Transcription
Most Christians have a category in their mind for sin, the obvious things, the things they know are wrong, the things they feel conviction about. But the Bible describes a category of sin that operates completely outside that awareness, a sin that does not feel like sin, a sin that has no emotional weight attached to it, a sin that you wake up committing, go through your day committing, and go to sleep having committed without a single moment of conviction because it never registered as wrong in the first place.
James 4:17 names it in a single sentence. So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it. Today, we are going to look at the sins that fall into that category, the ones you are committing every single day not out of rebellion, but out of unawareness. And by the time this video ends, you will never be unaware again.
The first sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is the sin of silence. Knowing the gospel that saves souls from eternal destruction and choosing day after day not to share it with the people around them who are heading toward that destruction without it. >> [music] >> This is not a sin most believers feel convicted about because the culture of the modern church has so thoroughly normalized silence about faith that the command to evangelize has effectively become optional in the minds of most Christians. But Matthew 28:19-20 does not present the Great Commission as an option for especially bold believers. It is a command [music] given to every disciple. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Go, make disciples, teach. These are active commands, not passive suggestions.
Ezekiel 33:6 gives the weight of this sin in terms that should permanently end the comfortable silence most Christians have made peace with. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. His blood I will require at the watchman's hand. The person who knows what is coming and says nothing to the people who need to be warned carries a responsibility before God for what happens to them.
Romans 10:14 asks the question that turns the Great Commission into an abstract command into a personal urgency. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Someone. That someone is you. The person in your life who does not know Jesus is waiting not for a professional evangelist, but for the believer who already has the relationship with them >> [music] >> and simply needs to open their mouth. Silence is not neutrality when someone is walking toward eternity without Jesus. It is a choice and God holds the silent watchman accountable for what they saw and did not say.
The second sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is the sin of delayed forgiveness. The pattern of holding onto an offense for days, weeks, or months before releasing it is though forgiveness is something you extend when you are ready rather than a command you obey the moment the offense occurs. >> [music] >> Most believers understand that unforgiveness is wrong. What they have not understood is that the standard the Bible sets for forgiveness is not eventual, it is immediate.
Ephesians 4:26-27 gives the timeline with a specificity that most people have never noticed. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Do not let the sun go down. God set a daily deadline on anger and unprocessed offense. Before the day ends, [music] the offense must be brought to God and released. Every day it is not is a day of sin and a day of ground given to the enemy.
Colossians 3:13 gives the standard of forgiveness that makes delayed forgiveness a daily violation for most believers. Bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. As the Lord has forgiven you. God did not wait until he felt ready to forgive you. He did not hold the offense for a season before releasing it. He forgave completely, immediately, at the cost of his son before you had done anything to earn it. That is the standard. And the Christian who carries an offense into a new day, a new week, or a new year, who wakes up every morning still holding what happened is committing the sin of delayed forgiveness every single sunrise. Not because they are wicked, because they have not understood that the command to forgive is not tied to how they feel. It is tied to the standard of how they were forgiven. God did not wait until he felt ready to forgive you. He forgave before you deserved it. The same standard applies to every person who has ever offended you.
The third sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is one of the most socially normalized behaviors in the entire church, and that is complaining. Constant, casual, habitual complaining about circumstances, about people, about leaders, about the weather, about the economy, about everything that is not going the way the person wishes it would. Most believers have never once felt convicted about complaining because it feels like honesty rather than sin. It feels like simply acknowledging reality.
But Philippians 2:14 does not frame it as a personality tendency or a cultural habit. It frames it as a command. Do all things without grumbling or disputing. All things without grumbling. That is not a suggestion for especially positive people. That is a universal command for every believer in every circumstance.
