There is No Private Sin

Bro. Linton Smith sends out a devotional post each day on his mailing list featuring thoughts from A. W. Tozer. I thought I would share the one that he sent out today. There is no such thing as private sin.... it will end up effecting those around you; but even more important, it already effects your relationship with the Lord!!!


Spiritual Warfare and Sin: No Private Sin

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
“Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:”
— 1 Corinthians 5:6-7

No sin is private. It may be secret but it is not private.

It is a great error to hold, as some do, that each man's conduct is his own business unless his acts infringe on the rights of others. "My liberty ends where yours begins," is true, but that is not all the truth. No one ever has the right to commit an evil act, no matter how secret. God wills that men should be free, but not that they be free to commit sin...

Coming still closer, we Christians should know that our unchristian conduct cannot be kept in our own back yard. The evil birds of sin fly far and influence many to their everlasting loss. The sin committed in the privacy of the home will have its effect in the assembly of the saints. The minister, the deacon, the teacher who yields to temptation in secret becomes a carrier of moral disease whether he knows it or not. The church will be worse because one member sins. The polluted stream flows out and on, growing wider and darker as it affects more and more persons day after day and year after year.

From A.W. Tozer’s: The Size of the Soul, pp. 74,77.