1 Timothy 5:22

1 Timothy 5:22

Neither be partaker of other men’s sins.

How must we reprove, that we may not partake of other men’s sins?

I. How a man maybe said to partake of other men’s sins.

1. By contrivance. Thus Jonadab was guilty of Amnon’s incest, by his subtle contrivance of that wickedness, by being a pander to that villainy (2 Samuel 13:5). When a man shall wittingly and willingly spread a snare in his brother’s way, and either drive him in by provocation, or decoy him in by allurement, he makes himself a partaker of his sin. For example: to provoke a man to passion, to tempt a person to drunkenness and uncleanness, to put a man upon murder and bloodshed, to draw souls into error, heresy, blasphemy, etc.,--this is to espouse and adopt the sin, and to make it a man’s own. You know the story there, 2 Samuel 11:1-27.: Uriah was slain with the edge of the sword; David was many miles off when Uriah was slain: “Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:9). The Ammonites slew him, but David murdered him. St. Paul tells us he was a “blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.”

2. By compliance. By consenting and complying with sin and sinners: so a man makes himself partaker. Though he has no hand in it, yet, if he has a heart in it; though he does not act it, yet if he likes it, and loves it, and approves it. Saul--He had no hand in St. Stephen’s death, he did not cast one stone at him; but because he looked on with approbation, and stood by with consent--“Saul was consenting unto his death” (Acts 8:1). You may murder a man with a thought, as they say the basilisk will with a look.

3. By connivance. By a sinful dissembling, flattering, and winking at others in their wickedness and sins, so men become guilty of others’ sins: “The leaders of this people cause them to err” (Isaiah 9:16): it is in the Hebrew, “The blessers of this people cause them to err.” Beloved, the blessers of men in wickedness are the leaders of men in wickedness.

4. By sufferance. By permitting the sins of others, so we become guilty, by suffering others to sin, whom we are bound in duty, and may be able by authority, to hinder.

5. By influence of bad example. By setting loose and bad examples for others to imitate. So men are guilty of other’s sins; as, namely, when children sin by the examples of their parents, those very parents are guilty of their children’s sins. So it is here: he that sets an evil example sins not alone; he draws hundreds, it may be, into sin after him. He is like a man that sets his own house on fire; if, burns many of his neighbours’, and he is to be answerable for all the ruins.

6. By inference from a bad example, or by imitation. So a man is guilty of another man’s sin, not only by pattern, in setting bad examples, but also by practice, in following bad examples; and thus that man that will be drunk because another was drunk, or that breaks the Sabbath because others do the like--he is not only guilty of his own particular sin, but he is guilty also of “their sins whom he imitates and follows; and the reason is, because bad examples are not land-marks for us to go by, but they are sea-marks for us to avoid. And this is the woful, intricate, perplexed labyrinth into which sin doth precipitate careless and ungodly sinners. If thou committest that sin which none before committed but thee, thou art guilty of all the sins of future generations by thy example--as Adam was in the world, and Jeroboam in Israel. And if thou committest any sin because others have committed it before thee, thou art guilty of all the sins of former generations by thy imitation: and so sin never goes alone; a single sin is as great a solecism in divinity as a single “thank” is in grammar and morality.

7. By countenance. By delightful society and company with wicked men to countenance them, so we become partakers of their sins.

8. By maintenance. By upholding and encouraging men in their sins, though thou never committest them thyself, yet thou art guilty. “He that biddeth him God-speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 1:11).

II. Why a Christian must be careful to avoid, and not to partake of, other men’s sins.

1. Out of a principle of charity to our brethren.

2. Out of a principle of pity to ourselves.

3. Out of a principle of piety to God.

III. application:

1. Is there such a thing as “partaking of other men’s sins” after this manner?

(1) Hence you may be informed of the equity and justice of God’s proceeding in punishment.

(2) Hence be informed what piety, and strictness, and watchfulness are more especially required of those that have the care of others.

