Six Shadows and Five Steady Flames: Biblical Portraits of Failed and Faithful Motive

The Same Story, Told Eleven Times

The previous articles in this series have established two things. First, God weighs the motives of leaders—He always has, and He has never been fooled. Second, Jesus is the only leader whose motives ever registered as pure gold on those scales—a single, undivided orientation toward the Father’s pleasure from Nazareth to Golgotha.

But Scripture does not leave us with only principles and a perfect archetype. It gives us something far more useful for the leader who actually has to get out of bed tomorrow and face his own mixed heart: stories. Narratives of real leaders—some whose motives corrupted and destroyed them, and others whose motives held and sustained them—told with enough honesty to serve as mirrors.

This article places six shadows and five steady flames side by side. Each of the six failures possessed competence—sometimes extraordinary competence—and each possessed at least some outward marks of character. What unraveled them was a corrupted motive underneath. Each of the five faithful leaders was flawed, sometimes deeply—but the motive beneath their leadership was oriented toward God rather than toward themselves, and it held.

The patterns are ancient. They are also identical to what we see in boardrooms and sanctuaries today. The names change. The motive-disease does not.

Part One: Six Shadows

1. Saul: The Motive of Appearance

Saul’s story is the story of a leader who looked the part and knew he looked the part—and whose entire leadership was eventually consumed by the need to keep looking the part. He stood head and shoulders above every other man in Israel (1 Samuel 9:2). He was chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, and filled with the Spirit. His competence was real. His early character was evident. But the motive beneath it all was rotten, and it surfaced twice in ways that ended his reign.

The first exposure came at Gilgal (1 Samuel 13:8–14). Samuel was delayed. The army was scattering. Saul, afraid of losing the people, offered the burnt offering himself—a priestly act he had no authority to perform. When Samuel confronted him, Saul’s excuse was revealing: “I felt compelled” (1 Samuel 13:12). The Hebrew suggests he forced himself against his own better judgment. The motive was not devotion to God. It was fear of losing his audience.

The second exposure was worse. God commanded the total destruction of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15). Saul spared King Agag and the best of the livestock, then set up a monument to himself on the way home (1 Samuel 15:12). When Samuel arrived, Saul greeted him with, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord!” (15:13). His confession, when it finally came, laid the motive bare:

“I have sinned… because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.”

— 1 Samuel 15:24, NKJV

There it is. Not devotion to God but preservation of image before men—the same motive Jesus condemns in Matthew 6. Saul is the leader whose public decisions are shaped entirely by fear of losing the room. His modern counterpart is the pastor who will not preach an unpopular truth, the executive who will not make an unpopular decision, the board member who votes with the majority because the cost of dissent is too high. The motive is not wickedness. It is appearance. And it is fatal.

2. Absalom: The Motive of Self-Promotion

“So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.”

— 2 Samuel 15:6, NKJV

Absalom was brilliant, beautiful, and relationally gifted. He positioned himself at the city gate—the place of public judgment—and intercepted every person coming to the king with a grievance. He offered sympathy he had no authority to act on: “If only I were made judge in the land! Then everyone who has any suit or cause would come to me, and I would give him justice” (2 Samuel 15:4). He kissed those who bowed to him. He flattered those who approached him.

His competence at relational politics was extraordinary. His motive was the throne, not the people. The Hebrew verb gānab (“stole”) indicates deliberate theft of affection—a chilling warning to every winsome leader who builds a personal following inside someone else’s house. Absalom is the leader who positions himself as the sympathetic alternative to existing authority, not because he cares more about the people, but because he wants the seat. His modern counterpart is the charismatic associate pastor who cultivates loyalty to himself rather than to the body, the manager who builds a faction within the team, the ministry leader whose personal brand grows faster than the mission he serves.

3. Simon Magus: The Motive of Spiritual Power as Personal Asset

Simon was a sorcerer in Samaria who believed and was baptized (Acts 8:13). His faith appeared genuine. But when he watched the apostles lay hands on people and saw the Spirit given, his old motive surfaced: he offered money for the same ability. Peter’s rebuke cut to the interior:

“Your heart is not right in the sight of God.”

— Acts 8:21, NKJV

Peter diagnosed Simon’s condition as “the poison of bitterness” and “the bond of iniquity” (Acts 8:23)—a motive-disease requiring repentance, not a technique adjustment. Simon wanted the power of the Spirit as a personal asset, a tool to enhance his own influence. His modern counterpart is the ministry entrepreneur who treats anointing as a growth strategy, the leader who leverages spiritual authority for personal advancement, the conference speaker who packages the Holy Spirit’s work as his own deliverable.

