The Only Way to Deal with Sin

It’s miserable to live with unconfessed sin.

In Psalm 32, David described the futility and misery of unconfessed sin. He said, “My body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat” (verses 3–4 NLT).

The Bible tells us, “People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy” (Proverbs 28:13 NLT).

Sometimes, we meet people who seem to be so together. They do everything right, and they say the right things. But something isn’t clicking. It appears that God isn’t blessing their endeavors. They go from one crisis to another, from one misunderstood situation to another. And we wonder what’s wrong.

But then, one day, it all comes to the surface. It turns out they’ve been living in a sin they haven’t dealt with or confessed, and it caught up with them. And suddenly, we realize why things haven’t been going well in their lives.

Sin will mess up everything. It will mess up every aspect of our lives. It spreads, and it’s a foul stench that permeates every area of our lives. It will affect our marriages, our businesses, our free time, and our spiritual lives. It will affect everything. That’s why we need to deal with it.

And not only is sin bad for us spiritually, but it’s bad for us physically. This is obvious in the lives of those who turn to vices like drugs and alcohol. We hear far too many stories of those who have overdosed on drugs, joining the long list of people who have thrown their lives away to drug abuse and addiction.

Then, there is the stress and worry connected to unconfessed sin. When you don’t deal with your sin, you are always worried that it will catch up with you sooner or later. In fact, modern medical research has proven that worry and stress break down our resistance to disease. And excessive worry can shorten a person’s life.

Charles Mayo, a cofounder of the famed Mayo Clinic, once commented that he never knew anyone who died of overwork, but he knew many who died of worry.

Does that describe you right now? Are you gripped with worry because you are afraid that your sin will come to the surface? That is how David felt. He said, “I groaned all day long” (Psalm 32:3 NLT). He was miserable.

But then he said, “Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone” (verse 5 NLT).

That is the only way to deal with sin. You can’t bury it and hope it will go away, because it will come back again. There’s only one place to get rid of your sin, and that is at the cross of Jesus Christ. You can’t cover it. You can’t hide it. And you can’t run from it. It will simply stick to you until you confess it.

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