(3) Hence take an account why the wicked of the world do so hate the godly, and reproach and revile them. It is this: They will not be partakers of their sins: they will not commit them, neither will they connive at them; and this is the reason why the world hates them.

(4) Here is matter of reproof and humiliation this day for our want of watchfulness in this kind.

2. The second use is of exhortation and caution together.

Is it so, that it ought to be every man’s care not to partake of any man’s sin?

1. To lay down the arguments.

(1) Consider: You have sins enough of your own, you have no reason to partake of other men’s. It is cruel to “add affliction to your bonds.”

(2) Consider: It is a most monstrous sin, it is a most dreadful sin, to partake of other men’s sins. The apostle speaks of committing iniquity “with greediness” (Ephesians 4:19).

(3) Consider: If you partake of other men’s sins, you shall certainly partake of other men’s plagues. “Come out of her, My people,” says God, namely, from Babylon, “that you be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). See Proverbs 13:20.

2. What sins we must especially take heed of partaking of. Of all sin whatsoever: “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22); but especially of three sorts of sin, which may be called epidemical plagues.

(1) Church sins.

(2) National sins.

(3) Family sins.

3. Now, and in the last place, we come to the antidotes: How we must so carry it and order the business, as not to partake of other men’s sins.

(1) Exercise an holy jealousy over others. Job, sacrificing for his children, said, “It may be that my sons have sinned” (Job 1:5).

(2) Watch against the sins of others. Have your eyes about, you: take heed of contriving, complying, winking at them.

(3) Pray against them.

(4) Mourn for them.

(5) Reprove them (Ezekiel 3:17-19). If we would not partake of the sins of others, we must reprove the sins of others (Leviticus 19:1-37.; Ezekiel 33:7-9). So the apostle saith expressly (Ephesians 5:11). (J. Kitchin, M. A.)

Partaking of other men’s sins

It was a frequent petition of the illustrious St.-Augustine, “Lord, forgive other men’s sins!” It is a petition which we all should constantly present to God; for we, all of us, in a greater or less degree, have been instrumental in producing that iniquity which deluges the world.

I. We are to show you by what means we may partake of other men’s sins. We partake of other men’s sins by uttering those sentiments which tend to subvert morality, or diminish our horror for guilt. If we propagate loose doctrines, if we scoff at serious piety, if we persuade men that an holy and heavenly life is not necessary, “if we call evil good and good evil,” we are murdering souls.

II. That we may in future be more guarded, let us attend to some of those motives which enforce the injunction of the apostle.

III. Some directions, to enable you to comply with the injunctions of the apostle.

1. Be careful that your own heart and life are holy. Sin is infectious; and as long as you are polluted with it, you must communicate its poison to those with whom you associate. Besides, if your own life is unholy, your conscience will prevent you from faithfully reproving sin in others, or your ill example will render your reproofs inefficacious.

2. Cultivate a high value and love for the souls of men. That which we love we shall not readily injure; and if we have a proper regard for immortal souls we shall rather forego many pleasures than give a wound to them.

3. Mourn before God for the sins of your brethren. When God passed through Jerusalem to smite it, He spared none but those who cried and sighed for the abominations that were done within it (Ezekiel 9:4).

4. If we would not partake of the sins of others, we must reprove them. (H. Kollock.)

Participation in other men’s sins

I. When do we make ourselves partakers of other men’s sins?

1. Ministers make themselves partakers in the sins of their people, when those sins are occasioned by their own negligence, by their example, or by unfaithfulness in the discharge of their official duties.

2. Parents participate in the sins of their children, when they occasion, and when they might have prevented them. But further, parents partake in the guilt of their children’s sins when they might and do not prevent them.

3. The remarks, which have been made respecting parents, will apply, though perhaps somewhat less forcibly, to masters and guardians, and all who are concerned in the government and education of youth.

