Old Secrets Uncovered

 Old Secrets Uncovered

A couple of news stories caught my attention, one local and another far away; one rather sordid, and the other, spectacular, if you are into those kinds of things.

The first had to do with a sexual assault case that took place 20+ years ago. The perpetrator was never identified until just recently. DNA studies collected from one of the victims was studied, tracing back to the 1700’s and linking to three brothers who were alive at the time of the crime. One brother was identified as a possible suspect, tested, and arrested. Who would have thought this crime would be solved after all these years? There is a verse in Numbers of the Old Testament that says “be sure your sin will find you out.”

The other story has to do with Ptolemy who lived in the last century before Christ. He wrote mathematical and scientific treatises on parchment, and, since parchment was limited in supply and expensive, later writers would write over old documents. We have never seen before his writings on the meteoroscope. “The reuse of the parchment for the Latin manuscript meant there were faint remains of the previous text.”  And not only was this work overwritten, but in the early 1800’s another researcher had applied chemicals to try and uncover the original, unsuccessfully. Now using things like multispectral imaging and a 240 million-pixel camera and software that does “layer amplification,” the ancient writing was restored. I won’t read the document or understand the instrument, but I am interested in old secrets being uncovered, because now we know that mankind is trying to do what God has always been doing.

Paul’s letter to the Romans has a “bad news” section which precedes the “good news” section. If you don’t believe in the “bad news,” you won’t care much about the “good news.” And so one element of the “bad news” is found in Romans 2:16, that there will be a day, a judgment day, “when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.” There will be no hiding spots, no erasures or scrub jobs, no chemicals or write-overs that will obscure the truth as we stand before God on the day of judgment.

The fact that God always has known and always will know our secrets shouldn’t cause us to re-double our hiding efforts; rather, it should help us draw this conclusion: we can be honest with God. And as we confess the truth about ourselves and affirm the truth of what God has done for us in Christ, God who offers forgiveness through Christ will wash those secrets away, forever, never to be brought up again.