| “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins … If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:9-10). |
| Naturally, we do not like to confess our sins. We may be willing to say, in a general way, “Yes, I have sinned,” for we all know that we have done wrong things. But if we are accused of a particular sin, we like to try and “wiggle out of it” by making excuses, or even saying that we did not do it. Of course, to say that we did not do it, when we know that we did do it, is to tell a lie. Then, since God knows about the sin, we are really making God a liar. |
| Many years ago I used to visit regularly in a detention center for young offenders in a large city here in Canada. They were all under sixteen years of age, and all had been accused of committing serious crimes. They were held in that place, like a jail, until they came before a judge the following week. We used to go in and tell them about the Lord Jesus, and some of them got saved. |
| I asked some of them once what was going to happen the next week. They told me that they would go to court and stand before a judge. The judge would listen to the evidence presented, and then decide whether they were guilty or innocent. Then, if they were found guilty, they would be sentenced to some sort of punishment. Then I asked them a question. I asked, “What if the judge had seen you commit the crime?” (This was assuming that they were guilty, and almost all of them were guilty. It was very rare that someone ended up there who had not committed the crime of which he was accused.) One boy answered me in the typical language he was used to speaking. He said, “Then man, you’re dead!” That expressed it well. You could not argue your innocence with a judge who had seen you commit the crime. |
| So it is with God. He sees everything, and there is no use trying to hide our sins from Him. To lie about it only makes matters worse. But if we confess our sins, God can forgive them, because the Lord Jesus died for us, and His blood has power to wash away all our sins. |
