Wired Word Lesson of the Week

The Wired Word

Topic for Sunday, February 1, 2026:

Author of Bestseller About Grace Needs a Double Dose Now: Popular Christian author Philip Yancey has confessed to an eight-year extramarital affair and says he is retiring from writing and speaking. We will discuss personal failure, self-righteousness, forgiveness, grace, and finishing well.

In the News

Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the February 1st bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:

Popular Christian author Philip Yancey made the news last week in an unexpected way. The 76-year-old confessed, to his "great shame," that he had "willfully engaged in a sinful affair with a married woman" for eight years. He said he had confessed his sin before God and his wife Janet, to whom he has been married for 55 years.

"My conduct defied everything that I believe about marriage. It was also totally inconsistent with my faith and my writings and caused deep pain for her husband and both of our families. I will not share further details out of respect for the other family. ... I have failed morally and spiritually, and I grieve over the devastation I have caused. I realize that my actions will disillusion readers who have previously trusted in my writing. Worst of all, my sin has brought dishonor to God. I am filled with remorse and repentance, and I have nothing to stand on except God's mercy and grace."

Adding that he had "disqualified" himself from Christian ministry, he announced his retirement from writing, speaking and social media, to seek professional counseling and accountability, to focus "on rebuilding trust and restoring my marriage" and to "pray for God's grace and forgiveness ... and for healing" for those he has wounded.

In 2023, Yancey disclosed that he had Parkinson's disease, which caused him to think about new limitations and his own mortality. He said that his wife demonstrated "selfless, fierce loyalty" even as she grappled with the probability that he would need her to become his caregiver.

"Speaking from a place of trauma and devastation that only people who have lived through betrayal can understand," Janet Yancey said in her own statement. "Yet I made a sacred and binding marriage vow 55½ years ago, and I will not break that promise," she added. "I accept and understand that God through Jesus has paid for and forgiven the sins of the world, including Philip's. God grant me the grace to forgive also, despite my unfathomable trauma. Please pray for us."

Philip Yancey has published 17 million copies of his works, which have been translated into more than 40 languages. He has written 30 books, including The Jesus I Never Knew, Where Is God When It Hurts? and What's So Amazing About Grace?

Some have wondered whether Christians would grant the same grace to Yancey that he so often wrote and spoke about.

"This is not a moment for judgment, but for compassion," wrote Archbishop Joseph D'Souza, President of the All India Christian Council. "We believe in a God whose grace is greater than our worst failures, a God who forgives completely through the finished work of Jesus Christ. ... Yet forgiveness does not erase consequences. Eight years of willful disobedience have left deep wounds, and Philip's human legacy now carries a shadow that was not there before. He has not, in the eyes of many, 'finished well.'"

A discipleship pastor at a nondenominational church in Missouri expressed his feelings this way: "I have no stones to throw, just a sinking sense of lament and sorrow."

More on this story can be found at this link:

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