WE are sinners, and should feel our sins, and own them too. It is a grand day when a man owns his sins before God. He has found out your iniquity, and He has found out mine, but I will tell you something more. He has pardoned and forgiven me.
It is a blessed thing to say with the Psalmist “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the clay long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32:1-5).
The moment the sinner draws near in the true acknowledgment of his sin the Lord meets him. The first word the Lord said to an anxious soul was: “Thy sins are forgiven . . . thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” (Luke 7:4848And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. (Luke 7:48) and 50).
Grace and love, forgiveness and blessing, are the portion of the soul that turns to Him. As soon as the ploughshare of conviction has done its work in the conscience, God delights to relieve the sin-burdened soul. He can forgive arid blot out sins on the ground of Christ’s finished work for the sinner.
Reader, turn to Him for pardon, forgiveness, and blessing. Do not be ashamed to own the Lord nor to confess Him. “If thou shalt. confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:99That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9)).
God gave you grace to receive Christ as your own Saviour, and then to confess Him boldly.
W. T. P. W.