Spiritual Warfare and Sin: No Private SinYour 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 5:6-7No 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. "My liberty ends where yours begins," is true, but that is not all 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. The evil birds of sin fly far and influence many to their everlasting loss. The sin committed in the privacy of the home will have its effect in the assembly of the saints. The minister, the deacon, 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. The Size of the Soul, 74,77."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."
Thank you for posting this.
The minister, the deacon, the teacher who yields to temptation in secret becomes a carrier of moral disease whether he knows it or not.
_________________David
Very good thread that I hope many will read!I have been convinced for quite some time because of the tendency of human nature to self-justify that those preachers and teachers who want to excuse/defend sin, are those who are guilty. That is at least one of the grave dangers of secret sin the tendency either to justify sin or on the other hand to strongly denounce, or hobby horse on certain subjects. David was quite ready to pounce upon the man that was guilty of the very sin he was trying to hide. It takes the continual process self-examination, confession, repentance and walking in purity before God to keep the stream flowing from our lips, clean. Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. And when the fountain is polluted at the source there is going to be a continual defense of why the water is polluted. I believe that is the explanation so frequently, for all the rants explaining and defending so-called liberty 2 Peter 2:19 (NKJV) 19While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. Clint
_________________Clint Thornton
