While a holy life and a good example are powerful tools for good, a bad example causes great harm to our ministries and to the work of the kingdom. Richard Baxter has some wise words for us:
It greatly hinders our work when other people spend the whole week speaking to our people in private, contradicting what we have been saying to them from the Word of God in public, because we cannot be there to expose their foolishness; but it will hinder your work much more if you contradict yourselves, and if your actions disprove what you have said, and if you build up an hour or two with your mouths, and all the week after pull down with your hands! This is the way to make people think that the Word of God is just a story told to pass the time, and to make preaching seem no better than babbling...One proud, bad-tempered, haughty word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon, and destroy the fruit of all that you have been doing.1
10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.