Romans 7:14-25
“Our Secret Sins”
By: Reverend Kenneth E. Sauer
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
A colleague of mine recently told me about a conversation he had with a parishioner.
She told him: “I have these secret little sins in my life, and I like my secret sins.”
My friend told me that he did not ask this woman what her secret sins were....he was afraid to ask....he
didn’t want to know.
But he did say that this woman was a regular church goer...a very respected person in the community....
...but somehow she had accepted her secret sins....
....and had come to like them....
...and cherish them.
And I’m afraid that their are a lot of us out there who have done the same thing....
....somehow we think it’s okay to enjoy our secret sins....
...after-all we aren’t hurting anybody....
...we’re still Christians.
We go into our homes, pull the shades down....
...indulge in whatever our secret sins are....
....then we pull up the shades and go back into the community as if nothing is wrong.
But there is something wrong!
There is something seriously wrong!
One of my favorite anti-drug commercials...
...and I’m sure many of you have seen it....
....flashes a bunch of young faces on the screen....
....one person says something like: “I support terrorism...”
....another says, “I murder people...”
....then another says, “It’s no big deal, I’m just doing it for fun.”...
.... “I’m not hurting anybody.”
But the truth is that our sins do hurt people, our sins do make a difference....even on a global scale--no
matter how big or small the sins may be!
This woman that my friend was talking about enjoyed her sins...
....she had no desire to change....
....She didn’t want to be freed from them...
....they were her friends!
And when we make friends with our sins we are making friends with our enemy!
In our Scripture lesson for this morning...Paul is frustrated.
He laments that he does not understand his own actions.
His desires and actions are out of sync.
Sigmund Freud came up with a similar analysis.
He claimed that humans are driven by unconscious forces, and to become well, a person has to get in touch
with this caldron of desire, the id.
Paul’s analysis is, of course, far different...
...We experience this sense of being out of touch with ourselves because we are out of touch with God and
are thus dominated by our sinful natures.
So what is the solution?
The solution is to know ourselves in relationship with the Lord!
Even when Paul is rebellious and disobedient, the Holy Spirit reveals to him the essential goodness of God’s
law.
And the law is spiritual....
....the law was given to humankind by the Spirit of God...
....the law is the expression of the will and nature of God...
....it describes the will of God and tells us just what God is like, and the rules of the law reveal both the
mind and nature of God....
...and the law has spiritual purposes.
The law is holy: it is set apart and full of purity, majesty, and glory.
The law exposes sin, and sin is everything which is contrary to God and God’s will.
In short, the law demonstrates to us our desperate need for a Savior!
Paul writes that he finds the law “at work” within him.
Do we find the law at work within us?
When we sin....are we remorseful?
When we sin...do we even care?
Sin is an illness.
It is a choice.
It is an addiction.
And like all addictions....if we feed that addiction....it will ultimately destroy us!
You know what the biggest problem is in this world?
Many of us have made a contract or a covenant with sin.
It’s like we’ve made an agreement with ourselves and the devil: “I can have my secret little sins.”
But the bottom line is that if Jesus Christ lives within us....that contract must be broken!
My friend said to me, “When the sin in my life tries to come out, I know God is watching--not as a
judge--but as a friend.”
Therefore as Christians, we are not to enjoy our secret sins...
....we are not to try and feed them....
....we are to try to distinguish them!
We don’t want to revel in our secret sins.
And we all have them.
This is something that all of us can relate to.
We are not to enjoy our secret sins...for our secret sins are our enemies!
They get between us and the abundant life that Christ has to offer us...
....they get between us and what we are called to do as Christians.
Because sin, my friends is “missing the mark.”
Many years ago I had an awful, but very telling dream....
....it was so real that as soon as I woke up I wrote the entire dream down on paper and could not get back to
sleep for the rest of the night.
I’m not going to get into all the details, but I dreamed that I went to hell.
In hell, I met up with some people who I had known as a young child.
I hadn’t thought about them or seen them in years.
To tell you the truth...until this dream, I’m not sure that I even remembered them.
They came over to me, and we started talking.
They said, “So, you missed the mark too!”
When I had this dream I didn’t even know the definition of sin.
