“You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance.” – Psalm 90:8
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah” – Psalm 32:1-5
When it comes to addictions and besetting sins, some of the most damaging and deadly are indulged behind closed doors. Whether it’s in the heart, the closet, the bedroom, the bathroom, or other private places, the woo of pain relief and self-initiated, self-gratifying pleasure, even if it’s for only a moment or two, deceives and moves you to walk through those doors, shut them, and lock them behind you. And yet, what is the reality of this pain and pleasure place? It not only has the stench of it, but is truly full of death. It’s a secret assassin and thief. It sneaks in to your heart and life. Though you know what it is, you often can’t feel it’s work until it’s too late. Sin in this dark pain and pleasure place delivers poison drip by drip that like cooking a frog in a pot, as the temperature and frequency of sin slowly increases, you find it cooking and killing you from the inside out. One of the terrible things is that you’re not only becoming numb to the pain that your sin in secret brought you, but you also become numb and blind to the great pain and damage your sin inflicts on your spouse, your children, friends, family, church family, co-workers, etc. The destroyer literally dismantles your life and relationships one by one, all the while giving you sweet candy and pleasurable delights to keep you coming back for more.
The closet drinkers and drug users, the porn and sex addicts all find themselves, at least initially, working hard to conceal and keep their sin “secret”. Why? Largely because greed, pride, adulterous hearts, covetousness, and shame from sin make a wicked addiction cycle cocktail that they believe are worth protecting for a time. Even though there is plenty of shame within, any shame from others knowing what was happening in secret is to be avoided at all costs. As this dark shell of sin remains well cloaked, the beast thrives and grows. Therefore, this is all the more reason to learn, understand the grave dangers and damage that is caused, and expose and deal with secret sins biblically, bringing them into the light.
Thinking about such education, a good place to start is to ask and answer the question- How does one find their way into the closet, locking the door behind them, to feast on sin that once repulsed them and they were so committed to staying away from?
- Sin Repelled by a Clear Conscience- This is where the walk to and through the door starts. It starts in a heart that has strength and grace fueled sensitivity to sin. Yes, we’re all sinners who fall all too frequently. However, the heart at this point has a sense of “innocence” as they haven’t been exposed to or tempted by sins of this sort. This is good fruit from intentional guarding and shepherding by their parents and friends. They may be around adults who drink or smoke a cigar in moderation, but stay away from those, and even peers, who desire to get drunk and abuse drugs. The conscience is alive and healthy, serving them well in repelling against such sins. Substance abuse, sexual sin, and other addictive sins aren’t even tempting for the time. They see what is wicked for what it is and continue to walk the path of righteousness, seeking to be faithful to Christ.
- The Sin Exposed and Wounded Conscience- Yet your flesh, the world, and the Devil constantly search to find and take advantage of your soft spots, your chinks in your armor. They saturate your day to day life with multiple forms of poison. Your walls may be strong initially, but they try to wear down your defenses in part through increased desensitization to sexual sin over time. Many people, companies, products, and marketing in our hypersexualized and highly deviant world today are experts at packaging what is rightly strongly repelled as wickedness to be avoided, and our eyes shut to, into bite size digestible portions. They attack various parts of your wall over and over again. Instead of crying out to Jesus for help and strength quickly, your strong stand begins to soften to- “Yeah, that stuff is everywhere now. We just have to deal with it.” Though this is true in many regards, the heart can go on to say things like, “Well, that isn’t nearly as bad or heinous as this!” Your conscience is slowly wounded to the point where you don’t stand as strongly against sin as you used to.
- The Twisted Tolerance of Sin- As your conscience continues to be wounded and poorly educated, you begin to see heinous sin as not all that heinous. Drugs, drunkenness, sex, and porn may remain “bad” and sinful, but a twisted tolerance of them in your heart starts to grow secretly within you, even though publicly you continue, like a Pharisee, to profess a strong stand against them so that you hope people around you are none the wiser.
- The Twisted Willingness to Participate in Sin- That twisted tolerance turns into temptations to engage in these secret sins becoming more tempting. In fact, temptation can often be stronger when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (HALT). Maybe you can relate to this. It’s good for you to remember this acronym. For you need to stop. You need to halt when temptation comes in any of these times, knowing hunger, anger, loneliness, and fatigue are common times of vulnerability when the hook sets in you, pulling you. And off you go to your secret place and indulge in your secret sin to relieve pain and enjoy momentary pleasure, even it’s only within your heart and mind.
