How to Confess Sin Biblically

Most Christians know they should confess sin — but almost nobody has been taught why or how to do it well. In this episode we tackle the question "why do we even confess if Jesus already paid for our sins?", walk through what bad confession looks like and why it never brings freedom, and work through Ken Sande's 7 A's of a biblical confession. If you've been confessing and still feel stuck, this episode is for you.

Book Referenced: The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande

Transcript

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Most Christians know that they should confess their sins both to God and the person they may have sinned against, but many have not been taught the why and hows behind a biblical confession. Why, if we have already been forgiven of our sins, do we continually confess our sins to the Lord? And practically, how do we confess sin to individuals we may have sinned against? And this creates two different problems that typically show up in church life. Number one is that there are people who rarely confess their sins, or people who confess constantly but never truly feel free from the guilt of their sin. Or there's those who become serial or professional confessors, but lacking in genuine change and repentance. And so the goal in this episode is to address those three topics in several different layers, beginning with layer number one. Why do we confess sin if Jesus already paid for our sins? If Jesus died on the cross and paid the penalty for all our sin, past, present, and future, why do we regularly need to confess our sins to the Lord? That's a fair question. This means you're trying to do good theology. And if you can't answer it, then hey, you'll always treat confession as something that is optional. But I want to stop here and just anchor our time in John chapter one, uh, first John chapter one, verses five through ten, where John writes, This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you, God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. If we say we have fellowship with him, and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. If we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Notice the language. John uses the language of fellowship in verse 6, for example. He says, if we say we have fellowship with him, meaning Jesus, while we walk in darkness. This isn't salvation language, this is intimacy language, this is relational language. So we need to understand the difference in the doctrines of justification and sanctification for the sake of this conversation. So, yes, Jesus Christ, if you're in Christ, if you're born again following Jesus, Jesus paid for your sin on the cross once and for all. It is a done deal. You are judicially declared justified in the courtroom of heaven. However, confession isn't about repaying a debt that has already been paid. Confession, ongoing confession for the Christian, is about relationship. It's not about a transactional thing that you're doing as a Christian to earn God's love, to earn God's favor or his justification of you, but rather it flows out of the fact that you have a new standing with God according to Romans 5, 1 through 5. So confession is about relationship, not confession. Let me just use an analogy here. If a husband wrongs his wife, the marriage isn't dissolved. The marriage covenant has been broken because he got in an argument with his bride and was unkind and unloving. However, something has been broken that needs to be addressed, and that is the intimacy, the communion within that relationship. And the way you fix that, one way at least, is by confessing sin and seeking reconciliation and forgiveness. And so unconfessed sin doesn't just, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't break your standing with God. So when we sin, and if that sin goes unconfessed, that is a problem, but it doesn't change your justified status. You can't lose your salvation, so to speak. But it does certainly break your fellowship with God. It'll affect your experience of that intimate relationship with your Heavenly Father because you have broken communion through your sin and it going unconfessed. Just like in a marriage, if or in any human relationship, really, if you're having a great relationship with someone, whether it's a friend, a coworker, a family member, a spouse, sin introduces brokenness within that relationship. It creates a hindrance to the joy and intimacy of that relationship. And the way you remove that wedge in the relationship is through confession. So even in our text, verse A confronts the person who thinks that they're past needing confession, where they may think, no, I don't, I don't need to confess sin because Jesus died on the cross. It's a it's a done deal. Well, listen to what John said. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, note that word righteousness. Not just merciful, forgiveness is grounded in what Christ has already done on your behalf, past tense on the cross. So an important guardrail before moving on in this conversation is not not every offense, as we get into defining what is a God-honoring confession, how do you practically do that? I do think it's warranted, just to add a disclaimer here, before we move on. Not every offense someone perceives means you've actually sinned against them. Just because someone feels hurt doesn't automatically make you guilty. You need to evaluate the offense before God through searching the scriptures, having an honest conversation with the person who feels that they've been sinned against by you, and then respond in a God-honoring way. But I just want to make sure we're clear about just because someone comes to you and says, you know, hey, I feel this way, does not equal, you know, an authoritative biblical statement on your behalf saying you are indeed guilty of sin. Let me just give an illustration of this. The Pharisees were often offended by Jesus and his earthly ministry. That did not make Jesus wrong. It didn't mean Jesus was in sin. So likewise, don't run out and confess things you don't actually owe a confession for. But at the same time, don't let that inner defense attorney kick in and be quick to hold yourself in a better light and assume that you have no sin. That's also what John is guarding against. And so, with that being