1 Timothy 5:24 Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.… Some men they follow after. Here is a revealed fact with no comment upon it, but it is very terrible. A smooth comfortable life, and yet a life of respectable sin! No blame, no opprobrium, no ostracism from society. Men deceive themselves. They go into the streets of their Nineveh, but no prophet reproves them. The waters are rising, but no Noah warns them; all is placid and full of repose. I. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS SINS. "And some men they follow after." Our sins are like us; they reflect our faces; they are mirrors which will one day show us ourselves; they follow after us by a moral individuality; they will each fly to their own center. Our sins are not resolvable into some generic whole as the sin of man. The blight in the summer-time is not so disastrous in defacing beauty, the locusts of the East are not so devastating in their all-devouring flight, as are our troops of sins. They follow after us, and blight our immortality. II. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SHAME AND SIN. "They follow after." That is the reason we are not ashamed of them. Shame for sin is not sorrow for sin. The Hindu is only ashamed when he is discovered. That is not grief at sin: it is horror at being found out. Sins that follow after are not much thought about. The world has given us carte blanche if we preserve our position in society. What men shrink from is exposure and shame. It' all sins were revealed, who could bear it? If the earth were a moral mirror, who could walk upon it? But detection surely comes in God's way - in God's great day when he shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. - W.M.S. Parallel Verses KJV: Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.WEB: Some men's sins are evident, preceding them to judgment, and some also follow later. |
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