In a moment we will confess our sins. The message last week was about confession of sin, and how God is dealing with us so that we will deal honestly with Him.
So what is it to confess? What is this duty, and to whom is it owed? In 1 John 1:9, we are told that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. The word for confess means to “to speak the same thing as, to acknowledge.” When God calls something sin, and we stop calling it something else, we have confessed our sins. A lie is a lie, a lazy afternoon at work is theft, a lustful glance is infidelity, and so on.
To whom do we confess? We confess to God, of course, and to others to the extent relevant and necessary. If you stole from someone then you confess to them as well as to God. If you lied to someone, you confess to them as well as to God. If you cheated on a test, you tell the teacher. If you chastise yourself all day long with bogus and hyper-sensitive accusations, then you ask God to have the devil leave you alone. If the attitude that you were forgiven for was contained within your heart, and it really was, then you just confess it to God.
But our sins are often far more public than we like to realize, and it is a mark of the Holy Spirit’s increased activity when we find a number of the saints cleaning house at the same time. When enough saints start house cleaning at the same time, we call that revival. Real sin, real confession, real honesty. The result is real revival.