I was thinking today about our propensity to hide our sins and failures. It’s quite human to do so.  In a sense we come by it honestly.  Adam and Eve responded in the same way immediately following the first sin.  As soon as they had eaten fruit from the forbidden tree, their first response was to cover their shame with fig leaves, then to hide from God, and then to blame others for their actions.  It was a bit ambitious to think that they could hide from the God of creation who had made everything they saw and had fashioned them by hand. And it wasn’t like they could slip away in the crowd because there was no crowd – but shame and fear easily distort our judgment…even the best of us.

Take David, for instance, and his now famous transgression with Bathsheba.  I have no doubt that after their moment of passion they were both overcome with shame. I believe they were both godly people who fell in a moment of weakness.  Because of that, I believe shame overwhelmed them and they left when it was over vowing that it would never happened again.  But then Bathsheba discovered her pregnancy. Her husband Uriah had been in the field with David’s army for weeks or months. The palace servants knew they had been together – just chatting of course – but now her pregnancy would cement the case against them.  At first, overwhelmed with shame and remorse they are both now overcome by fear.

David and Bathsheba’s adultery carried the possibility of unthinkable consequences. The Law demanded death for all those who committed adultery.  In this case an unborn child would die as well.  Although it was unlikely that capital punishment would have been imposed in this case there would certainly be scandal. Uriah would, of course, divorce his beautiful wife. The army who laid their lives on the line for their king would all feel betrayed by a man who was stealing their wives while they camped in the fields at his command.  David was not just a political leader but a religious leader as well.  Now the man who wrote most of the worship hymnal for Israel and the man who danced before the Lord with all his might was an adulterer.  There was so much to lose if the adultery were discovered.

So fear leads to hiding and deception. David determined to bring Uriah home to report on the battle and David assumed that, while in Jerusalem, Uriah would spend the night with his wife. Later, everyone would assume the child was his. When he refused to be with his wife while his men were in the field, David set him up to be killed in battle.  A dead man could not disclose that he had not been with his wife on his short furlough to Jerusalem.  With Uriah dead, the secret sin was safe and life could go on with some serious regrets to deal with to be sure.  But … it was over.

However, it wasn’t over.  For those who serve God, unconfessed and unrepented sin does not stay hidden and does not go away.  There are two reasons for that. Either Satan will bring the sin into the light to destroy people, families, reputations, and ministries or God will bring the sin into the light so that it can be dealt with and so that reconciliation can occur between the sinner and a loving God.  Either way, the sin will be brought into the light.

In the meantime, a guilty conscience and fear of discovery will torment the one hiding the sin. Listen to David.  “When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity” (Ps.32:3-5).  David sat on the throne for nearly a year without acknowledging his sin.  When Nathan the prophet came to confront David, the child from the adulterous evening had already been born.

I’m sure because of all the imagined consequences if the sin were brought into the light, David had simply hoped it would all eventually just fade away. Undoubtedly Satan had already lit the fuse on rumors from palace servants and soldiers who had wondered about Uriah’s death.  David had tossed and turned for months and we can assume Bathsheba had done the same.  Then God sent Nathan to pry the confession out of David and in that moment David confessed and God forgave.  There were consequences for the sin in the natural realm but all was reconciled in the spiritual realm. Even after adultery and murder, God walked with David through the consequences of his son’s rebellion and the hard years to follow.

Sin separates us from God – not just in a legal sense but also in an emotional and relational sense. We hide from God in our own ways and seal ourselves off from others who might discover our sin or remind us of what we have done. Sin also separates us from ourselves as we either loathe ourselves for the sin or excuse the sin while constantly quenching the Holy Spirit who is bringing conviction.  If we stay in our chosen denial long enough our hearts may harden so that we can no longer feel the tug of God trying to draw us back.

Sin has its costs. The cost of unconfessed and unrepented sin, however, accumulates with interest. Although we hope it will all go away, it doesn’t and as I said before, our sin will be brought into the light either by Satan the destroyer or by God the redeemer. The wise course is to quickly acknowledge, confess, and repent of every sin.  God is our redeemer and deliverer and when we have “blown it big time” we need him more than ever.  Our attempts to hide our sin and deceive others will simply create distance between us and the one who can save.

In addition, my experience is that good people don’t expect us to be perfect but they do expect us to tell the truth when we have failed.  “Blowing it” reveals that I can be foolish but lying about my failure reveals that I can’t be trusted. Satan does his greatest work in the dark and our secrets give him power over us.  He is a tormentor and a blackmailer and out secret sins gives him a wide playing field.

We all sin and our usual first response is very human – cover up, hide, deny our responsibility.  We fear rejection and we fear unknown consequences. But as believers we should not give into the human response because that is the flesh.  We should respond as the Spirit directs – humbling ourselves, telling the truth, repenting, and trusting God with the consequences. The penalties and interest are much less when we keep short accounts with the Father and cut sin off at the legs by our confession. It’s in the secret places that Satan gets a foothold that may soon become a stronghold. Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  I believe the biblical principle is also that if we tell the truth, the truth will set us free.  Be blessed today by truth and don’t give into fear because fear is not from the Lord.