Over the past few weeks there was constant media attention to the accusations against Andrew Mountbatten Windsor contained in Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl and his dramatic lack of royal status and privilege in consequence of those accusations.
We should be clear that Andrew continues to disclaim the accusations made against him and that he has not been found guilty of any wrongdoing. We also should be aware that serious questions have been raised concerning the reliability of Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs (see Michael Tracey’s article ‘Should we consider Virginia Giuffre?’ published in Unherd on 30 October 2025).
However, within the court of public opinion none of those caveats seems to matter. ‘Mud sticks,’ and within the case of the previous Duke of York, the mud of the accusations about his alleged relationship with Virginia Giuffre, and wider accusations about his relationship with the convicted American child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has meant that somebody who, on the time of his marriage to Sarah Ferguson in 1986, looked as if it would have every thing going for him, has now lost every thing in a downfall of Shakespearean proportions.
He lost his marriage in 1996, and he has subsequently lost his status, his employment, his standing as a member of the royal family and even his home. He has change into (whether justly or not) an icon of public disgrace.
For Christians the problem raised by the downfall of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is how we must always react in a distinctively Christian way when someone becomes publicly disgraced due to the things that they’ve done (or are alleged to have done).
In my view there are three key principles, drawn from the teaching of the New Testament that we’d like to use.
The first principle is that while we must always be able to say that exact actions were incorrect and contrary to the desire of God, we must nevertheless never sit in judgement on other people. Jesus was absolutely clear on this point within the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not, that you just be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you might be judged, and the measure you give might be the measure you get” (Matthew 7:1-2).
As John Stott explains in his study, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus is warning us against in these words is the temptation to censoriousness. In Stott’s words:
‘… To be censorious is to set oneself up as a censor and so to assert the competence and authority to sit down in judgement upon one’s fellow men. But if I do that, I’m casting each myself and my fellows within the incorrect role. Since when have they been my servants, responsible to me? And since when have I been their Lord and their judge? As Paul wrote to the Romans applying the reality of Matthew 7:1 to their situation: ‘Who are you to judge the servant of one other? It is before his own master that he stands or falls’(14:4). Paul also applied the identical truth to himself when he found himself surrounded by hostile detractors: ‘It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore don’t pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and can disclose the needs of the center.’ (1 Corinthians 4:4-5). The easy but vital point that Paul is making in these verses is that man shouldn’t be God. No human being is qualified to be the judge of his fellow humans for we cannot read one another’s hearts or assess one another’s motives. To be censorious is to presume arrogantly to anticipate the Day of judgement, to usurp the prerogatives of the Divine Judge. In fact to attempt to play God.’
Not only are we not the judge, but we’re all among the many judged and shall be judged with the greater strictness ourselves if we dare to evaluate others. Judge not, that you just be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you might be judged and the measure you give might be the measure you get.
The rationale must be clear. If we pose as judges, we cannot plead ignorance of the law we claim to give you the option to manage. If we enjoy occupying the bench, we must not be surprised to search out ourselves within the dock. As Paul puts it, ‘Therefore you’ve got no excuse O man, whoever you might be, while you judge one other; for in passing judgement upon him you condemn yourself, since you the judge are doing the exact same things’ (Romans 2:1).
To summarise, we will, and where needed should, judge the actual actions of others, deciding whether or not they are right or incorrect – for this reason now we have courts of law, for instance, or people in positions of authority. What is forbidden, nonetheless, and can bring God’s judgement down upon us, is playing God, by judging others as people. That judgement is the prerogative of God alone, for it’s he, and only he, who ‘knows the secrets of the center’ (Psalm 44:21).
The second principle is that we must not entertain the concept that we’re by some means higher than another one who has change into the topic of public opprobrium. Jesus makes this clear in his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14:
‘ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others: ‘Two men went up into the temple to hope, one a Pharisee and the opposite a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and even like this tax collector. I fast twice every week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I let you know, this man went all the way down to his house justified slightly than the opposite; for everybody who exalts himself might be humbled, but he who humbles himself might be exalted.’
