Fess Up!

good for the soul.” In due time all agree. One of them said that he had a problem with losing his temper on occasion. The second confessed to liking to smoke cigars and the third one confessed to liking golf so much that he would fake being sick so he could play on weekends.. When it came to the fourth one, he wouldn’t confess. The others pressed him saying, “Come now, we confessed ours. What is your secret or vice?” Finally he answered, “It is gossiping and I can hardly wait to get out of here.”


WHAT DOES THE BIBLE HAVE TO SAY ABOUT CONFESSION? It seems clear that the Scriptures teach that there are three categories of confession: secret, private, and public.

Secret sins should only be confessed to God.
Private sins should be confessed to the person sinned against
Public sins are those that are committed by public figures


UNCONFESSED SIN

David testified to the awful burden that unconfessed sin causes. In Psalm 32:3,4, we read, “There was a time when I wouldn’t admit what a sinner I was. But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. And day and all night You hand was heavy upon me. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day” (LB).

Unconfessed sin keeps us ensnared in guilt. And guilt saps us of all our strength physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

But this is not the end of David’s testimony. He did not settle down to a life of guilt. Instead, he confessed: “Finally, I admitted all my sin to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, ‘I will confess them to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone!”


Importance of Confession

1. We don’t get into God’s family without it. A granddaughter of Aaron Burr gave her heart to Christ at an evangelistic meeting. That evening she said to her grandfather, “I wish you were a Christian, too.” He replied, When I was a young man I went to a meeting like the one you attended. I felt the call of God on my life but did not respond. I stood under the stars later that night and looked up toward heaven and said, “God, if You don’t bother me any more, I’ll never bother You.” He looked at his granddaughter and said, “Honey, God has kept His part of that bargain. He has never bothered me. Now its too late for me to bother Him.” He went on later to commit treason against the United States.

2. We can’t live as healthy members of God’s family if we don’t confess when we sin.

3. Our prayer life is greatly affected. Isaiah 59:2: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”

4. The sin of presumption is a serious matter. To live in a state of continual rebellion, hoping that some day you will confess is playing with fire. See Deut. 29:19,20

5. The family is affected. Remember Achin’s sin in Joshua 7:19.


The word “confess” means to agree with or to open up or lay bare—to see sin as God sees it and to say the same thing that God says about it. It is just the opposite of rationalizing, justifying.

Out confession of sin must always be specific—whether it is to God alone, to an injured person, or to an offended group of people. Let’s look a little more carefully at these three categories of confession.


1. Secret Confession

 Its true that all sinning is sinning against God. That’s what David