A husband stopped off at a bar on the way home from work to have a beer or twelve. Arriving home very late and very drunk, he snuck into the house as quietly as he could, hoping not to wake his wife. When he looked in the bathroom mirror, he remembered the scuffle he’d gotten into and bandaged the scrapes he had gotten earlier that evening. As he eased into bed, he smiled to himself thinking that he had pulled one over on his wife.
When he finally came to the next morning, his wife was standing over him, hands on hips. "You were drunk last night, weren't you?"
"No, honey! Why would you think that?"
"Well, if you weren't drunk, then how do you explain the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?"
Like this man, we often try to cover up our sins. Like him, we don’t do it nearly as well as we think.
When Eve and Adam committed that first sin, their first thought was to cover themselves. The next thought was to hide. Even though it was apparently a common thing for them to have contact and conversation with God, they somehow thought that perhaps he wouldn’t notice on that day that they were missing from the garden.
But, of course, he did notice. And he knew. Before they finally admitted it, he already knew what they had done. He always does.
We still try to hide anyway. The same pride that is often at the root of our temptation causes us to pretend to be better than we are – to try to cover up our sin. One of the hardest things in the world is to confess that we have done something wrong.
Yet, what God requires of us is not sinlessness, but confession – honesty. "He who conceals his sins does not prosper,” God tells us, “but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy" (Proverbs 28:13).
We can’t hide our sin. God can. Jesus told of two men going to the temple to pray. One was respected, but arrogant. He thanked God that he wasn’t like others who sin. The other man begged, “`God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Only the one who admitted his sin went home right with God (v. 14).
Let’s be honest with God – and with ourselves – and confess our sin. Anything else is putting band-aids on the mirror.