The top three responses of those processing this sad story seem to be:

1. A call to let this event remind us that we are all sinners. We are to take stock in our moral weaknesses and say, “But for the grace of God there go I.”
2. Instruction to take our eyes off people and set them on Christ instead.
3. Extensive consideration of the practical ways we can avoid falling into sin.

Unleashed under this third response are any number of speculations on how this failure came about—the stress of the limelight; the result of boredom often found in a type A personalities or burnout; the lack of accountability; the failure to set up guard rails against temptation etc.

This third and possibly most common response is then to offer up consideration on practical strategies for maintaining a morally uncompromised life. I believe that this response dangerously places our faith on the same plane as every other religion and misses the power and promise the Christian faith holds out to us.

When we limit ourselves to implementing practical ways from falling into sin we simply put Christianity on the plane of every other religion and we leave off the one thing that promises to make our faith stand out above all others. No one can argue that the Word of God does not offer wonderfully practical advice for navigating this dark sinful world. And the further we get away from God’s Word the stupider we become in our patterns of behavior.

However, the danger in focusing on practical strategies for avoiding sin is that we communicate that the Christian life nothing more than learning how to artfully navigate around moral potholes. Every religion has its strategies for achieving moral goals. If this is where we settle in our message, we have stopped short of true Christianity and are merely teaching ethics and behavioral adjustment.

The Christian faith begins and ends in the power and promise of an exchanged life. It begins in a regenerate nature where Christ comes and resides with in us by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us persons that we can never make of ourselves through mere practicalities. The Word of God is exceedingly practical but our flesh isn’t practical at all. It constantly pulls us into the folly of sin. And our flesh can be refined and directed into more seemly behavior but at its best it will only produce what in God’s eyes are filthy rags. The answer God gives us for Satan’s temptations, the world’s allure and this overwhelming force of our sinful flesh is far more than advice on how to make good choices and how to put ourselves in the best positions to avoid trouble. God gives us Himself. He promises to live out from us His holiness as we surrender the totality of ourselves to Him.

“If anyone be in Christ he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold everything has become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).” Your body is roiling with sin but if you are a true Christian you are not a body with a spirit; You are a new, born again spirit with a body and the spirit commands. This new man in partnership with the Holy Spirit has available to Him the power to put to death the sinful deeds done in the flesh. (Romans 8:12 says as much). With this life God gives us words of tremendous promise. Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place (2 Corinthians 2:14). “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us(Romans 8:37).” Paul is talking about conquering sin.

Yes, famous failures may cause us to consider practical strategies for avoiding sin. But most importantly they should turn us back into the Lord’s provision for ourselves of His sanctifying life. These types of stunning failures should turn us back to God to say, “Oh God take over my life. Live through my life those things that bring honor and glory to You.”

Having addressed these concerns now let me briefly turn back to Ravi Zacharias and the conundrum of the testimony he has left behind. What do we say about one who claims and proclaims this kind of prevailing, transcendent Christianity and then fails to exhibit it in his life? How do we account for the leader who promotes the glories of the Gospel publicly but privately lives a double life of ongoing, unrepentant moral failure? We have to reach one of two conclusions. One conclusion is that what they professed to believe is not true. “God can’t deliver us. There is no powerful new man that supplants the old man in us. There is no power from God to grant us triumph in the face of great temptation and evil. It is all a fragile trick of the mind and nothing more.” Either what they profess to believe is not true or they did not REALLY believe it. Either the breakdown is in God’s power to save to the uttermost or the breakdown exposes a faithless form of godliness that denies the power thereof.

So where does this leave us with someone who was a leader in the Christian world who was revealed to be living a fraudulent life.

1. Do not mistake a full headed intellectual delight in the wonders of the Christian faith and truth for a full-hearted surrender to Christ.
2. Do not mistake the sentimental stirrings at the beauty of the gospel for the self-emptying, Christ filling work of grace God brings when He applies that gospel to any man or woman.
3. Just because of person is intellectually and emotionally and willfully committed to arguing for and standing to the truths of Christianity does not mean they have surrendered at the foot of the Cross to the Lord Jesus. They may only be projecting themselves on the surface of these truths for their own sense of importance, much like the Pharisees projected themselves upon the law of God for their own sense of self-worth.