Confessing Our Sins

On our recent road trip to visit my son in Colorado Springs, we encountered hundreds of bugs that splashed themselves upon our windshield.  Their suicidal assault upon my car did not damage the glass windshield, but their shmushed bodies made visibility difficult at night.  The more bugs smashed, the more blur spread across my field of vision.  At the next gas station, we stopped and rubbed those matted insects off the glass.  What a difference!  I once was blurred, but now I see!

 

Sometimes people ask, “If God forgives me of my past, present and future sins, why do I need to confess my sins to Him?”  For the believer, sin indeed is a defeated foe.  We never need to fear condemnation once we are in Christ.   God’s love for us does not diminish or expand with our spiritual performance.   Our adoption by God will never be renegotiated.  God elected us before we were born unto salvation and will not be frustrated in His eternal plan to rescue us from the condemnation that our sin merits.  But sin is still an enemy to our lives.  Sin still severely damages our soul and sours our fellowship with God.  One of the reasons that confession of specific sin is so necessary in a believer's life is that sin acts like bugs splashing themselves upon the windshield of a car.  Our sins blur our vision of God’s goodness, faithfulness and glory.  Jesus revealed, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”  (Matthew 5:8)  The book of Hebrews teaches us, “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.”  (Hebrews 12:14)  Blindness to God is one of sin's most grievous affects and seeing God is one of salvation's greatest joys!  The joy of our salvation is tied to our seeing and savoring our LORD.  We are redeemed to know Him and to love Him.  We rejoice to sing, 

"Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light."

If practical purity is essential to seeing God, we are right to ask, "How do we restore practical holiness to our lives after we sin?"  The Bible teaches us that we begin with confession of our sin to God.  We confess our sins to God, not to earn back His love, but to enjoy His love.  Jesus urges daily confession as He teaches us to pray, “Father, . . . Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  Jesus intends for us to make confession of sin a central part of our daily conversation with our Heavenly Father.   

Our flesh often responds one of two ways to sin in our lives:  1.  We brush it off as inconsequential.  2.  We despair over it as an unremovable stain.  Friends, let us not ignore our sin and allow the bugs to build up upon the windshield of their soul thinking that we can see “well enough.”  Nor let us despair over our sin, living in hopeless guilt thinking that no remedy exists for our blurred vision of God.  Instead let us make a daily practice of confessing our sins to the God who delights to clean the windows of our soul so that we can glimpse a clear view of His glory!

1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Some ask, “Is this verse for believers or unbelievers?”  The answer is, “Yes.”  This verse calls the unbeliever to faith in Jesus as the justifier of those who are guilty before God.  And this verse calls the believer to acknowledge before God those sins that grieve the Lord and that dirty our soul.  This verse helps the unredeemed to enter into God’s love and this verse helps the redeemed to enjoy God’s love.

Ritch Boerckel