An Ironic Impossibility

Rick McNally / September 2025

Have you ever noticed the tendency to try to hide or cover sin?  I bet you have.  I bet you’ve done it too.  I know I have.

We speak of theology.  We speak of the depths of theological concepts.  Take for instance omniscience.  

In the word omniscience, we state that God knows all things from all times in all ways completely.  There is nothing that God does not know.  Right.  Yet, we can practice deception pretty easily.  We disguise ourselves.  We blend truth with lies as a baker, making muffins of reality that are not a good and quality product — but rather a travesty.  

How can we live this way?

To clarify our thoughts at this point, let’s ground ourselves a bit.

• God does know all things.  This includes our sin; the things we do against him and against others. 
• When we try to hide our sins from him, or deny them, we do a very foolish thing.  This appears to be a “help” to us in the short term, but has a profound spiritual cost.
• When we try to confess our sins, we bring spiritual prosperity.  We confess and “agree with God” regarding our condition, and confess “speak outwardly” and find fellowship with God and others returning.

Yet, we try to hide things from each other, and lie, and manipulate and purge ourselves.  We do this while behind the foreground is our theology of God knowing all things.  How foolish.  I guess there could be a number of opposing or complimentary things going on (1) we believe God sees these things and will pardon us for them because he likes us, (2) we believe in our heart of hearts that we personally don’t sin in these actions— therefore there is nothing to forgive, (3) we equalize ourselves and say that everyone else is no better.

These don’t hold water with the Lord.  God may have forgiven us by Christ — but we can still do things in the Lord that need our confession to bring back a true fellowship with the Lord that may have been severed by our bad actions.

We must come to a point where we look at the Word of God and see what it says about our sins.  We have them.  We had them before Christ.  We can (and do) sin after we have Christ.  These sins cause us problems (for ourselves and others) from that day forward.  It is the acknowledgement of them that brings healing to ourselves and to others, not the covering up of them.

Examine the clarity of scripture on the visibility of our sins, and God’s absolute knowledge of them.  God knows them immediately.  Others can see through our masks better than we think.  Eventually, everyone will know about them.

What are we hiding when we try to camouflage our sin?  Nothing.

Old Testament

• Numbers 32:23 / But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out.
• Proverbs 28:13 / Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
• Ecclesiastes 12:14 / For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
• Psalm 90:8 / You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
• Jeremiah 16:17 / For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.
• Isaiah 29:15 / Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”
• Psalm 69:5 / O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
• Job 12:22 / He uncovers the deeps out of darkness and brings deep darkness to light.
• Jer 23:24 / Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.
• Psalm 44:21 / Would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.
• Prov 10:9 / Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
• Prov 15:3 / The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.
• 1 Sam 16:7 / But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
• Jer 17:10 / “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

In the Gospels

• Mark 4:22 / For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light.
• Luke 8:17 / For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.
• Luke 12:2-3 / Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.

In the Epistles

• 1 Corinthians 4:5 / Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
• Romans 2:16 / on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
• 1 Tim 5:24 / The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.
• Hebrews 4:13 / And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
• 2 Corinthians 5:10 / For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
• Gal 6:7-8 / Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

In Revelation

• Rev 20:12 / And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

Walking in the Light

The epistle of First John gives us a bit of insight into walking in the light (no pun intended) of this knowledge.  Take your Bible and highlight in 1 John 1:5-2:11 all the instances of the word darkness with one color, and light with another.

• We need to understand that God has and is light, and in him is no darkness.
• We need to avoid the sin of denial of sin, for we only deceive ourselves and hurt those around us.
• We need to confess (agree, speak) our sins to God; and when appropriate (if we’ve sinned against someone) to confess it to our brothers and sisters.
• This will help us to avoid the “hating” of our brother and will allow us to learn to “walk” or “abide” in the light.
• If we don’t do these things, there remain many “causes” for stumbling into deeper and worse sin.

To “walk in the light” does not mean to not commit sin nor look like you are righteous.  It means to acknowledge your sins and admit them before others and work your way out of them through that confession.  This is abiding in the light.

Let’s be honest.  If we tend to act like a “jerk” or if we tend to be manipulative and you think we are fooling anyone — we are doing what 1 John 1:8 tells you that we are doing, we are lying only to yourselves; God sees, likely other people see.  There are no private sins.  Lying doesn’t cover up for our sin.  Having others lie for us does not cover up for our sin.  

Jesus can forgive you, but confession comes before forgiveness in the realm of sanctification, just like it does in the ream of Justification when we first believe.  If we cannot do this — John says we still live in darkness.  Living in darkness is not good, as the words imply.

We need to pray for each other in this, as this is a difficult matter.

God would have us walk in the light and leave the darkness behind.

Be quick to confess your sins to God and one another.  The longer you delay, the more complicated it becomes, the more you hurt your brothers and sisters.