4. Churches become partakers of the sins of an individual member, when these sins are occasioned by a general neglect of brotherly watchfulness and reproof, and when they are tolerated by the Church in consequence of a neglect of Church discipline.

5. We all make ourselves partakers in other men’s sins, when we either imitate or in any other way countenance and encourage them.

6. Members of civil communities partake of all the sins which they might, but do not prevent.

7. If private citizens partake of all the sins which they might have prevented, much more do rulers and magistrates. Subjects who have the privilege of choosing their own rulers and magistrates, make themselves partakers of all their sins, when they give their votes for vicious or irreligious characters.

II. To state some of the reasons which should induce us to guard against partaking of other men’s sins.

1. If we partake of their sins, we shall share in their punishment.

2. It is impossible not to perceive how completely our subject justifies the con duct of those much insulted individuals, who have voluntarily associated for the purpose of assisting in executing the laws, and suppressing vice and immorality among us. (E. Payson, D. D.)

Participation in the sins of others

I. To specify some of the ways in which we may become partakers in other men’s sins.

1. When, through the influence of custom, we fall in with habits which Scripture and conscience condemn.

2. When we fail to exert the power or influence we may possess, for the prevention or discountenance of sin.

3. When we connive at them, or lend our sanction to their improper concealment.

4. When we fail to manifest our abhorrence, on either witnessing or hearing of their commission.

5. By inconsiderately introducing them to stations, the duties or dangers of which they are utterly incompetent to meet.

II. How hardening and injurious will probably be the influence of such conduct on the minds of sinners.

III. How adapted such conduct too to weaken in the believer’s own mind impressions of the evil of sin in himself. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

Other men’s sins

However hideous and hateful our own sins may be, still, from long familiarity with them, or from the pleasure they afford us, we excuse, or palliate, or forget them. But you look with unaffected and unmitigated horror and disgust on the sins of other men. The rich look with horror on the sins of the poor, and the poor with equal indignation loathe the sins of the rich. Now it is this which gives its horror to the thought expressed in our text. It speaks in a language which all can understand. It says to each man, “Be not partaker in other men’s sins.” Let us consider, then, how, or in what way, we may partake in the sins of other men.

I. We may become partakers in other men’s sins by learning to practise them. However alien to our own natural disposition, we are in danger of catching the infection of other men’s sins--in danger of being corrupted and contaminated, and led to commit them, of learning to do and to delight in doing them. This world is like a hospital crowded with patients afflicted with various diseases. And here in our text the physician warns us to take heed lest in addition to our own disease we catch the infection of other diseases from our fellow-men, and aggravate and complicate our own by introducing their poison into our system. Each man has a sin which more easily besets him--a sin to which he is predisposed, which seems born in his nature. But there is no sin, however alien to our disposition at first, which may not be superinduced on our character, and become a second nature. Perhaps of all sins, acquired sins are the most inveterate. Though we escape the infection of other men’s diseases, we may be responsible for their diseases and their death--diseases which we loathe and abominate. This is emphatically the lesson of the text.

II. We become partakers in other men’s sins when we wilfully and knowingly entice or encourage them to sin--ay, even though we should scrupulously keep our hands from doing or our own hearts from desiring to do it. This is an acknowledged principle of eternal justice. It is acknowledged and acted on in our courts of law. He who instigates, or encourages, or countenances a theft is held as guilty as the actual thief. He who loosens the stone from the mountain’s brow is responsible not only for the blade of grass which it crushes in its first tardy movement, but for all the evil that it does in its downward career till it loses the momentum which he gave it, and lies motionless in the plain below. He is responsible for all the ruin it effects though he stands calmly at the top. Even so do we become partakers in all the deepening sins to which our first enticement gave birth. The schoolboy who has whispered in his companion’s ear a filthy word, or taught him an evil thought; the merchant who has shown his apprentice the tricks and fraudulent dishonesties of trade; the master who has enticed his servant to despise the Sabbath; the giddy youth who has defiled the mind of maiden purity or seduced from the paths of innocence--all these are partakers, not only in the first sin to which they were tempted, but in the long, black, ever-deepening catalogue of sins to which that first sin gave birth. True, indeed, the responsibility of their victims is not lessened by their participation in it.

