If we say our sin doesn’t hurt anyone then ask the ones closest to you. Ask those who are in your family, ask your friends and ask those whom you say you love the most. Watch their faces while you pose the question, “Have I ever hurt you? Sin in one’s life does not only damage the person but it usually hurts those around them the most. Ask children whose parent is an alcoholic, or one who has come from a broken home. Look around your neighborhood and see how an unfaithful partner has damaged or destroyed a family. Look how sin has made our nation full of broken homes without a mother or father. See how our own selfishness has distanced friends from our lives. How disputes have built a ravine of resentment between once thriving friendships, or maybe how old relationships are now a field of retaliations because one of them decides to only be there when it was convenient, instead of loving them sacrificially for the good of one another. Look at your own life for a minute. How many broken friendships and relationships are scattered in your past that were once a friend to die for. What happened? Did someone hurt you by their desire to please only themselves? Could it have been a friendship that was one-sided and if you didn’t hold it together it would crumble? Was it one that you were the only one who would be responsible to maintain it? Maybe the question is, were they really a friend at all? I am sure we all could look back and remember these types of relationships in our lives, or maybe we have a so-called friend like that in our life today. Let me ask you again does sin hurt?
Now let’s turn our attention on ourselves for a moment. How did that friend’s selfishness affect you? Did it hurt, were you angry, or did you feel left alone and maybe used by them. If they had hurt you that deeply then how can we say that our sin doesn’t hurt anyone. Because just as a bad relationship has hurt us, we in turn have hurt others in the same way. And if we have done the same to others, how have we treated God in those times of selfishness. Sin is like a drop of poison in a body of water. It looks small but it can destroy so much. I think we need to seek not only God’s forgiveness but also the forgiveness of those whom we have hurt also. Scripture states that if our brother has something against us leave the gift at the altar and first be reconciled with him. Then return and give your gift to God. We all need to be reconciled with the ones we have hurt and who have hurt us. To see what our sins have done to those we love and to be conscious of what our behavior does to them. If we can have a clear understanding of the consequences of sin in relation to those around us then sin will have less pull on our hearts. Our joy will be placed in our relationship to God and not upon the pleasures of the flesh as Matthew Henry states: “The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hook.”[1]
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