 By James H. Cagle |
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28: 13 KJV).
We make coverings for just about everything. But there has never, nor will there ever be, a covering made for sin that will actually conceal it. And yet men as our text says, cover their sin.
There’s nothing that can be hidden from God. He sees in our heart and knows us better than we know ourselves. So no covering will hide our sin from God. So then, if we can’t cover our sin and hide it from God, why are we covering it and from whom are we hiding it?
Achan (Joshua 7), King David (2 Samuel 11, 12), Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) all sinned and tried to hide their sins from the eyes of men but God saw their sin and exposed them.
Whenever we sin, our immediate response should be to go before God and confess or acknowledge our sin. Next we should forsake our sin to enable us to receive His mercy and forgiveness.
If we sin, and instead of being open, honest, and sincere in our relationship with God by confessing and forsaking it, we choose to ignore, excuse, and pretend it never happened, we are attempting to cover our sin.
If we decide to ignore our sin by putting it under a cap and presumably concealing its existence, God will not prosper us in His way. We may ignore it by pretending it doesn’t exist but God sees it and withholds His blessings.
Though King David tried to cover his sin before men he couldn’t hide it from his conscience. He said “My sin is ever before me” (Ps. 51: 3). Our conscience acknowledges our sins as well.
Just because a sin is presumably covered or ignored, that doesn’t negate sin’s power to rob us of peace and fellowship with God. Nor does it remove the consequences of sin – “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32: 23).
The covered sin is usually a pet sin that easily besets us (Heb. 12: 1) and hinders us from running the Christian race and winning the prize.
We can’t cover and hide our sins from God ourselves but when we confess and forsake them, they are covered by the blood of Jesus (Rom. 4: 7, 8).
