I've touched on the subject of denial one's sins and its grave implications. I'd like to expound on it here.

We all have dark impulses, fleshly desires to do evil, both small and great. Even the most devout believers and saints have such desires. These may lie deep within us, often never rising to any level of consciousness. Denying their existence gives them license to reign unrestricted, and in the extreme, leads to various sociopathies. (There are far better essays written on the rise of denied sins, so I won't belabor it here.) We believers especially, but all people generally, like to think of ourselves as good people. We like to be known by others as good friends, good citizens, and good members of society. In truth, though, we harbor the potential for mind-numbing evil, and we must not deny it.

Murder is a common example. We've all been angered enough to have committed murder were it not for various kinds of restraint. Likewise, we are sexual beings. We're all capable of sexual deviancy, rape, and worse. We have the real potential to be unfaithful to our spouse. Our frustrations might lead us to beat our children (or spouse or others). We can lie with the best of them, weaving elaborate fantasies in order to protect ourselves or to get what we want. We can cheat and steal, especially if the risk/reward ratio is just right.

Any attempt to deny one's enormous capacity for sin--specifically the drives that are present within us all (even if only unconsciously)--is just a lie to oneself and to God. It opens the door for these evils to bubble up to consciousness and into actions. This is most especially true of the saints (thus, the all too common and public failings of so many believers). We are all sinful in our very nature, even if we were theoretically sinless in our actions.

The key to overcoming temporal sin is not its denial but choice. (I say "temporal" because this is not a reference to the destruction of sin from the perspective of eternity. The latter is a divine act only, while the former may be divine in power and strength but individual in submission.) In a sense, we wake each day and choose not to commit murder. Really, this choice is made moment by moment. Such choices are most often subconscious, but they're choices nevertheless. We choose not to be adulterers, murderers, and thieves. Most of the time, these choices are rather easy to make, but sometimes, they can be difficult. The motivations for these right choices include fear of social reprisal (shame, jail, retribution) or obedience to God. The godless have only the former (sometimes not even this) while believers also have the latter.

When the fleshly desires for sin are strong or when the fear of social reprisal is diminished (or both), only the choice/commitment to obey the Lord remains as a significant motivator for righteousness. The Lord provides us the power to obey (we will fail if we rely upon our own power to obey); we need only submit to Him, yielding our own will to His. When we deny that such a choice even exists, though, we open the door for these sins to assert themselves, and we fail to turn to the Lord for help in making this choice.