Confess Your Sin Regularly
Could you say that your life is marked by a regular habit of confessing your sin? Outside of this particular time during our weekly service, how often do you take time to confess your sin before the Lord?
To neglect regularly confessing sin before the Lord functionally preaches “I have no sin to confess.”
But really, we know that though we are redeemed, we are still marred by sin. We have to daily fight to kill the sin in our lives. And one of the weapons we have to kill sin is through our confession of it.
Confession of sin is intended to be our expression of our sorrow over sin, but far too often we can treat it as our response to the sorrow we feel over the consequences of our sin. Meaning we lament the effects of our sin more than we do the sin itself.
Or we confess our sin to the Lord in attempts to feel better.
Even more dangerously we can treat confession of sin as the atonement for our sin. Confession of sin becomes nothing more than an act we do to wipe away our sin.
When we confess our sin before the Lord, we are affirming the truth of God’s Word, we humbly show that we agree with the God that what we have thought, believed, said, or done is wrong and is not only against His commands but has been an act against God Himself.
As we confess sin, we are declaring to ourselves and to God our desperate need of Him by going to Him. We are putting on display His glory by declaring His righteousness. That is David’s point in Psalm 51:4: “Against You, You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when you judge.”
We have this moment for confession of sin each week in our service to remind us that it is needed every other day of the week.
As our worship service opens, we are confronted with the holiness of God and then our Word of Exhortation bridges the gap between our awe of the glory of God and the confession of our sin. Through it we lay out what God calls us to do so that we can confess to God what we have failed to do, so we can receive mercy because of what Christ has done.
As we confess our sin we acknowledge our unholiness. We own up to who we really are. We no longer pretend to be something we aren’t. And this gives us the opportunity to see God for who He is. As we confess to the Lord we should taste the bitterness of sin and the sweetness of Christ.
Regularly confessing our sin constantly keep in view our depravity and Christ’s righteousness. It is critical that these be contrasted so that we see the Savior in all his glory.
The habit of confessing sin should not be a rarity in the church. Instead, it should be a key marker of those who have been truly redeemed.
Church don’t neglect your responsibility and privilege to regularly confess your sin to your gracious God and recognize it as a means of grace to your soul that illuminates the beauty of Jesus and dims the glimmer of your sin.