p. 3 | Confessing Sin

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 23, 1905

Confessing Sin

In the model prayer which our Saviour has taught us he has instructed us to say, “Forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.” To pray this prayer daily is not to charge God with having failed to forgive our sins when we have asked him, neither does it imply that he is not able to keep us from sinning. It simply recognizes the proper attitude of a sinner saved by grace who keeps his sins forgiven, whether they be sins of omission or sins of commission. There is a wide difference between the humble contrition of one who accepts the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and believes in the power of God to keep from sin so long as he acknowledges himself to be nothing but a poor sinner, and the boastful claim of the one who makes the mistake of thinking that the experience of righteousness by faith transforms a sinner into a sinless being instead of changing a lost sinner into a saved sinner. The only way that we can be kept from committing sin is by confessing that we are sinners, wholly dependent upon the forgiving mercy of God. The publican who prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner” was accepted of God, and “went down to his house justified;” but if he had returned the next day with the prayer of the Pharisee in his mouth, he would have lost his justification. “No deep-seated love for Jesus can dwell in the heart that does not realize its own sinfulness. The soul that is transformed by the grace of Christ will admire his divine character.” It is Christ’s righteousness, not our own, in which we are clothed, and even when the righteousness of Christ is revealed in us, there is still no merit to be claimed as of ourselves, and we retain his righteousness by confessing that we are “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” The first step toward sin is to claim that we are free from sin. Let the Lord justify us, and not we ourselves.