Teaching Tuesday: The Fall - Genesis 3

January 20th, 2026

Series: Creation to Covenant - Genesis 1-11
Sermon: The Fall - Genesis 3 (1.18.26)
Watch the message HERE.

Several years ago, Tullian Tchividjian committed the sin of adultery. While always terrible, Tullian’s sin was particularly devastating because he was the pastor of a church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian in Fort Lauderdale, Florida - a large and impactful congregation with thousands of people affected by his bad choices, to say nothing of his wife and three children. To pile on the ripple effects even more, Tullian is a grandson of Billy Graham, so this was a big, big story when it broke.

A few weeks ago, famous Christian author and speaker Philip Yancey publicly confessed his own sin of adultery. In a post of Facebook, Tullian - who has repented and is now pastoring another church - wrote this about Yancey:

Philip Yancey, one of the most influential Christian writers of the last fifty years, has confessed to an eight-year affair. He is 76 years old.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Yancey authored award-winning books like “What’s So Amazing About Grace”, “Disappointment with God”, and “The Jesus I Never Knew”. His writing gave countless people permission to wrestle honestly with faith, doubt, suffering, and grace. I’ve long admired him. His books shaped me. And none of this changes any of that.

The news is, of course, heartbreaking. News like this always re-breaks my heart and sends shivers down my spine, because it pulls me back into the devastation I caused by my own infidelity—the wreckage, the shockwaves, the lives of those I love altered in ways that never fully return to “before.”

An affair is not an abstract moral failure. It is a long obedience in deception, and it leaves wreckage in its wake. Trust me, I know. Real people, especially those closest, carry the weight of betrayal, disorientation, grief, and a loss of trust that words alone cannot repair. Any talk of grace that does not first make room for that devastation is not grace at all; it’s evasion. For those affected, it’s understandable that hearing about grace in any form might feel like an allergen right now, a bitter reminder that feels premature or even painful.

What shocks me most, however, isn’t Philip’s sin. It’s the way Christian subculture routinely reacts when broken people break things.

Disappointment? Yes. Sadness? Absolutely. Feeling gut-punched? Of course. But shock? That’s the tell.

Shock almost always signals that Christian subculture is still operating with a high anthropology rather than a low one. We say we believe in the depth of human brokenness, but we rarely believe it applies to the people we admire most. We expect sin in theory, just not in our heroes.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve come to believe there is a fundamental difference between certain people and the rest of us—that some are less broken, less fragile, less capable of failure. But while there are functional differences between roles, statuses, and responsibilities, there is no fundamental difference at the level of human nature. The idea that some people don’t struggle with the same fears, temptations, and contradictions as everyone else is a myth. Human beings are human beings, carrying the same flaws, anxieties, and sinful tendencies across the board. No one lives outside the bounds of reality or human nature.

I have a friend who once said that all of us are three bad days away from becoming a tabloid headline and most of us are already on day two. All have fallen short, across every culture, vocation, ideology, and persuasion under the sun. Sin is a shared, ever-present reality, something that clings to all of us. All of us.

So if our theology leaves us stunned by human failure, it may be worth asking whether we’ve quietly believed in ourselves more than we realized.

What’s so amazing about grace? It covers both the sin of adultery and the sin of the one who looks down on the adulterer. It doesn’t excuse the devastation. It doesn’t bypass the wounded. It doesn’t ask whether one fall is worse than another. Grace simply shows up where it is needed most—over the wreckage, over the betrayal, over us all.

Martin Luther once preached, "I beg you, join us truly great and hardboiled sinners so that you do not diminish Christ for us, who is not a Savior for imaginary or trivial sins but rather for real sins - not only small ones but great ones. You must get used to the fact that Christ is a real Savior and you are a real sinner. God does not play games or indulge in make-believe. It was no joke that he sent us his Son and gave him up for us."

We are victims of The Fall and contributors to it. But those in Christ will not remain fallen. Creation will not always groan. The cross is bloody and the tomb is empty. By grace, our sins - our real sins; our specific sins - have been forgiven. Through faith, we have been saved.

Christ Jesus has crushed the head of the devil serpent.

TO KNOW HIM AND MAKE HIM KNOWN!

- Pastor Brady

Posted in Teaching Tuesdays