“I confess my iniquity; I am full of anxiety because of my sin” (Psalm 38:18).
I read about Beverly Sills who, in the 1980s, was the general director of the New York opera. She said that not managing the stress of her job combined with being profoundly undisciplined caused her to balloon into obesity. She said, “It made me sick to look at myself. I'd reached the point where I didn't want to have my clothes made anymore. It was too embarrassing. So, I ordered everything from catalogues.” Eventually Beverly was forced to face her problem. “I woke up one day and realized I was really ill,” she said. So, she went to see a specialist. “He put me on the scales,” she recounted, “and they read 215 pounds.” She looked at her doctor and gasped, “I cannot possibly weigh that much!” The doctor said, “Please look down. Are those two fat feet on the scale yours or mine?” Beverly smiled with embarrassment. Later, after beginning her weight loss journey and experience success, Betty confessed, “Once I accepted the problem, I was on my way” (https://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/c/confession.htm). Friends, just as the first step in losing weight is accepting the fact that we have a problem, so also is dealing with sin God’s way and experiencing forgiveness and life transformation dependent on the initial step of accepting that we are guilty of wrong doing and need to make it right with God and with those we have sinned against.
The Psalmist turned to God in Psalm 38:18 and said, “I confess my iniquity; I am full of anxiety because of my sin.” The anxiety the psalmist felt was, indeed, the loving, correcting, pangs of guilt introduced to him by the Holy Spirit calling him to turn from his sin to righteousness. In John 16:7-8, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Consequently, the pangs of guilt which follow sin at the behest of God’s Spirit are, indeed, good for us; they are to our advantage. They work in our favor. All of this is true, although, rarely is it realized, at least initially, by us when we sin. We must, nevertheless, be honest, and allow ourselves to feel conviction, sorrow, guilt, and even shame for our sins instead of giving in to selfish pride and arrogance and denying our sins. Only in this manner will our confession be true, our repentance be genuine, our hearts be changed lastingly, and our lives be ready to do the good works God has prepared for us. It is, as the early church father, Augustine, said, “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works” (https://www.christianquotes.info/quotes-by-topic/quotes-about-confession/).
In Psalm 32:5, David, King of Israel, prayed to God, “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.” Friend, are you the lost sheep today that needs to be found by Jesus? He will not and cannot rescue you if your heart is full of arrogance and pride and will not confess your need to be forgiven of your sin and transformed by His grace. Are you one who has had that moment of clarity, turned from your sins, believed in Christ’s death and resurrection for you, and asked Him to forgive you, save you, and make you a child of God only to find yourself today with unconfessed sin ruling your life and ruining your relationship with Jesus and His people? The solution for you is the same. God cannot rescue you from your waywardness if your heart is not broken over your sin and ready to confess your need for His forgiveness and restoration. In that condition, God’s justice and holiness demand that He separate you from Himself. Moreover, if your rebellious unrepentance persists for a lifetime, that separation will be eternal and include never-ending wrath and suffering. Frederick Buechner reminds us, “To confess your sins to God is not to tell [God] anything [God] doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge” (https://www.christianquotes.info/quotes-by-topic/quotes-about-confession/).
Remember, dear ones, that when, at last, Adam was questioned by God following his and his bride’s sin of breaking the command of God and eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the cunning entreaty of Satan—remember, he did not plead for mercy. Adam did not weep rivers of tears in godly sorrow. He did not manifest crushing grief. In a moment devoid of any sign of repentance, Adam pointed his finger of blame at Eve and said to God in Genesis 3:12: “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
In Adam, we see sin’s hopeless, incessant, heinous response to being exposed. It arrogantly, defiantly refuses to own guilt. As someone posted on social media this week said, sin “will not bow its head in repentance. It will not kneel before holiness. It must find another to carry the weight. And if no other man is near, it dares to lift a trembling hand toward heaven itself.” Strange is it not—I would venture to add sickening—that we are so often embarrassed even to the point of fighting tooth and nail to make sure nobody finds out our sins, when we were not embarrassed in the least bit nor willing to fight to keep from committing our sins.
Notice, Adam should have begged for forgiveness. He should have sought the counsel of God and appealed to the mercy of his Creator. He should have bent his will to the will of God. Instead, Adam blamed. He lashed out at his wife and the very One who gave him life. Adam indicted Eve and God for his own rebellious treachery, failure to turn from sin, and lapse in God-given spiritual leadership of his family. He failed to be the man God created and gifted him to be, and exposed his failure in one phrase of insubordination: “the woman whom you gave to be with me.” In other words, the woman is to blame, and You, God, are to blame.
Suddenly, the first man and woman, parents of the human race, created to walk in fellowship, agreement, and obedience to God, are separated from God. The one who sinned, in a moment of illogical perversity, attempted to make his perfect, sinless, holy Creator as sinful as himself. Yet, God would have none of Adam crooked foolishness. The Bible says in Genesis 3:23-24: “Therefore, the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Frozen in time by its inclusion in God’s revelation of Himself to humanity, the inerrant, infallible, Word of the living God, the Bible, is both the inauguration and root of our depravity and lostness. This is the very reason and explanation for Romans 3:10: “There is none righteous, not even one.” Adam’s explanation for his sin to God incapsulates and demonstrates the depth of our corruption save the miracle transformation wrought by faith, forgiveness, and the new birth. Notice, please, Adam blamed everyone he could think of for his own sin except himself. He blamed his wife. Moreover, according to his answer, Adam had the gall to blame God.
People today do the same thing with their ignorant musings about God knowing people would sin when He created them; therefore, God is the cause of sin. Absolutely ridiculous. God did not create us to sin. He created us with free will; moreover, free will’s call is to choose not to sin. Thus, God’s preference was and is for us to turn away from sin and obey Him. When sin’s hold on us is broken by God’s grace through saving faith in Jesus, the Bible boasts in Romans 6:14: “Sin shall no longer be your master.” However, the only way sin loses its power to master us, is through regeneration and new birth, and through confession and repentance of our sin when we sin seeking the forgiveness of God and restoration of relationship with Him. Not that Christ’s indwelling presence that accompanies salvation makes us unable to sin. Thankfully, His presence gives us the capacity to say “no” to sin because of our radically changed mind and heart, a shift if you will, toward holiness. As Paul reminds us in Romans 6:11: “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Oscar Wilde said, "A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life" (https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/confession.html). So, dear friends, the old adage, "confession is good for the soul," has merit. God's desire is that we live with clear consciences and pure hearts. After all, Jesus, in Matthew 5:8, said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Therefore, we must, according to David's example, acknowledge our sins and forsake the prideful urge to hide them. Our pressing need, indeed, until Jesus returns, is confession.