In Psalm 32:5 David wrote: “I acknowledge my transgressions to the Lord and my sin I will not hide, I will confess my sin unto the Lord and He will forgive the iniquity of my sin.” There are two points in this verse for you to see.
– Do not ever try to hide from God the fact that you sin. That is what Adam tried to do in the Garden, and it didn’t work. In Genesis 3:9. God said, “Adam, where are you?” God knew where Adam was. Adam said, “In the bushes, God.”
Adam did not want God to know what he had done. And many of you who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, when you make a bad decision and when you commit a sin in your life, you naturally feel bad about it. It is natural to feel ashamed and guilty, but the worst thing to do is to try to hide it. You can hide it from your pastor. You can hide it from your parents. But you can’t hide it from God.
– Admit what you have done to God and be honest about it. That is the first problem solving device. In John 13, Jesus taught Peter a marvelous lesson. He said, Peter, I know you are going to sin. I know that you are going to deny Me three times. I’m going to teach you a marvelous lesson that in spite of your sin, I love you and I will forgive you. Go to your Bible and read John 13:36-38 and John 18:15-27, and you will see that Peter did deny the Lord.
Like Peter, we have a tendency to shock ourselves. We sometimes do what we think we are not capable of doing. You cannot hide your sin from God. You must be willing to admit your weaknesses and confess what you did.
1 John 1: 9 says, “If we acknowledge our sins (or if we confess our sin) He is faithful and righteous with the result that He forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.” Every Christian has to do this every day. You will probably know it before you do it, because all sin begins with a thought and that thought leads to an attitude and that attitude leads to an action.
You will know it is a sin in your thinking process because it is there that your volition will make a decision. Do I want to do it? “Yes.” Do I not want to do it? “No.” Once you decide yes, you want to do it, then you form an attitude about it. Your attitude is good, fun, go for it, and when you go for it, you create the sin.
When you confess your sin, God is not shocked. He knew in eternity past what you would do. God knew what your old sin nature was and God made provisions so that you don’t have to let your old sin nature control your life.
Therefore, He says, if you will admit it and not try to hide it, He is faithful and just to forgive the iniquity of the sin. Basically what happens is represented by a simple drawing of two circles. The top circle represents the believer’s relationship with God which is eternal. You can never get out of the top circle.
The bottom circle represents the believer’s fellowship with God in time. You get out of the bottom circle every time you sin.
The point I am trying to make to you is critical that you understand. When you are in fellowship with God you are controlled by the Holy Spirit, and when you are not in fellowship with God you are controlled by your flesh or your old sin nature. At any point in time in a Christian’s life, he is either in or out of the bottom circle.
As you read this, you are either out of fellowship and controlled by your old sin nature, or you are in fellowship, controlled by the Holy Spirit. You don’t have any middle ground. You are either in fellowship or you are out of fellowship.
If you are out of fellowship, the reason is because of one of the three types of sin under which all sin is categorized.
1. Mental attitude sins are sins you commit with your mind (envy, worry, jealousy, bitterness, etc.);
2. Sins of the tongue are sins you commit with your mouth (lying, gossiping, criticizing, maligning, back-biting, etc.); and
3. Overt sins are sins that you do outwardly (fornication, stealing, murder, etc.).