What are the consequences of the hidden sin?

Why do some people live in sin and hide their sin from other people? Can they hide their sin from God? In this article I will answer the question coming from the site moldovacrestina.md:

What can happen to a person who calls himself a Christian but lives in sin? How much time can they wear a mask, and what can happen with them? 

The great deception of Satan is to make you think that it is possible to live a double life endlessly… But God, who is the source of truth, tells us something else.

păcatul ascunsYour sin will find you out…

Whether you sin secretly or in the open, you have to know that sin has the property of destroying you. If we do not repent and do not stop to practice it, sin will certainly pursue and overtake us. God has set before the people the blessing and the curse, life and death. When speaking about the consequences of their wrong choices, God told people,

So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. …and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.” (Deuteronomy 28:45,48)

By choosing to live in sin voluntarily, you enforce God to set upon you curses that will finally destroy you. God doesn’t want to do this, He wants to bless you, but because you choose this way, the curse will pursue and overtake you. 

In the book of Numbers, the Lord told His people,

But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. (Numbers 32:23)

We have to make a choice: to listen to God’s voice or to reject Him. But when you try to abandon obedience and to embrace the transgression, you need to know that God, not a man, said that sin will find you out.

The burden of sin is greater than you can bear

When David sinned with Bathsheba, he tried at first to hide his sin. After his plans failed, he decided to kill Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband and then married Bathsheba. It seemed that David managed to hide his sin and now can live a peaceful life, but in chapter 11 from 2 Samuel, God closed with the following words,

..But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord (2 Samuel 11:27)

In all of David’s “mastery” to cover his sins, the last word was told not by David, but by the Lord. In your life will be the same… David, the king, paid an expensive price for these wrong choices. More than he was able to pay… His daughter was raped by one of his sons, another son killed the brother who violated his sister, then he tried to take the kingdom from God’s hand. The child that Bathsheba gave birth to died. And these are only some of the consequences that David had to pay.

In Psalm 51, when David was crushed by understanding of the gravity of his sins, he said the following among his words of repentance,

Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice (verse 8)

David had lost joy and gladness. Satan, on the contrary, when he “brings the sin on the plate” tells you ”do this and you will be happy”, but after you commit it, you realize that you are the most unfortunate of all people. More than this, David tells us that God “has broken his bones”. The bones are an expression of the power. If a person has tiny bones, he cannot be considered a powerful person, but a weak one. In other words, David says that God crushed his power.

My dear, what is your “power” that God has to stop you to sin?

A friend of mine, postponed the repentance because the life with despairing women seemed too “sweet” for him to abandon it. But one day he remained impotent and so his “bones” were crushed…

The hidden sin leads you to death

A case that has shaken a lot of people happened when the church of Christ had begun to spread on the earth. Ananias and Sapphira, husband and wife, sold a piece of property and laid the money at the apostles’ feet, but have lied about the price. They could do anything with the money because it was theirs. Their sin was not that they kept some of the price, but because they lied to the Holy Spirit. They tried to look holy and sacrificial before the people, but in their heart the lie and hypocrisy was hidden. When they came to lay the price at the apostles’s feet, Peter told them,

„Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it. (Acts 5:3-5)

The same thing happened with Sapphira, Ananias’ wife.

Stop and confess your sin

The unwitnessed sin doesn’t disappear but multiplies. In the attempt to hide his sin, David committed more sins. A mistake which remains unstopped on time brings another more serious mistake with it. That’s why, my dear, if you have sinned, don’t try to hide it, because it would bring more problems in your life.

Our Lord Jesus wants to make you free from the slavery of your sin, but as long as you don’t realize the gravity of your state and don’t repent, He cannot make you free. Release starts with awareness of your sin that produces a godly sorrow.

May God help us not to tolerate the sin in our life, but if we happened to sin, let us follow God’s advice that tells us,

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. (1John 1:8-10)

Read this article in Romanian.