4. Diotrephes: The Motive of Preeminence

“I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.”

— 3 John 9, NKJV

The Greek participle philoprōteuōn—“loving first place”—appears only here in the entire New Testament. It was coined, it seems, for this one man and this one disease. Notice what John does not accuse Diotrephes of. He does not accuse him of incompetence. He does not accuse him of false doctrine. He does not accuse him of sexual immorality or financial corruption. The diagnosis is pure motive-disease: he loves to be first.

And from that single corrupt root, every visible sin grew: refusing apostolic letters, gossiping against the apostles with malicious words, excluding faithful brothers from the fellowship, and excommunicating those who welcomed them (3 John 10). Every one of those actions is traceable to the root motive of preeminence. Diotrephes is the controlling pastor, the territorial manager, the leader who treats the organization as his personal domain and responds to any outside voice as a threat. His ministry behaviors were the fruit. The motive of loving first place was the root.

5. Judas: The Motive of Greed Clothed as Concern

“This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it.”

— John 12:6, NKJV

When Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, Judas objected: “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” (John 12:5). His external speech was pastorally impeccable—concern for the poor, fiscal responsibility, stewardship of resources. It would have sounded right in any elder meeting or board room.

But John pulls back the curtain with a parenthetical that should haunt every leader who has ever dressed a selfish decision in the language of ministry: he said this not because he cared for the poor. The stated motive and the actual motive were not merely different—they were opposite. The words we say about our motives often deceive us before they deceive others. Judas is the leader whose financial decisions are always framed as “for the ministry” or “for the team” when the real beneficiary is himself. His modern counterpart sits in more leadership meetings than we would like to admit.

6. The Pharisees: The Motive of Being Seen

“But all their works they do to be seen by men.”

— Matthew 23:5, NKJV

We return, at the end of the shadows, to the failure that opened this entire series. Jesus’ seven-fold “Woe” discourse in Matthew 23 is, at its heart, a catalogue of motive-failures. The Pharisees tithed, prayed, taught, fasted, and observed the law with meticulous precision. The character checklist was impeccable. The competence was formidable. And the motive beneath all of it was theatrical: to be seen by men.

This is the most relevant shadow for the modern Christian leader—more relevant than Saul’s cowardice or Judas’ greed—because it describes a leader who is orthodox in theology, competent in practice, and corrupt in motive. The Pharisee does not look like a failed leader. He looks like the best leader in the room. That is what makes the disease so dangerous and so difficult to detect. You cannot catch it with a background check, a doctrinal exam, or a performance review. It lives in the only place those tools cannot reach: the hidden chamber of why.

Part Two: Five Steady Flames

Scripture does not leave us with only warnings. It provides counter-portraits—imperfect, flawed, sometimes deeply broken leaders whose motives nonetheless pointed toward God rather than toward themselves. None of them was sinless. All of them stumbled. But the orientation of their hearts held, and the fruit of their leadership endured. These are not hagiographies. They are honest portraits of what rightly motivated leadership looks like in the ordinary friction of human weakness.

1. Moses: The Motive of Reluctant Obedience

“Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.”

— Numbers 12:3, NKJV

Moses tried to decline the call—repeatedly, desperately, with every excuse available to him (Exodus 3–4). He was not volunteering for the spotlight. He was being dragged to it by a God who would not take no for an answer. His leadership flowed from obedience under protest rather than from ambition, and that reluctance was itself a kind of motive-health.

Reluctance is not always a virtue. Sometimes it masks cowardice or laziness. But motive that must be persuaded by God is nearer to health than motive that volunteers for the stage before being asked. The leader who has to be talked into leadership by the voice of God is, at minimum, not leading for the applause. Moses’ forty years in the wilderness of Midian—tending someone else’s sheep in obscurity after the spectacular failure of his Egyptian vigilantism—were the furnace where the motive of self-reliance was burned out of him and the motive of dependent obedience was forged in its place.

2. Nehemiah: The Motive of Burdened Love

Nehemiah occupied one of the most comfortable positions in the ancient world: cupbearer to the king of Persia. He was safe, well-fed, politically connected, and far from the rubble of Jerusalem. And then he heard that the wall was broken and the gates were burned, and he did something that reveals the motive beneath his leadership before a single stone was laid:

“So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for certain days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”

— Nehemiah 1:4, NKJV

He wept before he planned. He fasted before he fundraised. He prayed before he petitioned the king. And when he arrived in Jerusalem, he did something that no self-promoting leader would ever do: “I arose in the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do” (Nehemiah 2:12). He inspected the walls in the dark before giving speeches in the light.