III. We involve ourselves in other men’s sins when we, through heedlessness and inattention, countenance or give them occasion to commit sin. Observe, I do not now speak of those who allow themselves to be corrupted by other men’s sins, as under the first head, nor yet of those who intentionally corrupt others, as under the second head, but only of those who, through heedlessness and inattention, are the unwitting and unwilling occasions of countenancing others in sin. The guilt in this case is less than in the former instances, and the consequences are not so fearful to ourselves. This no less than the last is an acknowledged principle of justice. It is acknowledged and acted on in our courts of law. Has any one through heedlessness or want of attention caused the death of a fellow-man, he is acquitted of the crime of murder, but he is brought in as guilty of culpable manslaughter. His guilt is less, but is as clear. His punishment is less, but it is as sure. Does the traveller meet some accident, to the loss of property or the injury of his person, through the heedlessness or inattention of those who conveyed his property or himself, they are held responsible as persons guilty of culpable negligence, and if still persisted in to the frequent injury of others would be liable to severer punishment. But so it is in sober truth, and this for the first time is the point at which I take up the precise lesson of our text. I do not suppose that Paul thought it needful to warn Timothy against being corrupted by other men’s sins. Nor can I imagine that he thought it necessary to forbid him from intentionally corrupting others. What, then, did he mean, unless it was to warn him that with the best intentions he might inadvertently, through inattention, involve himself in the guilt of other men’s sins, sins which he hated himself, and which he mourned over in others? And so it was. “Lay hands suddenly on no man,” said Paul, and as an argument or motive to care and consideration, he added, “Be not partaker in other men’s sins.” Having thus endeavoured to illustrate the general principles suggested by or embodied in our text, I might now allude to the encouragement and countenance that is given to drunkenness by the multiplied and unnecessary drinking customs which even good men maintain, but by which they become partakers in the sin of those who are thereby led away to excess. (W. Grant.)

