Private Sin?

We all wrestle with sin. Me, I am grieved by my own sin much of the time. My struggle with it often seems private --- as if I'm in the battle alone. To be sure, the sin seems secret, but it is never really private.

Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. --1 Corinthians 5:6-7

No sin is private. It may be secret but it is not private. It is a great error to hold, as some do, that each man's conduct is his own business unless his acts infringe on the rights of others. That may be true to some extent, but it is not all of the truth. No one ever has the right to commit an evil act, no matter how secret. God wills that men should be free, but not that they be free to commit sin.

Coming still closer, we Christians should know that our unchristian conduct cannot be kept in our own back yard. My sin is like a ripple effect in a pond. Except it can turn into the tsunami in the ocean. For some of us, it really does --- especially when we are Christian leaders. The sin committed in the privacy of the home will have its effect in the assembly of the saints. The minister, the Elder, the teacher who yields to temptation in secret becomes a carrier of moral disease whether he knows it or not. The church will be worse because one member sins. The polluted stream flows out and on, growing wider and darker as it affects more and more persons day after day and year after year.

"Lord, this is especially true of us who are leaders in the church. Show to me and my fellow-servants this morning the horror of the consequences of our sin. Keep us pure and faithful, for Your glory. Amen."