- The Ongoing Spiral in Bondage and Secrecy- Never ever forget that sin flourishes in the dark and secret places. It flourishes when there is conflict in marriage, stress at work, and/or trouble in other meaningful relationships. The dependence becomes strong and stronger, as the spiral into deeper sins that the cloak of secrecy once again aids in your rationalization that whatever you do is Ok, in large part because no one is going to see you. No one is going to catch you. You’re safe in your sin as long as it remains secret.
So, with each step that you take in your descent into the pit of secret sin, grave damage is progressively done to you, your relationship with God, and others you love exponentially. It’s incredibly important that the addicted understand this!
- For the common deception is that no one is getting hurt. You are in control. If there is any perceived blast radius, you are in control of that too. No you’re not! You’re in voluntary bondage and idolatry. You can’t see the forest for the trees. Your view from the pit is blind and blocked in many ways.
- Another common lie you can believe at the time is that your sin isn’t changing you. You’re the same person you’ve always been. You can stop when you want to. No, your engagement in secret sin has been changing and poisoning you from the inside out and it’s not happening in a vacuum.
Reality is that damage already begins with the unchecked wounding of the conscience.
- More damage and growing conflict within breeds with increased tolerance of sin.
- Your relationship with God, your spouse and children are harmed as a common response to the internal conflict. Your feeling that you have to keep secret is the result of change in the lens you look at your own sin, life and relationships through. You become increasingly irritable and distant in your relationships, especially in your intimacy with your spouse, and your love and patience with your children.
- An adulterous heart has committed betrayal in your covenant marriage. Often times the addicted know the confusion, doubts, righteous anger and questions that their spouse and children have or will have if their sin is ever exposed. Heart wrenching questions, like- Do you not love me anymore? Am I not attractive to you anymore? Why can’t I meet your needs? Your sin can rock their faith. Does Dad’s sin change my understanding about God? How could he hurt Mom like that? How could he hurt me like this? Does he not love me? Should what he did change my view of sin and obedience? The list of questions goes on. Tragically, this too often doubles down the perceived need to protect the secrecy and multiplies the shame and pain, instead of humility leading to repentance.
- Damage is also seen in less and less running to Christ in confession and sincere repentance seeking His mercy and deliverance. Damage progresses with willingness to sin and becomes multi-faceted. More layers of cyclical guilt. More layers of cyclical shame. Devastation to the marriage, family, friends, ministry, etc. when the addicted is caught and the sin is exposed.
Considering all of this, praise God for wonderful remedies in His Word to deal with secret sin. What is so often forgotten in those moments when you fall thinking no one knows? God knows. God sees you as you sin. Your sin greatly displeases Him. An yet, there is forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation when you turn from your sin and return to Christ. He is and will lovingly chasten you. One piece of both His chastening and healing is what can in many ways be considered as “light therapy”. You find this laid out in the truths that Moses and David provide in our focus texts above.
- Looking at Psalm 90:8 in its context, you see that Moses taught the people of Israel to confess before God the righteous sentence of death which they were under because of their sins. He taught them to acknowledge God’s wrath to be the cause of all their misery. Moses also taught them to confess their sins to their Lord. See that part of that confession in verse 8 is acknowledging the work of God to bring their sins before His attention, and their secret sins were brought into the light and exposed by the “light of His countenance”. See the foolishness of those who try to cover their sins, for they can’t cover them. As devastating as the exposure of secret sin can be, such divine exposure by His light is good and necessary. (Psalm 139:23-24, Proverbs 20:27, 1 Corinthians 4:5) You need to let that consequence be good motivation to take the way of escape God provides, to seek the Lord’s mercy in dealing with issues in your heart and relationships, being committed to cut the head of the snake by never again returning to your secret places, but rather running to Christ for refuge and heart healing regarding what’s fueling your drive to sin in secrecy.
- This is the very thing David speaks to as he reflects in Psalm 32 on his own poor dealing with sin that he kept silent. Yet, you see David’s wonderful declaration of the Gospel here as he points you to Christ. Be joyful and give thanks for your sins being covered, paid for, and forgiven by Jesus! Indeed, you are truly blessed by God. Further, learn from David’s lessons regarding dealing with secret sin. Notice that he first presses the heavy consequences under the hand of God due to keeping silent about your sin before God. As David calls you to do, meditate on that for a moment. Rather, openly acknowledge your sin to Him promptly and don’t hide it. Confess you sins to Christ and He will forgive the guilt of your sin! (1 John 1:9) Praise the Lord. Meditate on this promise as well and trust in His faithfulness.
Well, I pray this of good help to you today and for many years to come as you seek to fight the good fight of faith and exercise yourself towards godliness for the glory of Christ your King.