But those words made me very, very sad.
I had missed the mark!
My life was a sham!
I hadn’t done what God had created me to do.
My life was devoid of love.
I was a loser.
I was in hell!
From that moment on....in the dream....I decided that I was going to try my best to get out of hell.
And I knew that there was only one way to do it.....
....I had to confess, acknowledge, love the fact, embrace the fact, and say the words: “Jesus died for my
sins.”
The only problem was that these were the only words that could not come out of my mouth.
Right at the height of a sequence in the dream where I could literally smell the evil in the air....and I was
about to be forced to bow down and worship Satan....
....I said it....
....I said, “Jesus died for my sins.”
....and then I woke up....
....feeling that I had indeed been in hell.
The dynamics that Paul describes in Romans is indeed a war within!
If we are Christians, God has placed in our hearts a knowledge of that which is good, and even a desire
to do what is good....
...and yet there is an alien force, the power of sin....
...and if we give in....
....the power of sin thwarts our good intentions, and we miss the mark!
If we are complacent, and our sin does not bother us....or if we even love our sin....then we had better
re-evaluate whether or not we are truly saved.
For those who have given their lives to Christ have a new nature and an old nature.
Our new nature desires to do the will of God....
...and our old or sinful nature desires what is contrary to the will of God.
We cannot be friends with God and friends with sin at the same time!
The book: Life 101, by John Roger and Peter McWilliams, has a chapter that poses the question: “Are
human beings fundamentally good or evil?”
Their answer?
Good.
How do they come to this conclusion?
They ignore the holocaust, war, and violence and focus on the baby.
They ask: “When you look at a baby, do you see fundamental evil radiating from hm or her?
No, you see purity, joy, sparkle, brightness, and happiness.”
And from just casual observation...they appear to make a point.
But aren’t babies totally turned on themselves?
For the first few months of their lives, they don’t even distinguish between themselves and the environment.
Their mother is just an extension of their own bodies.
Now, this might not be evil....
...But isn’t this the condition that disintegrates into evil later on in life?
Selfishness....living for self and not for God!
In describing the struggle within his soul, the apostle Paul writes, “For I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out.”
Willing ourselves to do what is good is not sufficient because at the core of our being we are in bondage
to sin.
As a man who was a genuine believer, Paul did not want to sin....
....he did not like his secret sins.
Paul actually willed not to sin.
However, Paul found that he could not keep from sinning.
So, Paul confesses that he is a desperate, wretched man who needs a Deliverer.
As Christians, our lives are like a walking civil war.
Paul says that he was pulled in two directions...
...he was pulled so much that he was almost like two men in the same body!
And there is no believer, no matter how advanced in holiness they may be, who cannot relate to what Paul
is talking about.
“Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul cries out.
“Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
This is an exclamation!
Paul bursts forth with praise to God, for there is a glorious deliverance from sin!
Because of Jesus Christ, the believer takes his or her new mind and does all they can to serve the law of
God.
When we fail--when our flesh caves in to sin--we know that it is the force of sin that has caused it--not
our new minds!
We know that we are still flesh as well as spirit, and their are two laws that are struggling for our
allegiance.
But as Christians, we are called to go on to perfection, knowing that we have an open access into God’s
presence when we ask for forgiveness through Jesus Christ....willing to go forward to be conformed more and more
into the image of Christ.
As the Bible says in Romans Chapter 8: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For
what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous
requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the
Spirit.”
I don’t want to enjoy my secret sins!
Do you?
Through Christ, our sins cannot only be forgiven--they can be completely obliterated!
As we come to the communion table this mornning--let’s gird up the loins of our minds and come
before God for forgiveness!
Let’s recieve a fresh surge of God’s forgiveness and grace!
Let’s start all over again.
Let’s allow ourselves to sense the law of God with renewed fervor---the renewed fervor of renewed
minds!
Let us pray: Loving Lord Christ, we confess that we have permitted ourselves to remain
captive to the power of sin, selfishness, and Satan, through our hearts we long to be truly free.
Empower us by Your Spirit to live in the liberating light of the gospel. In the powerful name of
Jesus we are bold to say. Amen.
