How We Are To Confess Our Sins

I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

Psalm 73:22

This is a godly man’s confession of sin, and confession is a normal part of a healthy Christian life. The Apostle John says: “If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

If you cannot see anything in your life that you might appropriately confess as sin to God, then you are deceived: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him [God] a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). You are simply not seeing clearly. You are not in touch with reality.

But how exactly we are to confess our sins has been a matter of debate in church history. Maybe you were taught to confess your sins to a priest. There may be some value in that, but there is no place in the Bible where God says that you must confess your sins to a priest.

John Calvin, a wise pastor in the sixteenth century, said that we are to confess our sins to God, but that confessing a particular sin to another person could be helpful, especially if having confessed it to God, you were still struggling to find peace in your heart about it. In that situation you can go to a pastor and tell him, or you can go to any other mature Christian and tell them.

God has made every Christian believer a priest: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 1:5-6). That means you can go to any priest, including the one sitting next to you at church.

Are you struggling to find peace over a particular sin?