“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Proverbs 28:13
Devotional Thought For The Day
This is a most blessed promise and assurance, that if we truly repent – acknowledging our transgressions and committing ourselves to turning away from them – God will surely provide us with abundant mercy, forgiveness, and salvation. This is the Old Testament equivalent of the promise contained in 1 John 1:9: “But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” While it must have been a great joy for God’s people of old to have such assurances of God’s grace and mercy, for those of us who know exactly how that mercy has been legally established for us in Christ Jesus, such assurances bring great peace and joy to our hearts and minds.
And we must hold on to these most precious realities, for the devil is eager to snatch away our comfort by obscuring, confounding, and even erasing these assurances of God’s grace, mercy, and love. First, he argues that being circumspect about our errors and transgressions negates God’s forgiveness – we must publish them as broadly as possible or else we are “concealing” them. Then he urges that we must talk of them to others, take out a newspaper ad, write letters of confession to everyone we know – or else we are still under God’s condemnation [will not prosper]. He sends all kinds of snoops and meddlers to probe and accuse, to exaggerate by suspicion and innuendo, and he demands that unless we make full confession to these very prosecutors of what they assert that our transgressions are, that we will not have forgiveness. Thus he seeks to make God’s forgiveness and mercy dependent upon our actions, a thing that we must painfully earn by suffering constant persecution from those who believe it their duty to “wring” dark and dire confessions out of others. It is a bit like a modern personal inquisition from the Middle Ages! But if they thought about all of this, and applied it to themselves, they would be far too busy publishing their own sins to have time to afflict others.
It is true that if we have offended another [in the biblical sense this is committing an actual sin against another, not just offending their sensibilities or hurting their feelings, or committing what “they deem” to be a sin] we should confess that to them and offer whatever reparation and reconciliation that we can. It is also true that we should confess all sin to God, and this means confessing ourselves guilty of all sin all the time, for “if a man keeps the whole law and yet offends in just one point, he is guilty of breaking all.” [James 2:10] But we do these things not to earn forgiveness from God, or even from other people, but rather because it is the honest and loving thing to do. And if we truly know God’s gracious mercy and forgiveness we are not afraid to have this kind of honest relationship with God – in fact, it is one of the blessed aspects of inner spiritual healing that God’s love and grace bring into our hearts. But those who erase these promises of God actually deter and interfere with a genuine relationship with God, by taking away the knowledge of His gracious mercy and love. So the evil that they do is far worse than any sins we can commit – and convinced they are doing some great “godly” service, they are in fact covering up and “concealing” their own grievous transgression in arrogant impenitence. It is a rather amazing and frightful turning of the justice they long for. Lord, have mercy.
To the end that we might properly acknowledge and confess our sin and not try to conceal it beneath a veneer of superficial piety and self-righteousness, we continue to have a general confession of sin at the beginning of most worship services. It is not inquisitional but honest. It is not personal but general, although we do personally participate in it. Afterward we receive the absolution, the forgiveness and cleansing of our sin that Christ commands His servants to minister to us [John 20:23], the mercy promised in this passage and numerous others. This is both painful and pleasurable – the actual confession; painful because we have disappointed our dear Lord and Savior, but pleasant in that the whole confession takes place within the sphere of His gracious mercy and love, and ends in the assurance of His gracious forgiveness and mercy. All of this is abundantly prosperous spiritually, for it continues to bind us ever closer to God our Savior. To Him be all glory and honor and worship!
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, thanks and praise be to You for establishing God’s mercy and forgiveness in the realm of justice and certainty, in Your bitter suffering and death on the cross for our sins. Help us to grow in the kind of genuine repentance and honesty that You desire and that is truly healing for us. Forbid that we fall into the lies and delusions of the enemy and his agents; preserve us in faith, and the peace and joy that You so deeply desire for us. Amen.