“Revealing Secrets”
Text: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
2-5-2023
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Everybody has secrets, don’t they? We all do! I even discovered at the mall that someone named Victoria has secrets. However, judging by the store display, those secrets have been revealed, if you get my drift. Seriously, though, we all have secrets and generally speaking we don’t want them to be known. Some secrets can be positive. For example, when you go buy someone a birthday gift you want it to remain a secret until they open it. No real harm is done if they found out ahead of time, but it ruins the surprise. Then there are the negative secrets. It could involve shameful things that you’ve done or things that were done to you. And they come in varying degrees of damage that they could do if revealed. The embarrassing ones we might dare to share with our closest friends. But the ones that we’re really ashamed of we usually don’t tell to anyone, except God. After all, He knows them already so there isn’t much sense in trying to hide them from Him.
And yet, we still try to. Ever since the first sin in the Garden of Eden, mankind has foolishly tried to hide their guilt and shame from one another and from God. Just consider what Adam and Eve did after they disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. The Bible says their eyes were opened and they suddenly realized they were naked. So they hid themselves. You see, they weren’t just uncomfortable with their nudity. Rather, that physical nakedness was symbolic of their exposed guilt of sin, which made them ashamed. They wanted to hide that guilt. You can see that in their attempt to sew fig leaves into clothes for a covering. They were trying to hide the secret parts of their bodies as well as the sinful secrets of their exposed souls. And there began what someone has called “The Fig Leaf Conspiracy.” It’s an agreement that we make with other sinners that says, “You leave my secret sins hidden and I’ll leave yours alone.” The only problem with that is the nagging guilt and shame that eats away at us when we hold those secrets inside. The sin doesn’t go away, it just remains hidden… some of the time, at least.
If you’re diligent you might just be successful at hiding those shameful secrets from other people. Here’s the kicker though: it won’t work with God. Hiding those sins in the secret places of your heart doesn’t keep them hidden from His all-seeing eyes. Rather, trying to hide them causes God to become hidden from you. Sin obscures our ability to know God and His righteous ways. It leaves us blind to His salvation and damned to hell. We may try to cover it up with a happy face mask, but deep inside we’re dying in the wretched darkness of our sin. And we can’t find our own way out.
That, my friends, is the whole reason why God sent His only Son into the world. He came to reveal something. Not our sins, as you might expect. No, Christ came to reveal God and His love for us. He came to reveal the Lord’s salvation for us that was accomplished on the cross. He came to reveal the way in which we can have our shameful, secret sins actually removed rather than merely hidden. That revelation has now been given to us in God’s Holy Word, the Bible. St. Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson that worldly wisdom is ineffective and doomed to pass away, because trying to discover the mind of God through human philosophy and logic simply won’t work. People tried it and that’s precisely what led them to reject and crucify Jesus. It hijacks the Gospel of forgiveness, empties the cross of its power to remove secret sins, and leaves guilt-ridden souls destined for hell.
To counteract this horrible dilemma, the Christian Church has been given the good news in order to reveal the truths of God to us. St. Paul says in verse 7, “we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God…” There’s a neat Latin phrase for this: Deus Absconditus. Roughly translated it means, “The Hiddeness of God.” But let me reiterate that God isn’t the one who hid His saving wisdom, keeping it a secret from the world. Rather, our sinfulness is what hid that wisdom from us. In reality, His wisdom of salvation was hidden in plain sight. It was hidden in what appeared to be the foolishness of the cross. It was hidden in the seeming foolishness of the Son of God suffering and dying in our place to remove all our secret sins. It was on display right before the eyes of the world, but it was hidden from human minds that were obscured by sin. And that’s the way it would have remained if God had not sent His Holy Spirit to change us.
In the subsequent verses of our text, Paul goes on to explain that we have received the Spirit of God so “that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” That happened when you were Baptized. Not only were your sins washed away, but you were also given a new nature to replace your old, sinful one. With it came a newfound faith and wisdom from God. The Holy Spirit teaches our new, sanctified nature how to interpret spiritual truths. With it we’re able to discern the hidden wisdom of God in His Word. His divine truths are no longer a secret to those of us whose minds have been enlightened by God, the Holy Spirit.
With that wisdom of God, you’re now equipped to tackle the biggest hindrance to your faith: your secret sins. You see, it’s an ongoing task of the Holy Spirit to reveal those sins that you’ve been hiding in your heart, and also the ones that you’ve overlooked and failed to recognize as sins. As you hear God’s Word read and preached the Spirit shows you the will of God and where you’ve been disobedient. As Paul says, He teaches you how to discern these spiritual things. He then convicts your heart of those hidden sins that you’ve been trying to keep a secret. The greatest danger for us is when we try to skip over and avoid addressing those sins. All that does is leave the guilt and shame in your heart to nag at you and erode your peace and joy.
Look folks, I know why we want to keep those secret sins hidden. We’re embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid to confess them to anyone. Some of them, we’re even too embarrassed to confess to God. As I said at the very beginning, we all have them. My father used to tell me that everyone had skeletons in their closets. Those “skeletons” are the secret sins of our old nature. Even Pastors have secret sins that they try to keep hidden. Like you, I have ugly sins from my past that I’d rather not think or talk about. And I certainly don’t want you or anyone else to know about them. But when you or I do that, it leaves us to suffer inwardly from those secret sins. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit gives us a way to get that monkey off our back: Confession and Absolution, just like we experienced at the beginning of the service. You can confess all those sins to God secretly in your heart and then hear the words of forgiveness that He gives your Pastor to speak in the Absolution.
But sometimes the assurance of our forgiveness eludes us. Not because God is hiding it but because our minds have been so obsessed by the guilt and shame that we need something more concrete to assure us. That’s true also of the horrible memories we have of things that have happened to us. When those kinds of secrets nag at our conscience and disturb our peace of mind, it’s good to get them out and tell them to another person. Be careful, though, because it has to be someone who will keep your secret with absolute confidentiality. That’s the advantage of going to your Pastor with those troubling secrets. Over my 25 years in the ministry, I’ve been told some very deep, dark, ugly secrets of people. And I can assure you, they will remain forever hidden in my memory because I have vowed to never divulge those secret sins and hurts. The good news is that I also have the great joy of speaking God’s unchanging word of forgiveness and healing to these troubled souls. The Lord knows all those secrets and He wants you to get rid of them and receive His peace.
Oh, let’s not be naïve though. The devil will repeatedly try to dredge up those old, hidden secrets. He’ll thrust them in your face and remind you often. You see, he wants you to despair and give up on your faith. He’ll try to convince you that since you remembered them and still feel the pain in your heart then the guilt of those sins is still hanging over you. Not true. Satan is lying to you. Rather than listen to him, remind yourself of God’s loving mercy. Defy the devil by looking to Christ hanging on the cross because there is your assurance that God has removed all those secrets that you’re ashamed of. And when God says they’re gone, they’re truly gone. You have His word on it. Psalm 103:12 says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.” If you’re a Christian, you now have the mind of Christ that’s able to discern the depths of this blessed truth. All your sins are gone, never to return to haunt you.
There was a rather famous song by the Beatles that went, “Do you want to know a secret?” Well, can I tell you a secret about God that’s really no secret at all: He loves you. He showed it by sending His Son to die for you. By faith He has given you the ability to believe this saving truth which is hidden to those who only possess worldly wisdom. So live in the peace and joy of His merciful love. And share that good news with others so that they too may have the wisdom of God that’s hidden from unbelievers but revealed by the Holy Spirit to those trust in Him. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!