When Nobody is Looking

In Matthew Chapter twenty-six the chief priests and elders of the people conspired together to find a way to arrest and kill Jesus. Oddly enough, they were afraid to do it publicly, and wanting to avoid the crows of Passover, they concluded that it should be “not during the Feast, or there may be a riot among the people.” (Matt 26:5) Here we have a group of conspirators scheming to put to death a traveling healer/teacher because they feel threatened by him, a bold and vicious move to be sure, but they don’t want anyone to take notice of their move. Do we act the same way? Are we willing to commit sins that we certainly know are wrong as long as nobody in particular is looking our way? It’s certainly a temptation, the notion that when we don’t get “caught” that we’ve actually gotten away with something. Of course God knows all that we do, but we somehow manage to convince ourselves that we’ve managed to keep things quiet. We’d all be better of if we remembered that our behavior in private and our behavior in public should always be Christ-like, even when nobody is looking.