaps it matters more what a person does with their sin when caught or exposed. I think of Zacharias when he denied his sexually predatory behavior only to have the world find out in an investigation that he lied and that one of his victims said he “called her his ‘reward’ for living a life of service to God.” 

Can someone like Zacharias or Yancey, then, still be called a hero?

Yancey’s now ubiquitous confession of repentance lacks the passage of time as a witness to whether his statement is authentic. 

“Having disqualified myself from Christian ministry, I am therefore retiring from writing, speaking, and social media,” Christianity Today reported him writing. “Instead, I need to spend my remaining years living up to the words I have already written. I pray for God’s grace and forgiveness—as well as yours—and for healing in the lives of those I’ve wounded.”

I conclude this means he will no longer platform himself — either for money or for fame — in the name of Jesus Christ for ministry purposes the rest of his time on Earth. I can respect that.

A path forward

I pray that in his repentance, he finds, yet again, the immeasurable grace of God, taking him up into his wings of care and forgiveness. Mostly, I pray God takes care of those Yancey has desperately wounded by his duplicity in that amazing grace Yancey so often wrote about.

But I know, and likely Yancey also knows, there are still consequences for his sin. This follows stories we read in the Bible about people God uses. 

Think Abraham the serial liar called God’s friend. Noah the drunk referred to as “perfect in his generations.” Rahab the prostitute, a Gentile woman in Jesus’ lineage. King David the adulterer and murderer identified as “a man after [God’s] own heart.” All of whom are included in Hebrews Chapter 11, which is known as the Bible’s Hall of Faith.

Yet, in the following chapter in Hebrews, I think it can be read that God guides our eyes off of these human and fallible “clouds of witnesses” onto the real hero of our stories: Jesus Christ.

The Bible says he is the author and completer of our faith, unto whom our eyes should remain fixed. (Hebrews 12:2) Because it always was and it will always be Jesus’ grace that is so amazing.

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.

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