Find Mercy from Condemnation

The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. – Proverbs 28.13 (CSB)

Unconfessed sin plagues and destroys us. God’s conviction of our unconfessed sin is heavy and graciously breaks us down. David described it this way in Psalm 32.3-4, “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.”

As I look back over my life with the Lord, a lot of of it was spent neglecting the gracious and merciful invitation to freely confess my sins to the Lord. The main reason was because of pride. I figured that since I was a pastor that I should be better. My struggle with sin was a source of condemnation for me. My struggle with sin made me feel like I wasn’t a “good Christian.” And maybe you feel that same way as well. But, follower of Jesus, first accept this: we aren’t good. There is no such thing as a “good Christian.” Rather, we are all sinners saved by the grace of God who then are given new identities as children of God when we surrender to the lordship of Jesus with our righteousness and goodness found in the righteousness and goodness of Christ. And we are loved and adored by him. He is good and we are his. That is the beauty of the gospel. 

Then, when we truly receive the grace of God, the fact that we struggle with sin is proof of the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. Paul tells us in his letter to Christians in Galatia about the war being waged inside of us between our flesh (i.e., sinful desires) and the Holy Spirit. “I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want” (Galatians 5.16-17, CSB). 

We all struggle with sinful desires that plague us, leaving us with a choice to either feed those sinful desires or to worship and honor the Lord through our obedience to him. Jesus told his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come” (Luke 17.1, ESV).  Paul confessed the battle that raged inside of him to the Christians in Rome:

“For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body” (Romans 7.15-23, CSB).

This confession left him with this statement: “What a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death” (Romans 7.24)? And how many Christians stay imprisoned to the chains of hopelessness and self-condemnation that come with this question instead of moving into the chain-breaking, freedom providing answer?

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7.25, CSB)!

And because of this earth-shattering truth, we can say with all confidence, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8.1-2, CSB). And two key things that bring us back to this statement of liberating victory over and over again are confession and repentant. 

And so we come back to Proverbs 28.13, “The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.” If you want to find mercy, “confess and renounce” sin (renounce = leave behind, let go, give up, abandon, forsake, i.e. repent from). Failure to do so rejects God’s gracious invitation into deeper intimacy and fellowship with him. We first find mercy from confession and repentance from sin when we surrender our lives to Jesus. We have God’s unlimited grace available to us every day as we battle against our sinful desire. And when we fall, we have available to us confession of sin and repentance from sin to draw us deeper into Christ and his mercy. Let that sink in and find rest for your condemned souls.