During the 1980s, Jim Bakker was a prominent evangelist with a hugely successful television ministry. However, in 1990, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of defrauding his ministry’s supporters of approximately $158 million. In 1993, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison, a sentence that was later reduced to eight years on appeal. He ultimately served five years before being released.

While in prison, during his first year, Bakker read The Awe of God by John Bevere and requested a visit from the author. During that visit, as John later recounted, he asked Jim when, during his successful ministry career, he had gone wrong—when he had fallen out of love with Jesus.

Jim’s reply struck me deeply:

“John, I never fell out of love with Jesus. I loved Him all the way through it. But I didn’t fear God.”

He went on to say that many Christians are like he was—people who love Jesus but do not fear God.

I’m afraid he’s right. Many of them, like him, are successful and prominent in Christian ministry. That is the only explanation I have found for a phenomenon that has long puzzled me.

I regularly read The Roys Report, a newsletter dedicated to transparency and integrity within the evangelical church. Nearly every week, it reports on pastors and other high-profile Christian leaders who fall spectacularly—often at the peak of their careers—due to sin that had persisted for years. I have no trouble understanding how Christians can fall into sin (I only have to look at myself) but I find it difficult to understand how such men could stand in the pulpit week after week, preaching God’s Word or presiding at the Lord’s Table. Personally, I would not dare to live such a double life, I would be afraid God would strike me down. In fact, it is precisely the  awareness of my own sinfulness that has always led me to decline invitations to preach. Jim Bakker’s confession—“I never fell out of love with Jesus, but I didn’t fear God”—is the only reason I can conceive of for how these fallen leaders could continue ministering, even successfully, while living in duplicity.

Another dimension of this troubling pattern is the question of how such leaders can continue to be successful despite the hidden sin in their lives. I found a possible answer in Ezekiel 44:

“Surely the Levites who wandered away from me when Israel went astray, and who strayed from me after their idols, will bear the consequences of their iniquity. Yet they will occupy my sanctuary, serving as guards at the temple gates and ministering at the temple. They will slaughter the burnt offerings and other sacrifices for the people and will stand before them to serve them. Because they ministered to the house of Israel before their idols and became a sinful stumbling block to them, therefore I swore an oath against them”—this is the declaration of the Lord God—“that they would bear the consequences of their iniquity. They must not approach me to serve me as priests or come near any of my holy things or the most holy things. They will bear their disgrace and the consequences of the detestable acts they committed. Yet I will make them responsible for the duties of the temple—for all its work and everything done in it.” (Ezekiel 44:10–14, CSB)

It is as though God is saying: I will not punish the people by withholding the ministry they need just because their shepherds have gone astray. By God’s grace, even unworthy ministers can preach His Word and serve as instruments of His grace.