Numbers 11:1 gives the divine response to complaining that most Christians have never connected to their own daily habit. And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled. In the hearing of the Lord, every complaint you make is heard by the God who gave you the life you were complaining about. And 1 Corinthians 10:10-11 applies Israel's experience of complaining directly to New Testament believers as a warning. Nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction. Written down for our instruction. God recorded [music] Israel's complaining and its consequences specifically so that believers would understand that complaining is not a neutral habit with no spiritual consequence. It is a sin that grieves the God who gave you life, provision, breath, and every good thing you have and treats all of it as insufficient. Every complaint you speak is heard by the God who gave you the life you were complaining about. Gratitude and complaint cannot live in the same mouth at the same time.
The fourth sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is the sin of wasting time. Spending hours on entertainment, social media, and meaningless consumption while the calling of God on their life goes unpursued and the people around them go unreached. This sin feels invisible because wasting time does not feel like active wrongdoing. It feels like resting. It feels like relaxing. It feels like a harmless personal choice about how to spend free time.
But Ephesians 5:15-16 frames time not as a personal resource to be spent however you choose, but as a [music] stewardship responsibility before God. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Making the best use of the time. The Greek phrase is exagorazo, to buy up, to redeem, to purchase at a price, suggesting that time is a currency too valuable to be carelessly [music] spent.
Psalm 90:12 records Moses praying a prayer that every believer needs to make their own. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Number our days. The person who genuinely numbers their days, who genuinely reckons with the finite, unrepeatable, irreplaceable nature of every hour they are given, does not spend 3 hours on social media scrolling content that will contribute nothing to their calling, their character, or the kingdom of God.
Romans 14:12 places the accountability for how time is spent at the most serious possible level. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. An account, [music] not just of the obvious sins of commission, the things done wrong, but of the sins of omission, the things left undone, the hours spent on things that had no eternal value. The days that passed without prayer, without the word, without a single deliberate act of obedience to the God who gave every minute of them. You will give an account to God for your time, not just for how you sinned with it, but for what you did not do with it. Every hour has a report card.
The fifth sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is partial obedience. The pattern of obeying God in the areas that are convenient, comfortable, and socially acceptable, while quietly exempting certain areas of life from his authority. >> [music] >> Partial obedience is one of the most subtle forms of disobedience because it looks like genuine devotion from the outside. The partially obedient Christian attends church. They read their Bible. They serve in ministry. They give generously. And there is one area, sometimes two, where they have quietly decided that God's standard does not apply to their specific situation. >> [music] >> One relationship he has been speaking to them about that they have not addressed. One habit he has been convicting them about that they have not surrendered. One area of their finances, their entertainment, or their private life where they remain the authority.
First Samuel 15 records one of the most sobering stories of partial obedience in all of scripture. God commanded Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites, everything, holding nothing back. Saul obeyed. Mostly. He destroyed what seemed worthless and kept what seemed valuable. And when Samuel confronted him, Saul's response in verse 20 is the response of every partially obedient Christian. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. He genuinely believed he had obeyed. He had obeyed. 90%. And Samuel's response in verse 22 gives God's verdict on partial obedience permanently. [music] Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey [music] is better than sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice. God is not impressed by the 90% you gave him while you held on to the 10% he specifically asked for.
Luke 6:46 puts the question directly. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Partial obedience is not a lesser form of obedience. It is a form of disobedience dressed in the language of surrender. Saul obeyed 90% of God's command, and God called it disobedience. Partial obedience is not incomplete surrender. It is incomplete, and God sees the part you held back.
The sixth sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is prayerlessness. And it is a sin because First Samuel 12:23 identifies the failure to pray for others as a sin against God. Moreover, as for me, far be it for me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. Ceasing to pray is a sin. Samuel, one of the greatest intercessors in the entire Old Testament, understood that prayer was not a spiritual exercise he did for his own benefit. It was a responsibility he carried for [music] others. And when he stopped carrying it, he was sinning.
Most Christians have never once identified a prayerless day as a sinful day. They have identified it as an unproductive day, [music] a busy day, uh spiritually dry day, but not a sinful one. Samuel's declaration changes that framing completely.