said, once you do know that you have sin, the Bible doesn't let you keep it vertical only, meaning you only confess to God and that's it. James 5.16 pulls confession out of your prayer closet and into your relationships. I mean, this is inspired scripture, which commands confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. So there you go. There's the horizontal aspect to this, right? This is the part of the church that you know many of us sometimes abandon. We have an exhortation in inspired scripture to take our sins from the private heart level and to confess them to one another, not for the sake of broadcasting our dirty laundry, but for the sake of inviting God's people into our lives to help us walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. So confession, friends, isn't earning anything. It's agreeing with God about what's true about your sin and clearing the air in the relationship. It's a way to walk in the light, to go public before God and our fellow brothers and sisters with our sin and agreeing with God and what he says about our sin by calling it what God calls it according to Scripture. Now, to get into some practical stuff here, let's talk about why confession sometimes usually falls short. So most people have learned what a bad confession is and they wonder why nothing changes. So we can be quick to say things like, Man, I'm sorry for being a jerk, or I'm sorry if I if I hurt your feelings when I said that, or if I made you feel a certain way. Listen to Proverbs 28, verse 13. The text says, The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. So concealment is the opposite of a God-honoring confession. And let's just be honest here, our human tendency is to want to go inward, right? To manage like a PR firm. We want to manage the collateral damage of our sin. We want to manage our image and our perception in the eyes of others. And so the temptation could be not to walk in the light and to confess our sins to others, or to give a full and thorough God-honoring confession, but rather to do damage control and keep it internal. And that leads to hollow versions of confession, where we say things like, hey, I'm sorry if you were hurt, or I shouldn't have done that, but you, you know, or we might even just say things like, you know what, I was wrong, but let's just move on. Let let's let's let bygones be got be bygones. But friends, these aren't confessions. They're self-protection and apology wrapping paper. These are not God-honoring confessions of sin. You're not acknowledging your sin, you're not acknowledging the hurt in the other person, you're not calling your offense what God calls it in his word. You're trying to put a band-aid on something and sweep it under the rug to move forward. Now, why do we do this? Pride, fear, a fear of being vulnerable in front of others, a fear of being viewed as weak to others. No one ever maybe even modeled real confession before you. I mean, think about that. If you did not maybe grow up in a Christian household or in the church, you maybe have never seen a God-honoring example of a man or a woman take personal responsibility for their sins and to confess thoroughly in a God-honoring manner and to ask for your forgiveness so that there's this transaction of reconciliation. And so we're a product of our disciplers. If you haven't grown up witnessing these things, whether you grew up, you know, in a Christian household or not, or even if you came to faith later in life, if you weren't in a church where maybe these things were modeled or even taught from the pulpit, well, then you don't know what you don't know. And so the result then when this happens is you don't experience the beauty and the gift of real biblical, God-honoring, gospel-rich forgiveness. Then there's no freedom. There's there's you know no reconciliation in your relationships, and then you end up feeling stuck with a trail of broken relationships. Now, here's where we're gonna get practical. Now, what I'm about to share is not inspired scripture. These are just helpful tips and principles that I have used over the years as a biblical counselor and pastor in discipling and counseling relationships. But uh, I'm gonna rip this straight from Ken Sandy's book, uh, The Peacemaker, where he uses something he calls the seven A's of Confession. Now, what are the seven A's of confession? This is his way of taking what we see in scripture and trying to figure out if we are gonna give a God-honoring confession of sin, what should that look like? I have found each of these helpful. And so I'm gonna walk through each one and give some commentary. So, number one is when you confess sin to someone, address everyone involved. Address everyone involved. Confession belongs to everyone who has been affected by your sin, not just the person in front of you. Another way I like to put that is your confession should go as far as the offense. So let me give an example. So I'm a husband and a father, I have three children. Let's say that I'm being sinfully sarcastic and unloving in my remarks towards my wife and in a conflict or whatever may be in our home, and all three of our children are present. When in God's grace, when he convicts me of my sin and I recognize I need to go to my bride and confess my sins, because my children were present, I need to address them as well. Why? Well, because they witnessed the offense. I sin before God, first and foremost, but I also sinned directly against my wife, but I also sin against my children who were present, who also saw me modeling an ungodly example of how a Christian is to speak. And so, yes, get right with God. Then I should go to my wife, who was the direct recipient of my sin. But then as innocent bystander, so to speak, I should go to my children and say, hey, kids, you know what? When daddy raised his voice, or when daddy made those sinful, sinfully angry and unloving remarks to mommy, that was inappropriate. That was sinful. And I need to ask you for your forgiveness. Will you forgive me for that poor example of what Jesus is like? So address everyone involved is step number one. Make sure that your confession goes goes as far as the offense. Number two is avoid if, but, and maybe. These words sound, you know, okay when we're confessing sin, but let me just give an example here. Hey, sweetheart, I'm sorry for lashing