Confessing Sins | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 16, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 48.

Confessing Sins.

IN Proverbs 28:13, we read, "Whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy." Confessing sin is the way to mercy. He that confesses shall find mercy—shall have mercy shown him. He shall have mercy among men; and with God, especially, they who confess and forsake their sins shall have mercy. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." On him who confesses and forsakes he will have mercy, for his mercy endureth forever.

Not that contrition deserves mercy. To deserve mercy is a contradiction and an absurdity. Mercy is favor or compassion to the ill-deserving, to sinners, to such as deserve nothing but wrath. How then can mercy be deserved? The very idea is absurd. How insane, then, the notion that pardon can be merited, or mercy purchased, or Heaven bought by the performance of a few good deeds confessedly imperfect. Salvation cannot be both of merit and of grace; if there be any merit, then there is no grace. The awakened sinner may at first imagine that by his sighs and tears and prayers he may incline God to be propitious; but sooner or later he banishes such a delusion, and is fully persuaded that God, being unchangeable, can never be rendered more merciful than he is and ever has been, and that he can show mercy only through Jesus Christ, who has satisfied the demands of his justice; that he himself has no claims upon God for the least of his mercies, and that he cannot deserve pardon on account of his contrition, prayers, and tears, but must receive it as a free gift, an undeserved favor, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Nor is the sinner pardoned simply because he repents, confesses, and forsakes his sins. It is not a Bible doctrine that repentance is enough to secure pardon, or that it entitles to forgiveness, without reference to an atonement. It is not in this way that God can be just and yet justify. We must believe. There must be faith as well as repentance; and that faith must lay hold of the atonement of Jesus Christ. He has made satisfaction to divine justice. Of that satisfaction the sinner, confessing his sins with contrition of spirit, is to avail himself by faith, receiving Jesus Christ as his Saviour and resting on him alone for acceptance with God. The penitent is pardoned, forgiven, though not because of his penitence. Repentance stands not to forgiveness in the relation of cause to effect, or of means to an end; it is a prerequisite, a necessary antecedent, but it merits nothing, and apart from faith it procures nothing. Judas had a kind of sorrow, and yet went to his own place; and without faith, without a believing apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, our sorrow for sin would be like his. Penitence always accompanies faith, and faith is always attended by repentance; but it is faith that lays hold of Christ, and, so to speak, instrumentally, at least, secures the pardon of sin, justification, and salvation. The one who truly confesses and forsakes his sins does also believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore is forgiven; as it is written, "Whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy."

God will have mercy on him for Christ's sake. God has ever been merciful. The satisfaction of Christ does not render him more merciful, though it satisfies his justice, and so opens the way in which he can consistently exercise mercy; and he can consistently exercise it only in this way. Hence true sorrow for sin must have respect to the cross and the atonement—it must have reference to Christ, and the penitent must believe in him. He is to look for pardon and acceptance only through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And if he thus looks, confesses, and forsakes his sins and casts himself on the Saviour's arm, he shall be received and for Christ's sake forgiven. Through Jesus Christ, God will have mercy on him and blot out his sins; for there is forgiveness with him through Jesus Christ, that he may be feared, loved, and served. Come, then, to Christ, confess and forsake your sins, and you shall find mercy.—Presbyterian Banner.