Confessing Sin

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

Much could be said about God’s faithfulness to forgive and cleanse; it still amazes me that He does it and is absolutely justified in doing so!

I have no problem with the Lord performing His part; it is that responsibility which is laid upon me; to “Confess our sins.” We have all most likely, heard many formulas offered as to the correct procedure to follow in approaching the Lord concerning this matter. I would ask you to consider just one more. In Revelation 3:14-22 we encounter the Lord in His confrontation with the Laodocean church. There seems to be a conflict of opinion: “Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing:” But the Lord says, “thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:” But the pathetic thing about it is that you don’t even know it. Listen Church, My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus. Yes we know! But we are doing quite well on our own; we don’t really need anything!

"Lord, here; partake of the fruit of our labors; come, let us sup together!”

Well might we cause Him to have spiritual food poisoning; but He cannot stomach that which has been offered; it is spued out of His mouth. There can be no grounds found here for feasting and fellowship.

So. . .what must be done? Something that should be most obvious, as presented in our text, is a lack of the Church feeding upon the Word of God. There can be no mistake; it is “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked.” If the Church was indeed assimilating the Truth; something more than intellectual; hiding it in the heart, surely then such condition would not continue.

“If we confess our sins”

"It is elementary that there be an awareness of our sin and that being made known by the working of the Spirit in our lives through His Word. Next it must, must be done in Faith. The order of the work of Faith may be found in Hebrews 11:13: “These all died in Faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

Briefly here is the order of Faith as relating to our text: it works two-fold; on the one side, Faith reaches back into the darkness to reveal our Pride and Self-life. We see it, we are persuaded by it, and now we are faced with a choice; yes, Faith involves the will. Faith we see in its conception; but we must will itsbirth. For Faith to work, I must not only see and be persuaded, but I must will to embrace and confess; there must, on the one hand, be a denying of self, a mortifying, a pushing away from the one side, in order to embrace and confess the other.

“If we confess our sins”

In I Corinthians 11:31 we find these words; “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” It amazes me that our Lord, being long since departed from this earth, yet does not cease to give us examples. In His judgment of the Laodocean church, He is spuing or vomiting its self-proclaimed righteousness out of His mouth.

"Lord, what are you trying to tell me?”

The call is for self-judgment. My sins are not in my mouth; they are in my heart; if my heart is to be cleansed, purified, then I must confess them: that confession comes from the heart. That is, I need to regurgitate them forth from the heart; then they are spued out of the mouth in confession.

Needless it is to pretend to vomit out of the mouth unless it is truly coming from the heart!

God forbid that our confessing of sin should be reduced to a meaningless ritual, a nightly ceremony, a Pharisaical practice. When one confesses sin, he is to come into agreement with God about his sin,expecting to submit himself to God, that He might perform that which He promised; not only to forgive, but to cleanse from all unrighteousness.

Sin must become distasteful, and that to the point of nauseating. That which is nauseous to God should likewise be the same to us.

As natural regurgitation can be painful and of great discomfort, so it is in the Spiritual realm. It is doubtful that there exists a sincere repentance apart from one humbling himself and becoming submissive unto God, and that cannot be accomplished without a self denial and a throwing down of fleshly weapons, and that most assuredly requires some degree of suffering.

We are only deceiving ourselves if we think that God is really going to honor our confession of sin when it is offered in an attitude of complacency. We tend to think that we are to confess our acts of unrighteousness. Consider this: Eve reached forth her hand to take the forbidden fruit, but sin was not in the hand; it was in the heart. The hand was only an obedient tool, an instrument to carry out the desire and will of the heart.

How futile it is then, to confess with the mouth if there is not a vomiting forth of that which defiles from the heart; that principle of sin which lodges there. Though sin may attempt to attach itself to us as a leech, yet we are to abhor its presence and pray for the effectual presence of Christ to deliver us from its power.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Now if all this is accomplished in our hearts, what is the next step? Well, according to scripture it is the restoring of that feasting and fellowship that we had lost beforehand: “if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”