I Shall Confess My Offense

Readings:
Psalm 32
Ephesians 4:7-16

Focus:
Psalm 32:3-5: "While I refused to speak, my body wasted away with day-long moaning. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; the sap in me dried up as in summer drought. When I acknowledged my sin to you, when I no longer concealed my guilt, but said, 'I shall confess my offense to the Lord,' then you for your part remitted the penalty of my sin."

So often pride keeps us from admitting it when we have done wrong. Not only do we not want to acknowledge what we have done to others; we don't even want to acknowledge it to ourselves.

Yet when we do wrong things, it eats away at us. God has made us such that we are only constituted for doing what is right. When we do wrong, it as if we were ill; we don't work correctly. There is a malaise within us. Years of habituating ourselves to cultural approval of what is wrong may bury this deep. But it is there.

It is only when we acknowledge our wrongdoing (whether it is small or not so small) to ourselves, to those we have wronged, and, most importantly of all, to God, that we can rid ourselves of this malaise and truly be free. God remits the penalty of our sin. We are whole again.