There Is No Private Sin

“Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” [1]

Lone-Ranger Christianity has no relationship to biblical Faith. God’s purpose is to build His church—a vibrant, world-encircling community of Faith. This is so much more than a matter of just saving individuals and then leaving them to their own devices until they die. God is creating a Family of redeemed people who know they belong together. These are redeemed people who realise they need one another if they are ever to fulfil the will of their Master and Saviour. Some who are numbered among the professed saints of God say they love the Lord, but they somehow fail to honour the local church—they don’t believe that belonging to the local congregation is necessary. How can such individuals be in fellowship with the One who “loved the church, and gave Himself for her” [see EPHESIANS 5:25]?

Only in healthy interdependence on each other, in a fellowship where love is actively lived out, can we realise the ideal that is presented in EPHESIANS 4:13, “…until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The new life we who are the redeemed now have in Jesus Christ must never become a private matter to be lived out in isolation.

I acknowledge that our faith does have its solitary aspects. No one can be saved for another. Each individual must individually turn to Christ in order to be saved. People are saved one at a time, not in groups. Saving faith is personal faith. But there is a corporate element in our faith. The church of our Lord is the body of Christ, and it is a family in which we are fellow-citizens. He is the head and we are the members. We cannot belong to Christ without belonging to his people as well. We cannot be properly related to each other without being properly related to God; but we cannot be properly related to God without being properly related to each other.

There is no such thing as genuine fellowship of believers among themselves apart from their individual fellowship with God. And there is no genuine fellowship with God that does not produce a living fellowship with other believers. A vital part of our life with the Lord is our life with each other. The reason the apostle Paul warned the Ephesians to put away lying and to speak the truth is because “we are members one of another” [see EPHESIANS 4:25]. We who are saved are called to invest our lives in one another. This is why we are gifted as we are, because only in community with others can we reflect the Body of Christ.

Listen to the Word on this issue. “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” [1 CORINTHIANS 12:4-7].

We who are saved share one Spirit, as stated when Paul writes, “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” [1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-13a].

Understanding the impact of the Spirit’s work in uniting the saints leads to the rational conclusion that there is no private sin, no isolated wrong. Sin for a Christian always has an impact on others—family, friends, church. A lie is a sin against the fellowship of believers, a hurt inflicted upon others with whom we share the faith. The idea of fellowship, of sharing life as members of one family, dominates the New Testament teachings about congregational life. Any thought of enjoying salvation in isolation from other Christians is foreign to the New Testament. Christian fellowship moves us toward mature stature of His fullness and is the earthly counterpart and foretaste of the eternal fellowship that is promised us in heaven.

In the text before us, and which I intend to explore with you in this hour, we witness the Apostle as he stresses the steps leading to unity. And this is not an ersatz unity founded on some earthly commonality; rather, it is a genuine oneness that only those sharing the life of the Risen Son of God can know. Dear people, the unity we share as followers of the Risen Son of God, as worshippers of True and Living God, is real.

PREPARING FOR UNITY — “Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” [EPHESIANS 4:25]. The relationship of the saints of the Most High is grounded in truth. This should not be surprising since we know, “God is truthful” [see JOHN 3:33 NET BIBLE 2nd]. We were born in truth to the God of Truth; that is, we who are redeemed are born from above and into the True God.