Money, Sex, and Power

Today's Scripture

1 Timothy 3:2-3 — "Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money."

1 Timothy 6:9-10 — "But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs."

1 Peter 5:2-3 — "Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock."

The Big Idea

Christian leaders rarely collapse because they got a doctrine wrong first. They collapse in three old, familiar rooms: money, sex, and power. The Bible knows this — which is why it builds leadership around character instead of talent, and guardrails instead of willpower. And it points us to the one Leader who had all the power in the universe and used it to serve.

Reflection

Three rooms where leaders fall

Run through the failures in the New Testament itself. Judas — money. Demas — "in love with this present world." Diotrephes — who loved "to put himself first" (3 John 9). Ananias and Sapphira — money again, dressed up as generosity. Notice what is missing: almost none of them failed an exam in theology. They failed in appetite.

This is why Paul's checklist for an overseer — his word for a church leader, a shepherd — is so strange to modern eyes. 1 Timothy 3:2-3 lists almost no skills. It does not say gifted communicator, grows attendance, strong on stage. It says "self-controlled," "gentle," "not a lover of money." The one ability mentioned, "able to teach," sits in a crowd of character words a next-door neighbor could verify. Then comes the power warning: 1 Timothy 3:6 — "He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil." Hand a person a platform too fast, and pride does to them what it did to the devil.

Why these three rooms? Because money, sex, and power are where our deepest hungers live — security, intimacy, significance. None of the three is evil in itself. Each becomes deadly when it stops being a thing we use and becomes a thing we worship. John Calvin diagnosed the machinery underneath:

"Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

An idol is not a statue. Tim Keller translates Calvin into a sentence you can test yourself with:

"An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, 'If I have that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I'll feel significant and secure.'" — Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

Jesus said the choice is binary. Luke 16:13 — "No servant can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and money." Not should not. Cannot. A ministry quietly organized around one of these hungers is already serving a different master, long before the scandal makes the news.

And notice the violence of Paul's language about where the hunger leads. 1 Timothy 6:9-10 — those who desire to be rich "fall into temptation, into a snare," they "plunge into ruin and destruction," they have "pierced themselves with many pangs." Snares, plunging, piercing. Paul is not describing a personality flaw. He is describing a hunting accident — where the hunter is also the prey. The love of money does not just bend a ministry; it wounds the person carrying it, from the inside, before anyone else can see the blood.

Augustine tells on himself

You might think this is a modern problem — celebrity pastors, podcasts, platforms. It is at least sixteen hundred years old, and the most honest report ever filed came from inside.

Augustine was a brilliant young teacher in the fourth century, climbing the career ladder of the Roman Empire, addicted to ambition and to sex. Years later, as a bishop, he wrote Confessions — a book-length prayer in which he names his old sins out loud, with his name on the cover. He remembers the prayer he used to pray as a young man:

"Give me chastity and continency, only not yet." — Augustine, Confessions

Chastity and continency are old words for sexual purity and self-control. Be honest: it might be the most relatable prayer in church history. God, make me good — but not until I'm done enjoying this. Half of him wanted holiness. The other half wanted one more day. And Augustine watched, with terrifying clarity, what those days were doing to him:

"I was bound, not by an iron from another, but by my own iron will... For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity." — Augustine, Confessions

Read that progression slowly. A desire indulged becomes a habit. A habit unresisted becomes a chain. That is the anatomy of every leadership collapse you have ever read about: not one dramatic decision, but a thousand small surrenders, made in private, years before anything became public. Which is exactly what Proverbs 4:23 warns: "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life." The scandal is never the beginning of the story. The heart is.

Guardrails, not willpower

Drive a mountain road and you will pass steel guardrails on every sharp curve. Here is the thing about guardrails: they are installed before anyone crashes. Nobody calls that insulting to drivers. We call it wisdom about gravity.

The New Testament thinks about leaders the same way. It does not say, "Find heroes with unusual willpower." It builds rails.

For money: when Paul collected a large offering for the poor in Jerusalem, he refused to carry it alone — he sent trusted brothers along, on purpose, in public. 2 Corinthians 8:21 — "for we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of man." More than one set of eyes on the money is not suspicion; it is Scripture. A leader who sets his own salary, controls his own books, and answers to no one is standing on a curve with no rail.

For sex: the old disciplines are unglamorous and effective. Honest friends who know where your real temptations live, not just the rehearsed ones. Doors with windows. A marriage that is a partnership, not a prop. John Owen, the Puritan, said the work is daily or it is nothing:

"Be killing sin or it will be killing you." — John Owen, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

There is no neutral, Owen insists. Sin in the heart is never parked; it is always moving, one direction or the other. (Mortification, by the way, just means putting sin to death — starving it instead of feeding it.)

For power: 1 Peter 5:2-3 tells shepherds to lead "not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock." Domineering — bossing, controlling, punishing dissent — is treated as a disqualifying sin, not a leadership style. Richard Baxter, a pastor writing to pastors in the 1600s, aimed the warning at the mirror:

"Take heed to yourselves, lest you be void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others, and be strangers to the effectual working of that gospel which you preach." — Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

It is possible, Baxter says, to hand out bread you have stopped eating. The rails exist because that danger is real for everyone — which is also why this day is not only about leaders. You have the same three rooms. Smaller stage, same hungers. The same guardrails, scaled down — honest money conversations, real accountability, friends with permission to question you — protect ordinary lives too.

The King who used power to wash feet

Underneath money, sex, and power sits one master-sin, and C.S. Lewis names it:

"It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Pride is the engine in all three rooms — my security, my pleasure, my throne. So how does God answer it? Not first with a rulebook, but with a person.

Mark 10:42-45 — "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant... For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Jesus had unlimited power and never once used it on his own behalf. Offered all the kingdoms of the world, he said no. Rich beyond imagining, he became poor. Facing the cross, he prayed "not my will, but yours." Then he took the towel, washed feet, and paid a ransom — the price to buy slaves free — with his own life. He is the only leader in history with nothing to hide, and he used his power to die for the people under his care.

That is your protection and your hope, in this order. Protection: measure every leader, including yourself, against the Son of Man with the towel, and be slow to trust any shepherd who refuses rails. Hope: when you find Augustine's chain on your own wrist — and you will — remember that the gospel is not "try harder." It is that Christ has already served you, already paid for the failures in all three rooms, and his Spirit now works freedom where willpower failed. The leaders who finish well are not the strongest people. They are the ones who knew they weren't.

Going Deeper

Take the three rooms — money, sex, power — and ask which one is loudest in your life right now. (For most of us, one clearly is.) Then build one rail this week, something structural, not just a resolution: an automatic giving plan, accountability on your devices, a standing weekly conversation with a friend who may ask you anything, or a confession you have been postponing. Leaders who finish well build the rail before the curve. Today is before.