Luke 18:1 gives Jesus giving the purpose of the parable of the persistent widow with a diagnosis embedded in it. He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not [music] lose heart. Ought always to pray. The word ought in the original Greek carries the weight of moral obligation, not a spiritual aspiration, but a duty. And the reason Jesus attached it to not losing heart is that prayerlessness is never a dramatic decision. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to stop [music] praying. They simply lose heart. Gradually, quietly, one skipped prayer at a time until the habit of prayer that once marked their life has been replaced by the habit of managing their life without it.
Jeremiah 29:12-13 gives the promise that makes every return to prayer worthwhile. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. The ear of God is open to the heart that returns to prayer. Today, right now, regardless of how long the silence has lasted. Samuel said ceasing to pray for others is a sin against God, not a spiritual weakness, not a personal failing, a sin. That changes how you should think about every prayerless day.
The seventh sin most Christians commit every single day without knowing it is the sin of passive love. Knowing that someone around them is in need and doing nothing about it. >> [music] >> Not because they are cruel, not because they do not care in a general sense, but because the need did not rise to the level of urgency that would overcome their comfort, their schedule, and their natural preference to let someone else handle it.
First John 3:17 names this sin with a directness that leaves no room for comfortable theology. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Closes his heart. >> [music] >> The problem is not absence of resources. It is presence of a closed heart. The sin is not inability. It is inaction in the presence of both knowledge and ability.
The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-37 gives the most vivid picture of this sin in action. The priest and the Levite, the most religiously qualified people in the story, saw the wounded man and passed by on the other side. They did not stop to harm him. They simply chose not to help him. And the standard Jesus establishes at the end of the parable in verse 37, go and do likewise, is the standard that every Christian is held to every time they encounter a person in need and make a decision about whether to respond.
Matthew 25:45 gives the weight of that decision in the words of Jesus on judgment day. >> [music] >> As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. Every person in need that you walked past was Jesus in a different face. Every need you had the capacity to meet and chose not to address was a choice made about him. The sin of passive love is committed not by doing something wrong, but by doing nothing when doing something was exactly what God put you there to do. The priest and the Levite did not hurt the wounded man. They just didn't help him. Jesus still used them as the picture of what not to be. Inaction is not innocence.
Here is what I need you to sit with before this video ends. None of the seven sins we looked at today require a dramatic act of rebellion. They do not require you to walk away from God, to commit an obvious moral failure, or to make a conscious decision to disobey. They happen in the ordinary, unremarkable moments of a normal day. In the silence where a word of witness should have been spoken. In the sunrise where yesterday's offense is still being held. In the complaint that rose before the gratitude could. In the hours spent on nothing while the calling waited. In the 90% offered while the 10% was quietly kept. In the day that passed without prayer and in the need that was seen and walked past. These are the sins of the average Christian day. And James 4:17 says they are sins, not weaknesses, [music] not shortcomings, not areas for gradual improvement, sins.
With that clarity comes responsibility. But here is the grace that runs underneath every one of them. First John 1:9 is still true. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All unrighteousness, including the sins you never knew you were committing until today. Bring them to God right now, not tomorrow, not after you have had time to think about it, right now, because Hebrews 3:15 says today, [music] if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. You heard his voice today, >> [music] >> through this teaching, through his word, through the conviction that is sitting in your chest right now. >> [music] >> You heard it. The response that honors that voice is not to close this video and add what you heard to a list of things you will deal with eventually. It is to deal with it now, confess it now, [music] turn from it now, and walk into tomorrow as someone who knows what they were committing and has chosen not to commit it anymore. >> [music] >> Subscribe to Faith Aflame Network right now and hit that notification bell. We release teachings like this one every single week. Share this video immediately with every Christian in your life, because the sins nobody talks about are the ones doing the most damage. And leave a comment below. Tell me honestly which of these seven deadly sins you recognized most clearly in your own life today. God bless you, and I will see you in the next message.