No Secrets Allowed

Scripture

And this is the message I proclaim—that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life. Romans 2:15-16

Observation

Clearly Paul is not trying keep secrets about our secrets being revealed. He’s presenting the whole Gospel. It includes both salvation through Christ and judgment from Christ. The goal here isn’t to hurt people, but to help them. “People with integrity walk safely, but those who follow crooked paths will be exposed.” (Prov. 10:5). Paul wants us to know that there is nothing hidden from the eyes of God so we might as well come clean and find freedom. Keeping secrets, refusing to confess and repent for our sin, is like being handed a key to the lock of our jail cell and throwing it away in the hopes that no one will notice the bars.

Application

We think keeping secrets will keep things easier, keep life from getting messy, keep things moving forward. According to the Phychologs Magazine, “Keeping secrets does have its own emotional burden that an individual is battling with. The following could be the possible emotional hurdles that any individual might go through while keeping secrets. This includes:

Anxiety – when holding onto a secret, individuals might go through a toll of anxiety and guilt for concealing the things known to them

Stress – it is so obvious for any individual to feel stressed when they have to constantly hide information or experiences.

Loneliness – Individuals might have to distance themselves from others as they may not be able to be true to themselves.

Cognitive overload – when an individual needs to not share certain things with certain people or with all of the individuals, it would remain as an additional preoccupation in their thoughts.”

If we already know that our secrets will be revealed on the last day let’s be free of the burden today!  Jesus told us that we may think we are fooling others about our own innocence, but really we are just fooling ourselves. “He said to them, “Watch yourselves carefully so you don’t get contaminated with Pharisee yeast, Pharisee phoniness. You can’t keep your true self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.” (Lk 12:2-3). The Pharisees were seen as the pinnacle of spiritual maturity and yet Jesus made it clear they were far from clean and thus far from freedom. Secret sin isolates us from others and from the Lord. Bonhoeffer writes this in Life Together:

“In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sins wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart.”

Prayer

I love what You are doing at The Father’s House. You are building a culture of confession. At our house Men’s Fire Night we sat around the fire in our CREW’s and confessed the things we were ashamed of. We threw a log on the fire to symbolize the secret no longer had sway over our hearts in the light of confession and Christ’s forgiveness. Then, we prayed for each other. Keep doing this Lord! Help us to continue to run to Your light instead of running from it so we can truly be free of the burden of unconfessed secrets.