Why is it sinful for a church to cover up abuse?

No veil covers us. Myself I avow, I desire to bear the shame of my own and my brethren's nakedness, and that all our sins may go before to judgment. Better to have the testimony of the Spirit and of one's own conscience, and the sneer of the world, than to lose these and retain the approbation, or even the continued communion of brethren. To continue in fellowship with any gathering which persisted against testimony, in still lying under such an evil, ought to be felt to be morally impossible where there is faith. The nature of the evil, too, must painfully affect the character of intercourse with those who are individually accomplices. Better for all, however, to be forced to confession, than subjected still to the leavening plague of such an evil.

One word as to church position. — What is that, if it is not a position in the light, where all is made manifest, and nothing can be hid. Impossible the thought, that where the Holy Ghost is, there, unconfessed sin should be covered over; or that where life in Christ is, it should not detect and confess every evil inroad of Satan. Let the confession be in the same circle as was the sin, and the knowledge and fruits of it. God loves the members of Christ's body too well to cover up sin without judging it. What is the church on earth, if thought of as a place exempt either from the moral government of God, or from the holiness, truthfulness and purity, which become the habitation of God?

Now the former report (avowedly hearsay) imputes pretty much what in fact was written. Yet the writer, when appealed to, said he was satisfied he never used these words! Was this Christian candour? or even common honesty? But so it is ever: the truth of Christ lost for one who bears His name is the loss of truthfulness. Nor this only: the brother who resented the reported dishonour of Christ was challenged to produce the letter containing it, in the very place where the letter was, and was known to be unless destroyed! Now what can one think of concealing it deliberately, not only to shield the evildoer, but to subject the brother jealous for the glory of Christ to the charge of unrighteousness, and to threats of more or less discipline? Shame on such as conspired in the Name against that Name! If honest once, to what have error and party spirit and a bad conscience degraded them? Is this the holiness of God's house? It is not Greenwich only: the same fellowship was at work to the same ends at Ealing, and in how many other spots we know not. It is Christ flouted by all such, with moral wrong flowing directly from it as flagrant as the doctrinal error, leaven in both ways.

But, ah, there was an Eye that could penetrate through all this covering which David's insensibility has cast over his heart and conscience. "The sword devours one as well as another," no doubt, and war has its vicissitudes; but this would not satisfy the holiness of God. No; the whole matter must be exposed — the dreadful meshes of evil in which Satan had entangled the feet of his victim must all be disentangled, the holiness of God's house must be maintained at all cost, His name and truth fully vindicated, and His servant scourged in the view of the whole congregation — yea, "in the sight of the sun." It might seem, in man's judgement, to be wiser to hide from public view the chastisement of one who stood so high, but such is not God's mode; He will prove to every spectator that He has no fellowship with evil, by the judgement which He executes in the midst of His people. Nothing could avail to wipe off the stain which had been cast upon the truth of God but the public judgement of the transgressor. The men of the world may go on for the present, and sin with a high hand; but those who stand in association with the name of the Lord, must keep themselves pure or else be judged.

But it is well to remember here that christian discipline has always the recovery of the soul for its object. Even if the offender should be delivered unto Satan, it is for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord — a most forcible reason for exercising this discipline, according to the measure of our spiritual power; for we cannot go beyond that. At the least we might always humble ourselves before God, in order that the evil may be removed. To be indifferent to the presence of evil in the church is to be guilty of high treason against God; it is taking advantage of His love to deny his holiness, despising and dishonouring Him before all. God acts in love in the church; but He acts with holiness and for the maintenance of holiness: otherwise it would not be the love of God which acted; it would not be seeking the prosperity of souls.

As observed already, in this case of (church) discipline it is not a question of a personal restoration of the one who is the object of it, but of the common responsibility of all, to keep the house from defilement. The restoration of the sinning one may be the result of the church discipline; but that is another thing and has nothing to do with the necessity of the church discipline as such, nor can it alter its character. The Name of the Lord must be vindicated first.

At the seat of judgment, God will bring every secret thing into the light; everything now covered will be revealed; and at this hour, those hidden evils amongst God's people, which bar the manifestations of His presence, would be exposed, confessed, and cast out, were His saints truly before His face.

Achan confessed his sin, pronounced publicly what had been in his breast. The messengers ran, dug up the accursed thing, and laid it out in the broad daylight before Jehovah. None of the shame of the sin was hidden, no hushing up of iniquity for the sake of peace dreamed of; the truth, not policy, prevailed; for the question on that solemn day of heart-searching was, Jehovah or man?

Let any evil which has to be corrected in any be shown there. If it be in brethren meeting in York-street, Bristol — in G. Alexander, J. N. Darby, G. V. Wigram, or W. H. Dorman — we desire in no sense to screen them any more than to condemn any among yourselves. Let the Lord's honour and the unity and holiness of the church only be thought of.

The writer acknowledges also that the evil is immensely aggravated by full testimony and patient admonition. Any evil might enter any assembly; but it is the want of genuine zeal in judging it scripturally for Christ's sake, which is so fatal that no assembly ought to be owned if it distinctly abandon this paramount duty. The deliberate acceptance of evil, the persistent failure to clear itself, ought to unchurch; and those who, with conscience before God, leave such a defiled meeting, are the very inverse of schismatics, if they also hold fast to the one body. Nor is it a sort of clergy, (that is, men here or there, who set up to an exclusive right to judge these questions,) who have to decide this, nor other meetings in the neighbourhood, but saints in the circumstances who have to act for God in their own duty, with the interests of Christ and the church in their hearts.

All is to be brought into the light, all thought of concealment rooted out and destroyed in the heart; but God will not maintain the influence of men and reputation by presenting a manifestation to them in the word, which is exactly what falsifies the moral judgment; and He does not. If the heart is comforting itself with the thought that it will not be known, He breaks through the heart's deceit relentlessly, and says it will be known; everything hidden shall come to light. He does not neutralize His own authority and destroy the purity of moral principle, in saying it will be known before your brethren in that day.

All is to be brought into the light, all thought of concealment rooted out and destroyed in the heart; but God will not maintain the influence of men and reputation by presenting a manifestation to them in the word, which is exactly what falsifies the moral judgment; and He does not. If the heart is comforting itself with the thought it will not be known, He breaks through the heart's deceit relentlessly, and says it will be known: everything hidden shall come to light. He does not neutralize His own authority and destroy the purity of moral principle, in saying it will be known before your brethren in that day.