The Sins that follow Us.
The visible Church holds still within its outward pale thousands whose lives are their own condemnation. These are they whose sins are "open beforehand"; they need no penetrating scrutiny, no process of conviction. Their sins go before to judgment, sent forward to prepare a place on the left hand of the Judge in that great day. "And some men they follow after." That is to say, there are men all fair without, but within full of disguised and deadly evil. Let us see what the words mean.
I. They mean that all sins have their proper chastisement; which, however long delayed and seemingly averted, will as a general law, sooner or later, overtake the sinner. I say allsins, because chastisement follows often even upon sins that are repented of, as in the case of David; and I say also as a generallaw, because it seems sometimes that God, in His tender compassion to individual cases, does hold back the chastisement of His rod, and by ways of peculiar lovingkindness make perfect the humiliation of particular penitents. Our sins follow us by the rod of chastisement.
II. Again, past sins follow after sinners in the active power by which they still keep a hold on their present state of heart. It is one of the worst effects of sin, that after commission, it clings to the soul. Every sin leaves some deposit in the spiritual nature. It quickens the original root of evil; it multiplies and unfolds its manifold corruption. And, worst of all, it brings on a deadness and insensibility of the spiritual nature. Our present falls, infirmities, spiritual struggles, afflictions, and dangerous inclinations, are, for the most part, the sins of our past life, following us in chastisement, and cleaving as diseases and temptations.
III. And further, whether or no sins follow in chastisement now, they will surely overtake us in the judgment. The long quest of sin pursuing the guilty shall be ended before the great white throne. All masks shall be torn off from all faces there, and we shall be seen, not as we show ourselves, but as we are. It will be a fearful meeting between a sinner and his very self, when his true self shall confront his false, and the multitude of his sins shall clamour on every side. Such must some day be the doom of the most successful hypocrite, of the fairest and least suspected sinner.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 73.
References: 1 Timothy 5:24. T. T. Munger, The Freedom of Faith,p. 317, J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 109; J. Baines, Sermons,p. 15; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 115. 1 Timothy 6:1-21. Expositor,1st series, vol. iv., p. 191. 1 Timothy 6:4; 1 Timothy 6:5. Homilist,vol. vi., p. 1. 1 Timothy 6:6-13. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 321. 1 Timothy 6:7. A. F. Joscelyne, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 323;O. Morris, Ibid.,vol. xxviii., p. 132. 1 Timothy 6:7; 1 Timothy 6:8. Plain Sermons by Contributors to" Tracts for the Times," vol. v., p. 38. 1 Timothy 6:9. A. Davies, Ibid.,vol. xiii., p. 245. 1 Timothy 6:9; 1 Timothy 6:10. H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xxvi., p. 227; Plain Sermons,vol. x., p. 195. 1 Timothy 6:11-16. E. White, Ibid.,vol. xxxiii., pp. 113, 129.