Ministers with Character Flaws

 Ministers are called by God with flaws such as Peter a trader, liar, hot headed and very loquacious.  Judas was a greedy, dishonest and manipulating thief.  Peter and Judas both had been handpicked by Jesus for ministry. They had received a personal call “come follow me and I will make you fishers of men,” yet these men had character flaws.   In his personal walk with Christ, Judas was consumed by his demon of greed and theft and eventually committed suicide.  Peter converted from sin and in time was able to grow and strengthen the saints through his writings in I & II Peter.

The purpose of Christian conversion is to change one’s character in to Christ like character.  Occasionally we may find Religious leaders in the news media under the heading “The ______Scandal”.
While still conducting their sinful practices all in the name of God, some have chosen to maintain their mal practice as a religious leader and not convert to true holiness.  When Jesus says to his disciple Peter, “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Luke 22:32, He wants to prevent the making of mal practicing Christian Leaders, who wear religious titles and assume religious positions, but yet need to be converted. 

The passage “Peter when you are converted strengthen your brother” conveys to us that a person can be called by God to do ministry and still have character flaws. In John 13:18 Jesus said “I know whom I have chosen…”  The question is will the minister whom the Lord has chosen be converted and grow or will the minister play the role of a hypocrite and be consumed by his or her demon?  The antithesis of the problem is; cover the sin or be converted from the sin. When a person covers his or her sin then he or she will eventually be consumed by their sin.  Example: Achan and the golden wedge, Ananias and Sapphire (greed and lying) to the Holy Ghost.  The objective is to remit character flaws and grow into a more mature, stable, flawless Christian. Each day God gives us grace to grow and the opportunity to perfect holiness in the fear of God. 

So many Christians today are professing to be Christians without full conversion.  How messy, messy, messy!  A person who ministers to someone without being fully converted himself is like putting a bandage on an open sore without washing and cleaning the wound first.  The unclean wound filled with oozing whitish - yellow pus, blood, and bacteria will spread more and more infectiously throughout the body.  

Jesus in His wisdom saw the good that was in Peter and was not willing to terminate Peter’s ministry but, Jesus knew that before Peter could honestly and effectively help others again, he needed to take the time to repent, regroup and to heal wounds of the soul before attempting to advise, preach or minister to someone else. Without the proper steps of spiritual restoration the infectious evils will spread throughout the body of Christ.  Band aids such as; He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone... John 8:7;  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Romans 3:23-26 are good to cover the hideous sores of sin, but Jesus instructs Peter “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Luke 22:32.  In other words when you have sinned please clean your infectious sores of sin before you reach out an infected hand to help someone else.

The objective of the Christian life style is to convert to a Christ like pure life style.