confession of sin

Come to Jesus as Sinful as You Are

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us…If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. – 1John 1:8,10

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. – Galatians 6:7

Beloved friends, suppose we have tried to appear before God what we are not, God has not been deceived, for He is not mocked. We may get up a very respectable character to please ourselves, and give it a few touches every now and then, just to set it off and improve it, and we may find a number of people to join with us to form a mutual admiration society, and our friends may cheerfully hear us talk about what wonderful beings we are, provided we will sit and hear them glorify themselves in return: but neither with one witness nor a thousand witnesses will our boasts be one jot more true, or likely to be believed in heaven. God is not misled, He looks at all boasters of their own purity, and says, “When you say you have no sin you make Me a liar, and My word is not in you, for if the truth were in you, you would know that sin is in you; and if My word were in you, you would also confess that you have sinned, and humble yourselves before Me.”

I exhort thee, sinner, to give up all thine attempts to feel right and to be right before coming to God in Christ Jesus. Have you not made a great failure of it already? You thought you were getting right for Christ, but just then you fell in the worst possible way. You have been trying to repair your old clothes and make yourself respectable before coming to Christ; but every time you have touched the garment the rent has grown worse. Give up all attempting to prepare for grace and come to Jesus Christ just as you are. ..Jesus Christ came, not to save the righteous, but sinners…May the Spirit of God help you to come to your heavenly Father on the ground of truth, confessing that you have sinned—that is the truth for you; and on the ground that Christ died for sinners—that is the truth on God’s side which enables Him to smile on sinners.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Caught In Christ’s Net

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. – 1John 1:9

Religious lie-telling is a dreadful thing, and there is plenty of it; but if I could be saved by masking my condition before God, I would not like to be saved in that way. The man whose heart is in the light loves to do the right. It would be a great dishonor to God to suppose it possible that He will save us in any manner which would not accord with truth. It is right that we should come before God as we are and plead for mercy through Jesus Christ and therefore let us do it.

Moreover, upon some of us it is imperative, because we cannot do anything else. There may possibly be a person here who could say, “I have no sin”; but I could not. Why, if I were to claim innocence either of nature or practice the words would choke me. Say I have no sin! I should expect to turn black in the face and fall down dead, it would be so gross a falsehood. To say I have no sin, why there is no one part of my whole nature but what would protest against such an assertion! I am shut up to come to God as a sinner, I cannot help it; and I would to God that every one in this place felt shut up to it too, for it is the intent and design of the law to shut the sinner up in order that he may be compelled to accept salvation on free grace terms through Jesus Christ. You can never catch a fish in a net while there is one mesh through which he can escape, but when all around the meshes are so small that the fish cannot get out, then we have taken him. When you are such a sinner that you cannot plead that you have no sin, nor yet that you have not sinned, but are quite shut up to be saved by grace, then you are in Christ’s net, and He will lift you out, and the Fisher of Men shall have cause to rejoice.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Remember and Confess All of Your Sins

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:9

O my friends, lay bare your consciences before the law of God. Go and open the twentieth chapter of Exodus and read the ten commands; think of their spirituality,—remember how he that looketh on a woman to lust after her committeth adultery with her in his heart; and let the law with all its blaze of light flash flame into your soul. Do not shirk the facts or shrink from knowing their full force, but feel the power of the condemning law. Then recollect your individual sins; recall them one by one: those greater sins, those huge blots upon your character, do not try to forget them. If you have forgotten them, raise them from the grave and think them over, and feel them as your own sins. Do not lay them at the door of anyone else. Do not look at circumstances in order to find an alleviation for your guilt, but set them in the light of God’s countenance…Think of your sins of omission, your failures in duty, your shortcomings in spirit. Repent of what you have done, and what you have not done. How both these forms of iniquity may stagger and humble you! Think of your sins of heart. How cold has that heart been towards your Savior! Your sins of thought, how wrongly your mind has often judged; your sins of imagination, what filthy creatures your imagination has portrayed in lively colors on the wall. Think of all the sins of your desires and delights and hopes and fears. What faculty is there that has not been defiled? “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” We are bound to confess the aggravations of our sin, how we sinned against light and against knowledge, against conscience, and against divine love, against the monitions of the Holy Spirit, against tender warnings which came from His gentle voice…I beseech you, dear hearer, try to fix your eye on Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice, and live as a believer in Him, and this will make you live as a constant confessor of sin; for when the wounds of Jesus speak peace they also preach penitence, and when the atonement gives us rest it also makes us meek and lowly in heart under a sense of abiding faultiness…Thus, may you daily, as long as ever you live, confess sin and find cleansing from all.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

The Double Cure

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, Sovereignty of God

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:9

Suppose you go to a surgeon because you have some deadly polypus or cancer growing upon you: you want to have it removed, and you know there are a great many physicians who will profess to cure such things, but in reality, only give temporary ease. From all these you keep clear. You are well aware that if only a little root of the growth should be left it will grow again. So, you say outright to the surgeon, “Sir, there is my disease; I will tell you all the symptoms of it: I only ask to have a thorough cure, cost me what it may in money or pain. I make no reserve, do just whatever you feel is best in the case, but make clean work of it. If you have the knife in your hand, do not spare it out of pity for my pain, but be just with me, cut out the disease, roots and all, so that it may be a complete cure.” Even in the same manner, go to the Lord, and say, “Lord, there is my sin, I confess it all; do not suffer me to have any peace unless it is true peace, do not let me have any comfort unless I get it from Christ; and if there must be more conviction of sin and more alarm of conscience, if there must be deeper gashes and sterner cuts into my soul, Lord, do not spare me; be pleased to purge me from the secret depravity of my nature, and make me pure. Thy holiness is what I crave after, and I cannot be satisfied till Thou make me holy, even as Thou art holy.” This is the way to plead with God, and the only way. Confess the sin, and then He will be faithful and just to give you the double cure, namely, first, the forgiveness, and next, the cleansing from all unrighteousness.