out at you, but you know when you say this, it provokes me, right? As soon as you say if, but, or maybe, you have just canceled out your entire confession because what you're doing is you're creating a scapegoat. You're essentially saying, Yeah, I acknowledge some responsibility, but we both know if you didn't do A, B, or C, I never would have did what I did. So what you're doing is you're actually pointing the finger at the other person saying, you know, I'm gonna do the right Christian thing, so to speak, and confess my sin a little bit, but I do want you to know you're the reason why I sin the way we did. Brothers and sisters, none of us will stand before Jesus Christ and be able to play the card. Well, God, I know when you look at my life, well, all these sins in this column, that was because of what other people did. Like that's why I sinned in that way. No, either you deal with your sin or Jesus dealt with it on the cross. There is no third party that we can point the finger at and legitimately blame. And so avoid any if, but, and maybe, because those words undo everything that came before them. It's it's almost like you're creating uh an exit ramp, taking you off the course of confession and reconciliation and heading right back into conflict. But a third aspect of a thorough confession would be admit specifically, admit your sin specifically in your confession. A vague confession equals vague repentance. Name the attitude, the disposition of your heart when you were sinning, when you're confessing, not just the behavior. So instead of just saying, you know, hey, I confess my angry speech, you can say, hey, I also need to confess, man, my heart was just self-centered and prideful in that moment. I was focused on what I wanted to get, what I wanted, and I was willing to use my sinful anger to manipulate you to do what I wanted you to do. So confess the behavior, sure. But man, the savior is always concerned with our hearts, not just our actions. As Christians, we should never be content with only behavior modification, but we also want to understand what were the ruling desires in my heart that led to the fruit of that sinful behavior. And number four is acknowledge the hurt. Show the person you're confessing your sin to that you understand what your sin cost the other person. Acknowledge the damage done in their heart and mind. Show empathy. Don't just be accurate in your language by articulating what you did behavior-wise, but also acknowledge, man, like not only do I recognize I need to confess my sin, but I also want to acknowledge that that might have broken your heart. That might have just crushed your spirit and discouraged you when I did A, B, or C. And so acknowledge the hurt. This is this is a sign of true, genuine love and repentance and sorrow when you recognize that you have sinned horizontally against another image bearer, especially if you're confessing to another Christian, someone who Jesus has purchased on the cross with his own blood. So don't be vague in your confession, but be be specific, but also acknowledge the hurt. And number five, accept the consequences. Real repentance doesn't just negotiate the fallout, so to speak. It seeks restitution, it seeks to rebuild trust, it seeks to do whatever it takes to pursue full reconciliation with the one who has been hurt by your offense. And so you have to have the humility to lay on your sword, so to speak, and recognize my sin has consequences. But we can't forget the gospel here. The gospel of Jesus Christ has saved us from the power and the penalty of sin, praise be to God, but not always the consequences. So you can't say you're genuinely repentant of your sin that you're confessing if you're gonna wallow and be angry that there's still consequences. That comes with the territory and true repentance and godly sorrow recognizes that sometimes you're gonna have to accept the consequences. And this is a spectrum, right? Because not all sins are the same. So there are some sins that are gonna be on the lower end of the spectrum that don't have as much collateral damage. And then there's some more severe sins in which someone could commit an egregious sinful act against someone. And by God's grace, there could still be reconciliation through the power of the gospel. But that person who sinned may have to accept the consequences of, well, the relationship will likely look very different because of my sin. Or in some really severe situations, there might be situations of church discipline and in other scenarios where, hey, that that doesn't mean you're not in Christ, but it does mean you have to accept the consequences of your decisions while still being reminded that you are a blood-bought child of God. Number six is alter your behavior. Confession without a plan for change is just an emotional release vow. We have to alter our behavior. So when we're confessing our sin, we should also be sharing with the other person. If we've prayerfully thought through this, here's my plan of repentance. Here's how I plan with God's help, with the help of his people, to turn from this sin and to turn towards Jesus in joyful obedience. Here's my plan to put off and put on to the glory of God. And lastly, number seven, ask for forgiveness. Don't assume it, don't demand it. Give the other person the dignity of a real response. We are commanded to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us. So a thorough God-honoring confession of sin should end with, especially if we're talking to another Christian, give a thorough confession, steps one through six, and then you end with, brother or sister, will you forgive me? Don't assume the forgiveness, ask for it. Because when you do that, especially to another child of God, you have now put the ball in their court, and they now, before the Lord, have to address, am I going to honor God by forgiving as God in Christ has forgiven me, by extending forgiveness? And now a transaction takes place called reconciliation. And a quick sidebar disclaimer here, I would I think it's worth mentioning an eighth uh statement. Ken Sandy has this in his book, and that is to allow time. Depending on the sin, sometimes wounds might be deep. And I think the person who is confessing sin should not be the one leading the ship and demanding that the other person forgives quickly and swiftly. I think you