The reason holiness and grace go together is that the more I understand who God is, the greater appreciation I have for His holiness, and I figured the more that’s going to make me hate my sin.

Yesterday I shared the first part of my recent interview with Dr. R.C. Sproul. We discussed his new book, his teaching style, his view on Creation, how he determines where to place boundaries in cooperating with other Christians, and a few other topics. Today the interview continues.

This matter of “Christian celebrity” has come up in the past few years. How have you dealt with the pull toward pride and ego-inflation, and has this been a particular challenge for you?

Well, everybody has to fight the sin of pride. I remember reading Benjamin Franklin’s resolutions when I was in collegehttp://www.challies.com/interviews/an-interview-with-rc-sproul-part-2, where he, at one point in his life, was very committed to improving his moral conduct. He wrote a big list of virtues, and every day he checked off the virtues as to whether he achieved them or not. One of the things that he considered a great virtue was humility. He said he was careful to maintain a humble attitude toward things, so at the end of the day, he would write a check for humility, and then the next day, write a check for humility, and the next day write a check for humility. He said after a while he realized he was getting proud of his humility. Pride can come at you from so many different ways, and get you just when you think you’ve overcome it. It’s always there.

This business about Christian celebrity, I don’t know what that means, really. If you talk about celebrities, you’re talking about people who are extremely well known, usually through national media such as television, movies, or professional sports. Everybody’s heard of Arnold Palmer and Elizabeth Taylor or people in the political arena.

But to be a minister and to have a certain visibility because of lesser media such as radio and book writing, these are two different worlds. There’s the Christian publishing world and then there’s the New York Times bestseller world, and those two hardly ever cross over. So when you talk about Christian celebrity, you’re talking about a very small universe. I’ve had people introduce me to their friends and say: “This is R.C. Sproul. He’s famous.” I laugh because I say, “If I’m famous, you don’t have to tell people that.” So this whole celebrity thing is really overblown, I think. I don’t pay much attention to it.

Looking back over your life so far, and I emphasize “so far,” what are some of your personal regrets? What do the words “well done, good and faithful servant” mean to you at this time in your life?

I can remember—I’m going to take the second part first—that when my mentor, Dr. Gerstner, was getting older, into his later 70s and into his 80s, he seemed to take a second wind. He took on more and more and more labor when most men were retired at that age. I asked him about it, and he said he knew that he didn’t have much time left. He wanted to fill his days with as much productivity for the sake of Christ as could muster. That left a profound impact on me.

I do think about that “well done, good and faithful servant” now more than I ever did because I know that I’m in the twilight of my life and of my ministry. I want whatever time I have left to count. I really want it to count. When you ask me about regrets in the past, I would have to think about that because I don’t spend a lot of time navel-gazing about regrets over what happened in the past. I mean, I haven’t changed my theology over the years. I just teach the same things now I did 50 years ago.

If I think of strategic decisions, I know within Ligonier, I’ve made mistakes in hiring and firing, and where we put the emphasis at different times. Clearly if I had time to do things over with hindsight, I would do them differently. But I don’t dwell on that.

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