Partaking of other men’s sins

There is something which is very striking and very awful in the thought which is suggested to our minds in the words which have just been read. We have often heard it said that it is quite enough for any man in this world to answer for his own doings or misdoings; it is not fair to lay upon him any burden of guilt beyond that which is properly his own; or to attach to him any discredit because he comes, perhaps, of an ill-doing family; or because some one closely related to him has fallen into gross sin and shame. And if, in the nature of things, it is possible for us to help feeling as though a reflected disgrace were cast upon that person whose near kinsman has broken the laws of his country, for instance, and died a felon’s death, still we are ready at once to confess, when the thing is fairly put to us, that it is not fit or just to hold any human being responsible for that which has been done by another; and that it is quite enough to answer for the wrong which he has done himself. We tremble to think of the heavy load of responsibility and guilt which we have accumulated for ourselves. But can it be that this is not all; can it be that we have all of us more to answer for than we have ourselves done. There is a sense in which it is not possible for any man to be partaker in the sin of another. You cannot transfer responsibility. No man can justly be held responsible for that which he did not do; but then a man may do many things besides those which he does directly. A man may do many things at second-hand, so to speak; and in that case he is quite as responsible for them as if he had done them with his own hand. For instance, you can all understand that if any person hires another to commit a murder for him, both parties in that transaction are equally guilty of the crime of murder. And, indeed, in many cases the accomplice is worse than the actual sinner, for in the case of the accomplice there is all the original guilt, with cowardice and meanness added. But may you not likewise be partaker in sins of which at their commission you did not know, and at whose commission you would shudder? May you not, in the moral world, sometimes set the great stone rolling down the hill, with little thought of the ruin it may deal below? As, for instance, you, a parent, neglect the training of your child, that child grows up into guilt which appals you--guilt which terrifies you; but are you not still partaker in that guilt--answerable for that guilt at the bar of God? Ah, you know you are; you know full well that if that neglected child should end at the gallows, the fault, the sin, the shame will still be in a great measure your own! Ah! you may live after you are dead to do mischief--live in the evil thoughts you instilled, the false doctrines you taught, the perverse character you helped to form. When you stand before the judgment throne, you may find yourself called to answer for myriads of sins besides those which you directly committed; and you will feel that your condemnation for these sins is just and right. Let us, then, look somewhat more closely into this great principle which I have been endeavouring to set before you. Let us look more particularly at some of the ways in which we may become “partakers of other men’s sins.” And in thinking, first, of how we may make others to sin by suggesting evil thoughts and feelings, let us take an extreme case by way of example: an extreme case, indeed, but unhappily not an unprecedented one. Let us think of a great genius: of a man to whom God has been pleased to give that rare and wonderful power of excogitating beautiful thoughts which shall come home to the heart and brain of other men, and clothing these beautiful thoughts in words which shall fall like music on the ear. Let us think of such a man applying the noble powers which God gave him for high and pure designs to surround vice with all the fascinations of poetry and romance, to strip it of all its grossness, while leaving all its guilt; let us think of him writing tales and poems, all of the most corrupting tendency; going to undermine the very foundations of all morality and all religion; and wrapping up infidelity and profligacy in thoughts that breathe and words that burn. And in every such case, is not that perverted genius justly chargeable with a share of that sin to which his writings have tempted? You may have done in a lower degree what the bad great man did on a grander scale. Even then, when you allow vice to pass without reproof, for fear of giving offence, are you not thus tacitly encouraging it? Even then, when you soften down the stern requirements of religion, for fear of making some one uncomfortable whom the truth would make uncomfortable, are you not thus practically encouraging him to remain worldly as he is? So far, then, for certain fashions in which by the lip, by speech or by silence, you may become accessory and abetting to other men’s sins; and next we remark that by your life and example you may do so even more effectually. Example, whether good or bad, is always more efficient than precept; and you know quite well that many a man has taken heart to do a sinful deed because he saw another do it, who but for that would never have done so. The higher a man’s profession of religion, the more closely will his practice be watched, both by such as have little religion and by such as have none at all; and who does not know how any inconsistency, any lapse, on the part of a professing Christian is laid hold of by ungodly men to countenance their ungodly lives, and to show that all religion is a pretence and a delusion! The evil principle we instilled, the evil example we set, may ripen into bitter fruit in the murderous blow which shall be dealt a century hence upon Australian plains. How strange, yet how inevitable, the tie which may link our uneventful life with the stormy passions of numbers far away! It is but as yesterday that we heard of the success of that marvellous achievement of science which has set the old world in momently communication with the new; and the most sluggish imagination must have been awakened somewhat in the thought of that slender cable which, far beneath the waves of the great Atlantic, lying still in stirless ocean valleys, and scaling trackless ocean cliffs, maintains the subtle current through those thousands of miles; but more wonderful still, surely, is that unseen fibre along which, from other men’s sins, responsibility may thrill even to our departed souls--a chain whose links are formed, perhaps, of idle words, of forgotten looks, of phrases of double meaning, of bad advice, of cynical sentiment hardly seriously meant; yet carried on through life after life, through soul after soul, till the little seed of evil sown by you has developed into some deed of guilt at which you would shudder, but from some participation in responsibility for which you cannot clear yourself. Yea, the thought widens out beyond anything which I have hitherto suggested; for surely it is nothing more than a legitimate extension of the great principle of the text to say that in some measure we are responsible for the sin which we failed to do our utmost to prevent; and so that even heathen cruelty and heathen idolatry may be in so far chargeable on us, because, though we never bowed to the senseless image, though we never imbrued our hands in a fellow creature’s blood, we yet failed to give of our means, our efforts, our prayers, to send to those dark lands that gospel light, which might have bidden these things die out for ever. In truth, the only way in which it is possible for us to cease to sin in the person of others, is by ceasing to sin in our own; for every sin may waken its echo, every sin is repudiated and reiterated, in other souls and lives. (A. H. K. Boyd.)