need to honor the Lord by having the right heart posture and doing what God requires of you, and then entrust the heart of the person you're confessing to to the Lord. And in his timing, let him, you know, soften hearts and help them come to a place by the power of his spirit and their understanding of the gospel to a point where they're ready to extend that mercy and forgiveness. Sometimes we can get caught up in, okay, I did my part, I checked the boxes, I did the seven things, I asked for forgiveness. So, okay, forgive me. Man, sometimes that can be manipulative, that can be prideful, or it could just be downright unloving because you're not giving the other person time to make sure that they go before the Lord and they process your words, what happened, and make sure their heart is right before the Lord so that they're in a place to extend that forgiveness. And if you're on the receiving end of a confession and you are struggling with that, I think a good thing to do in that scenario is just to be honest and tell the person who's confessing to you, I want to obey the Lord. I know God asked me to forgive as He has forgiven me in Jesus. But if I'm honest, the wound is still fresh. My heart's just not there yet. Would you give me time? Would you give me an hour? Would you give me a day to just be with the Lord and pray and get in the word and just think about, you know, what's going on in my heart? Why do I feel this heaviness to go ahead and move forward in forgiveness and give them that time? Pray on their behalf for the Lord to minister to them through his word and his spirit. All right. Now that was a lot of practical, nitty-gritty stuff, but let's let's end by talking a little bit a little bit about how the gospel gives us freedom in our confessions. I love how in Psalm 32, verses 3 through 4, we see David say, When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was drained as in the summer's heat. Man, I love that language. This is David just being transparent before the Lord. This is what unconfessed sin actually does to you. Go read Psalm 32 on your own. But man, what David is describing there is he got some physical stuff going on that's ailing him, and he got some spiritual anguish going on because his sin went unconfessed. But in verse five, David confesses his sin. And what happens? The weight, the heaviness, the heaviness of the Lord's hand upon him is lifted, and he just experiences this beautiful freedom from simply walking in the light before his God and confessing his sin. So back to the person who confesses constantly but never feels truly free of their sin. If confession isn't bringing relief, ask yourself whether you're confessing to earn relief or are you confessing from a place of grace? Are you confessing sin to get something from God, or are you confessing sin when you recognize, wait a minute, if God has shown me such grace and love and mercy on the cross, how could I have committed such an offense against my God? And your understanding of your justification and forgiveness leads you to forgiveness. Tying this back to 1 John chapter 1, verse 9, the promise is already there for you. The question is whether you'll take God at His Word when He says, if you confess your sins, He will cleanse you of all unrighteousness. The gospel of Jesus Christ is what makes honest confession possible. You can be ruthlessly honest about your sin with God and your brothers and sisters in your church family because it's already been dealt with at the cross. I tell people all the time: if you are in Christ, if you understand the gospel, whenever you confess sin, you are confessing forgiven sin because Jesus already atoned for it on the cross. So you never come to the Lord to confess to earn grace. You confess from a standing in grace, which should empower you to confess. And yes, some Christians are going to be less mature than others. Some might be untrustworthy to maybe hold certain knowledge about people's sins. But hey, we're all works in progress and we need to disciple those people. But listen, we worship amongst a bunch of people who put Jesus on the cross. So we all know the worst thing about one another, and that is that we murdered Jesus on the cross. And so we should never be shocked when people confess sin to us. Confession is actually an act of faith as well. You're trusting that the gospel is big enough to cover what you're about to admit out loud. And according to Richard Sibs, we can never outsend the mercy of Jesus Christ. So to give some practical closing tips here, here's a question to prayerfully think about. Is there something you've been avoiding to name and to confess specifically and publicly? First to God and to your brothers and sisters in your church family who the Lord has placed in your life? If so, ask God in prayer for the courage to one, just be honest before Him. He's omniscient, which means he knows all things. So he already knows about your sin. So hiding it is just foolish. But are you also stopping short of going to your brothers and sisters and enlisting their prayers and help to address sin in your life? Freedom isn't on the other side of getting your act together, right? It's on the other side of honest confession. Jesus isn't pacing back and forth in heaven waiting for his disciples to clean their lives up. He already did that on your behalf on the cross. Remember this as I close. Jesus didn't just pay for your sin so you could carry it quietly in the privacy of your own heart. So confess your sin, name it, call it what God calls it, agree with God's word about it, and trust that the cross is big enough to handle your sin. This is what Paul meant when he said that he was the chief of sinners. He wasn't saying, hey, I have I have the greatest tally of sins than any other Christian. No, he was saying when I look in my own heart and when I know my sins, my struggles and temptations, I am the worst sinner I know. And yet mercy and grace was shown to me. Therefore, there is hope in Jesus for any sinner if there was hope for me. And I pray that that is what you would come to know through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening. If you found this helpful, I would encourage you. Hey, please subscribe. That helps the channel out. And you can share this as well with someone you think would benefit. Until next time, God bless.