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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.)

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KJV: Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure.

WEB: Lay hands hastily on no one, neither be a participant in other men's sins. Keep yourself pure.