Refusing to be a partaker in other men’s sins

Joseph Sturge, the Christian philanthropist, remonstrating one day with a drunken man whom he met, was startled by his reply that he had got drunk at a public-house, adding, “The beer was made from your barley.” His mind was at once made up, and the next Mark Lane Express announced that under no circumstances would the Messrs. Sturge supply barley for malting purposes. This conscientious decision struck off £8,000 a year from their income.

Keep thyself pure.--

A caution to young men

In the abstract, the text, brief as it is, contains a precept impossible to be fulfilled. For who does not know that in His judgment “God looks upon the heart”? and yet, who can say, “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin”? The solution of the apparent difficulty lies upon the surface: we can do relatively what we cannot do absolutely; we can do in association with the grace of God what we cannot do without it. We then, accordingly, as ambassadors for Christ, say to each young man whom we address, as the apostle said to Timothy, “Keep thyself pure.” Keep thyself, as one from the beginning separated and set apart for Christ, from everything which is inconsistent with the allegiance which thou must owe to Him; with the attachment which thou oughtest to feel for Him; with the attainment of those blessings which are the purchase of His blood, and which God will bestow on thee through Him alone. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Watch against the beginnings of evil.

1. “Keep thyself pure,” then, young man, as to “doctrine” (for doctrine is the foundation of duty).

2. And not only let Holy Scripture stand first, but let it stand alone. Let it be received, not as “the word of man,” but, as to doctrine, the teacher of truth alone.

3. Again, we say to the young man, “keep thyself pure” from error, by taking Scripture, in all that seems to require “reproof” or refutation, as a test. Whatever is repugnant to thy inherent and instinctive sense of right, whether to be denied as a principle, or to be deprecated as a practice, try it by its agreement or disagreement with God’s Word.

4. Next, “keep thyself pure” in act, by taking the Word of God “for correction,” or setting upright that which hath fallen down, restoring what hath been damaged or decayed through sin. And here the Word is a supreme, unerring standard of right and wrong; and “correction “is but another name for bringing into harmony or accordance with the Word.

5. “Keep thyself pure,” by looking to the Word “for instruction in righteousness”; for instruction, which must extend itself throughout the whole of life, though life were protracted, as of old time, far beyond the narrow limits of threescore years and ten.

6. “Keep thyself pure,” then, young man, but only by the grace of God in Christ. Once throw aside that buckler, and thou wilt become vulnerable by every weapon of the foe. Writ thou “keep thyself pure,” or shall that impurity, which is now thy shame, become thy companion and thy curse throughout eternity? Writ thou be refined as the pure gold, or cast away as the “reprobate silver”? “Keep thyself pure,” then, young man! because “thy breath is in thy nostrils”; because thy sun of life may go down ere it is yet high noon; and that purity of life is essential to the peace of death. But once more we add, “keep thyself pure” for the improvement--yes, and even for the true enjoyment of life. But by the observance of this salutary caution everything is gained, and nothing can be lost; time is rightly occupied, and talent profitably improved. Diligence in the practice of business, coupled with uprightness in its principles, rarely fails to prosper, even in a worldly view. (T. Dale, M. A.)

Purity in a minister

I admire Mr. Whitefield’s reasons for always having his linen scrupulously clean. “No, no,” he would say, “these are not trifles; a minister must be without spot, even in his garments, if he can.” Purity cannot be carried too far in a minister. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A clean record

The last words of a man are of comparatively little importance, but surely Mr. Gough could have uttered no sentence which would have pleased him better if he had known he would never speak again than the last words which he ejaculated as he sank unconscious in the Presbyterian church in which he was lecturing, “Young man, make your record clean!”