Tomorrow morning on Sunday, I am preaching on Matthew 6:1-8, where Jesus names a secret sin: giving, praying, and fasting to glorify yourself before man rather than to glorify God.

Chapel Library has produced a fantastic pamphlet on the subject of secret sins. Download the pdf.

The puritan, Thomas Watson, also writes in The Godly Man’s Picture: Secret sins. Some are more modest than to commit gross sin. That would be a stain on their reputation. But they will sit brooding upon sin in a corner: ‘Saul secretly practiced mischief’ (I Sam. 23:9). All will not sin on a balcony but perhaps they will sin behind the curtain. Rachel did not carry her father’s images like a saddle cloth to be exposed to public view, but she put them under her and sat on them (Gen. 31:34). Many carry their sins secretly like a candle in a dark lantern. But a godly man dare not sin secretly: (i) He knows that God sees in secret (Psalm 44:21). As God cannot be deceived by our subtlety, so he cannot be excluded by our secrecy. (ii) A godly man knows that secret sins are in some sense worse than others. They reveal more guile and atheism. The curtain-sinner makes himself believe that God does not see: ‘Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, for they say, The Lord seeth us not’ (Ezek. 8:12). Those who have bad eyes think that the sun is dim. How it provokes God, that men’s atheism should give the lie to his omniscience! ‘He that formed the eye, shall he not see?’ (Psalm 94:9). (iii) A godly man knows that secret sins shall not escape God’s justice. A judge on the bench can punish no offence but what is proved by witnesses. He cannot punish the treason of the heart, but the sins of the heart are as visible to God as if they were written upon the forehead. As God will reward secret duties, so he will revenge secret sins. from Thomas Watson, The Godly Man's Picture, Drawn with a Scripture Pencil, Or, Some Characteristic Marks of a Man Who Is Going to Heaven, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 147.