Book titles fascinate me. The title of a book is intended to capture your attention. The author or editor wants to grab you with a thought, whet your appetite and get you to buy the book.

As I look above my keyboard, I see a variety of interesting titles: “Are You Fit For Life?,” “How to Reach Your Full Potential for God” and “Hope Again.”

With authors with names like Graham, Stanley and Swindoll, all of those books were as interesting and helpful as the titles indicated.
But there is a book with a title that really grabbed my attention. It is simply “Respectable Sins.” What do you think the author of that book’s purpose was?

Well, it was just what I expected. He took the time to hammer away at things many of us Christians do — things that are clearly sins, and yet we tend to overlook them.

We often are so busy discussing the sins of others, those sins we find blatant, that we fail to see our own sin.

Jesus spoke about this issue. He warned us not to make a big deal about the speck of dust we see in our neighbor’s eye when we have a huge log sticking out of our own eye. Do you think that Jesus was over-exaggerating for a purpose? Yes, it seems to be the case. We have certain sins that we consider the big ones, all the while continuing to do things that we like to think of as minor.

But we need to be sensitive to the fact that sin is sin. I may call it a “prayer request,” but if I am passing along gossip, the Lord is not pleased. I may say that it is “righteous indignation,” but if I lose my temper, it is wrong. I may claim that I am merely “telling the truth,” but as Paul says, “If I have not love, I am a loud and clanging noise” and nothing more. These so-called little sins destroy our relationships with others, as well as our friendship with God.

I don’t know what list of “little sins” plague your life, but I know the ones that hurt me. I am going to make the commitment to allow the Lord to show me those areas in which I displease him. Then I will repent from them and seek to walk in his ways.

Would you do the same? Do you realize what a difference we could make in our families and churches if we would?

Let’s be done with the respectable sins, because in God’s eyes there is no such thing.