As the nineteenth century Evangelical commentator Thomas Scott explains, what Jesus teaches us on this parable is that:
‘The man, who abhors and condemns himself, who approaches God with deep self abasement and reverence of His holy majesty; who looks into his past life, his present conduct, his heart, his duties, with humiliation of soul; who thinks everyone higher than himself and must despair, were it not for the gospel message of free salvation; who applies for mercy with a trembling heart and with earnest desires, in the way in which, and thru the name that God hath revealed: this man will sooner be heard and accepted, when he breathes out ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’ than any ostentatious pharisee together with his long prayers or boasted services: that is the trail to honour, glory, immortality and everlasting life; whilst pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Let us then take heed to not glory in ourselves or to despise others ….
‘The best obedience of mere man to the holy commandment of God must leave him under condemnation, as a substitute of entitling him to the inheritance of everlasting life. Men may compliment each other nearly as good; but in reality there’s none good, no not one, our glorious Emmanuel alone excepted: the more confident they’re that they’ve kept all of the commandments, or any of them from their youth, the plainer it’s that they lack understanding within the spiritual meaning of them and that they’re strangers to repentance, to faith, to their very own true character, their very own hearts, and their need of a free salvation.‘
The danger we run into after we read the general public reports of the misdeeds of some one who has change into the thing of public disgrace is that we change into tempted to entertain the concept that we’re by some means higher within the eyes of God than that person, because now we have not behaved in the way in which that they’ve done. This lie in turn encourages us to forget that the one reason we could be acceptable before God is due to his free mercy offered to sinners in Christ and undermines that needed ‘humiliation of soul’ referred to by Scott which is the one basis on which we will rightly come before God.
We must ask God to assist us to discipline ourselves in order that each time we hear concerning the wrongdoing of another person our response shouldn’t be ‘God, I thanks that I’m not like that’ but ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ The Devil will all the time seek to instil in us the pride that may cut us off from God, and he’ll use the reports of other people’s bad behaviour to this end. We must ask God to guard us from the Devil’s activity on this regard.
The third principle is that if we will hope that God will show mercy to us, though we’re sinners, then we must also hope that he’ll show mercy to everyone else, including those that public opinion currently judge to be the ‘bad guys.’
In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul declares, ‘The saying is certain and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus got here into the world to avoid wasting sinners’ and in Romans 3:22-24 he likewise declares: ‘For there isn’t any distinction, since all have sinned and fall wanting the glory of God, they’re justified by his grace as a present, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.’
What Paul tells us in these passages is that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ all human beings, sinners though they’re, have been objectively delivered (‘redeemed’) from the facility of sin and death. There is not any one for whom Jesus Christ has not acted in this fashion.
However, this doesn’t mean that everybody will mechanically be saved within the sense being rightly related to God on this world and on this planet to come back. Human beings need to freely accept what Jesus has done for them. In Paul’s language, the redemption antecedently achieved by Jesus Christ needs to be ‘received by faith’ (Romans 3:25). Sinners have to simply accept that they’re sinners who need salvation and that God has already met this need within the work of Christ, and Christians need to hope that they’ll accomplish that.
The key point to know is that that is true for each single human being. The Christian message shouldn’t be, as is typically thought, ‘good guys go to heaven.’ The Christian message is ‘bad guys can go to heaven’ provided they accept the reality that they’re bad guys, but that God has provided the answer to this problem. The radicalness of Christianity is that it really does mean ‘bad guys can go to heaven’ without qualification concerning how bad they’ve been.
A German theologian who had met Adolf Hitler was once asked what he was like. His reply was ‘a human being like all other.’ Theologically this was the proper answer and meant that if Hitler, prior to his suicide, had accepted his must salvation and put his faith in Christ, then he too might have been saved – the terrible evil of his deeds notwithstanding.
In conclusion, what now we have thought of in this text implies that after we hear within the media concerning the disgrace of some public figure, our response, if we’re Christians, shouldn’t be to sit down in judgement over them, or thank God we aren’t like them, but to thank God that he has provided salvation for them and pray for them that they’ll open their hearts to receive it.
 Over the past few weeks there was constant media attention to the accusations against Andrew Mountbatten Windsor contained in Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl...){kind=link}