A leader whose motive is burden for the people will always work this way—grief before strategy, prayer before action, quiet reconnaissance before public announcement. Nehemiah’s motive was neither self-advancement (he gave up a cushy court position) nor control (he consulted before leading). It was love—the kind that weeps over ruins and then picks up a trowel.

3. Paul: The Motive of Christ’s Love

“For the love of Christ compels us.”

— 2 Corinthians 5:14, NKJV

The verb synechei (“compels, constrains”) portrays the love of Christ as an internal pressure—not a guilt trip, not a duty roster, not a strategic calculation, but a force pressing outward from the inside that leaves no room for competing drives. Paul’s motive was not strategic. It was not missiological. It was not ambitious. It was responsive love—a man so gripped by what Christ had done for him that every other motive was crowded out.

Paul was not a man without ego. He was capable of sharp disagreement (Acts 15:39), personal defense (2 Corinthians 11), and pointed rebuke (Galatians 2:11). But beneath all of it, the animating motive was not Paul’s reputation or Paul’s legacy. It was Christ’s love, pressing outward through a broken vessel. The leader whose motive is Christ’s love does not become passive. He becomes unstoppable—but the energy is borrowed, not manufactured, and the direction is outward, not inward.

4. Timothy: The Motive of Genuine Care

“For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus.”

— Philippians 2:20–21, NKJV

Paul’s commendation of Timothy is remarkable because it is specifically about motive. He does not praise Timothy’s preaching skill, theological precision, or administrative competence. He praises the reason Timothy cares. The Greek gnēsiōs merimnēsei—“genuinely concerned”—is set against the backdrop of everyone else pursuing ta heautōn, “their own things.” The contrast is not skill versus unskill. It is motive versus motive.

Timothy is the leader you want on your team but rarely find: the one whose first instinct is not “How does this affect me?” but “How does this affect them?” He is the associate who does not need the spotlight to function, the staff member who celebrates the win without calculating his share of the credit, the co-laborer whose concern is genuine rather than performed. Paul searched his entire network and found exactly one.

5. Epaphroditus: The Motive of Costly Service

Epaphroditus is the least known of the five, and his story is the most convicting. He was sent by the Philippian church to minister to Paul in prison. He fell gravely ill in the process—so ill that he nearly died (Philippians 2:27). And when he heard that the Philippians had learned of his sickness, his response reveals a motive so clean it stops the reader in his tracks:

“For indeed he was sick almost unto death; but God had mercy on him… he was distressed because you had heard that he was sick.”

— Philippians 2:27–26, NKJV

His anxiety was not for himself. He was not worried about his own health, his own survival, or his own reputation. He was distressed that the people he served were worried about him. When your first concern in the middle of your own crisis is how your crisis is affecting the people you serve, your motive has been tested and found genuine.

Paul adds that Epaphroditus “risked his life” to complete the ministry (Philippians 2:30). The Greek paraboleusamenos tē psychē literally means “having gambled with his soul.” He treated his own life as a stake to be wagered on the work. That is not ambition. That is not self-promotion. That is love with skin on—love that counts the cost, absorbs it, and keeps going.

The Mirror on the Wall

Eleven portraits. Six shadows and five flames. And the question they press on every reader is not “Which one am I?”—because the honest answer is that most leaders carry traces of several at once. The question is deeper than identification. It is direction.

Which way is my motive pointed?

The six shadows share a common direction: inward. Saul’s fear was about Saul. Absalom’s charm was about Absalom. Simon’s request was about Simon. Diotrephes’ control was about Diotrephes. Judas’ objection was about Judas. The Pharisees’ performance was about the Pharisees. In every case, the motive curved back toward the self, regardless of what the external behavior suggested.

The five flames share the opposite direction: outward. Moses’ reluctance pointed him toward obedience rather than ambition. Nehemiah’s grief pointed him toward the people rather than his own comfort. Paul’s compulsion pointed him toward Christ rather than his own legacy. Timothy’s concern pointed him toward others rather than his own advancement. Epaphroditus’ distress pointed him toward those he served rather than his own survival.

The direction of the motive—inward or outward—is the diagnostic that matters. Not the skill level, not the doctrinal precision, not the outward character, not the size of the ministry. The direction. And it is the one thing that only God can see with perfect clarity—which is why the prayer we traced in Article 2 remains the most important prayer a leader can pray:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

— Psalm 139:23–24, NKJV

The next article in this series moves from narrative to doctrine—rereading the Pastoral Epistles not as a character checklist but as a motive document, a diagnostic of what a man actually wants when he reaches for the office of elder.

Next in the series: “The Pastorals Reread”—why the elder qualifications are not a character checklist but a motive document, and what changes when you read them that way.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV). © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.