What a blessing it is that the Lord will be faithful and just to you in the cleansing of you from all the sinfulness of your nature. I pray you deal honestly with God and say to Him, “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults; Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts Thou wilt make me to know wisdom, purge me, therefore, O Lord, and I shall be clean.”

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

The Lord Meets You Where the Truth Is

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:9

When a sinner feels he has no natural fitness for receiving the grace of God; when a broken spirit cries, “Oh, what a wretch I am! Not only my past sin but my present feelings disqualify me for the love of God; I seem to be made of hell-hardened steel,” he is confessing that sin is in him…If you feel you are desperately bad, remember you are worse than you think you are. Your case is in itself desperate, hopeless, damnable! If you feel that you are lost, you do not feel it too strongly, you are in the true light where God will meet with you. The Lord will not consent to parley with you on the ground that you are not much of a sinner, and that after all your sin is not a great evil. No, He will meet you where the truth is and nowhere else; when you confess that you are unworthy of His pity, you are owning the truth, and when you feel guilty, you feel what is really fact; on this footing of truth, sad truth though it be, the Lord will meet with you through the atoning blood. It is in your vileness that sovereign grace o’er sin abounding will come to you and cleanse you, and therefore the sooner you come to the honest truth the better for you, for the sooner will you obtain joy and peace through believing in Christ. The text means just this—Treat God truthfully, and He will treat you truthfully. Make no pretensions before God, but lay bare your soul, let Him see it as it is, and then He will be faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Mark the beauty of that expression; God will deal with you in faithfulness. His nature is mercy, and you naturally expect that if you confess your sin to a merciful God, He will deal mercifully with you and be faithful to His nature; and He will be so…The blood of Jesus Christ has made a full atonement, and God will be faithful to that atonement. He will deal with you on the grounds of the covenant of grace, of which the sacrifice of Jesus is the seal, and therein also He will be true to you.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Confession of Sin

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, repentance, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:9

We must say, “Lord, I own with shame that as my nature is corrupt such has my life been; I am a sinner both by nature and by practice.” Make the confession of the two things, of the cause and the effect, of the original depravity—the foul source, and then of the actual sin which is the polluted stream. And if you say, “How am I to confess it?” I would say this—To confess sin does not mean merely on some one occasion to repeat a catalogue of sins before God in private, nor at certain set seasons to rehearse a list of our faults, but it means a life-long acknowledgment of our sin. We must take our places as men who have sinned, and never attempt to occupy the position of innocent beings. We are to look towards God as a man ought to look who has transgressed. Do you understand me? The Pharisee took up the posture and spirit of a man who had no sin in him and said, “God, I thank thee.” He was not confessing sin, but claiming righteousness, and he was not accepted because he was out of the light, that is to say, he was not speaking and feeling according to truth. But the publican, though he said little, and made no confession of sin in detail, yet by his posture, by his smiting on his breast, by his not daring to look up, by the sigh which he heaved, was virtually confessing sin. When a man prayerfully begs that he may feel the power of the blood of Jesus, he is confessing sin, for is not the blood of Jesus needful because of our sin? The daily exercise of faith in Jesus Christ is a confession of sin, for nobody would need to believe in a Savior unless he had sin. Baptism is a confession of sin,—who needs to be buried with Christ if he be alive by a righteousness of his own? To come to the communion table, and remember there the atoning sacrifice, is a confession of sin; for we should need no remembrance of our blessed Substitute if we were not sinners. Confession of sin is best carried out when we deal with God as those who have offended Him, not as those who feel that they are innocent. We are to act before the Lord as those who know that sin is in them. And how ought such to behave? They will walk with God very humbly, and watchfully, jealous lest inbred corruption should get the mastery of them.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Feeling a Falsehood

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, Sovereignty of God

…we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence. – Job 15:31

Awakened sinners often say, “If I could feel my heart was right towards God, then I could believe that He would look upon me in mercy.” How wrong is this! If you did feel that all was right, it would be an untruthful feeling, for by nature all is wrong. “Oh, sir,” say you, “if I could but feel that now at last, I am as I ought to be before God, as tender and as penitent as He would have me to be, then I could have hope.” No, but my dear friend, such a feeling would not be according to truth, for no man is as tender and as penitent as he ought to be; and if you felt you were, you would be feeling a falsehood, and so the truth would not be in you. I do not want you to feel that you are what you ought to be: I pray that you may own that you are not what you ought to be; I would have you feel unrest, and absence of anything like satisfaction, for such feelings will be according to the truth. I beseech you never claim to experience feelings which you do not feel, nor make hypocritical confessions of sin which you have never committed, nor pretend to a repentance which is not in you, for the Lord hates all shams, and will only deal with you according to truth. If you are conscious of impenitence, go to the Lord and tell Him you have a hard heart, which will not feel either the terrors of His law or the meltings of His love: in fine, go to Him just as you are, and confess what you are, and ask Him to deal with you in Christ Jesus as He sees you to be. That is the only way, and the plan of pretending that we are now free from sin will not work and bring us blessing; for “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon