Leading or Trailing?

My New Testament reading for the Wednesday came from First Timothy (5:1-25). As I read it I ran across a rather troubling word Paul gives Timothy. He writes, "The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden" (vv. 24-25).

I think Paul wrote the passage to encourage Timothy, saying that even if the good deeds Timothy was doing were not all that evident now, eventually they would be recognized as such, so keep up the good work. But the way I read it was negatively (I tend to do that a lot). I saw Paul basically saying that our sins either rush ahead of us to heaven, or else they come trailing in behind us when we get there.

Now I know some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute Steve, my sins are forgiven – they are as far as the east is from the west, yada yada…" But picture this with me for just a moment. You're standing at the gates of heaven and everything is looking good. Peter reviews your paperwork and is about to let you in but then there's a commotion in the back of the line. It's an angel, completely out of breath that rushes up to St. Peter and says, "Hold it; you need to see this before you let that one in," and just like that, it's over. I know, I know; bad theology…but I'm just saying.

The answer, of course, is to stop sinning so we don't have a leading edge of sin racing toward the place of judgment ahead of us, or worse (in my mind), a comet-like trail of sin following behind as you make your way there. David said, "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered" (Psalm 32:1) but Paul added that just because they are forgiven is certainly no license to keep on sinning so let us all "count ourselves dead to sin, but alive in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:11). Then we won't have to worry about our sin racing ahead of us or the possibility of it trailing behind.

Of course you could just take the word from Paul as a positive exhortation as he probably meant it, but then I wouldn't have had anything to write about today! J