It's not hard to understand why someone who doesn't know God would be reluctant to confess fault. Someone who has no God, but has to admit their own imperfection, is not only wrong, but alone. It's a prison of sorts, propping up a sagging structure on no foundation, no way out, no way to repair what we know is in truth is broken. For someone who has no God, living with irredeemable wrong must bring dark echoes of fear.
Faith and the freedom to confess go hand in hand because for the faithful, confession brings no fear. If I bear fault, but have no God, I am wrong and alone. If I confess to God, however, I know immediate communion with Him. I have sinned, but He is always near to pick me up. I may fall to my knees, but rise by His side, and confession is the only gate that opens into this sweet field of grace.
In fact, taken to its logical result, resistance to confess sin constitutes a lack of faith. Reluctance to admit wrong demonstrates failure to understand the very nature of God. He is holy and I must remember it. Stubborn, intentional, ignorance of God's majesty circumvents knowledge of a love most obviously demonstrated in forgiveness. If I know who God is, I know who I am, and will immediately confess my sin. When I know who I am, I know who God is and will immediately worship Him. The concepts cannot be separated.
God does not deny or ignore my sin, nor can I. He faces it--calls it exactly what it is, and what I am in consequence of it. God tells me that I am wretched, not because He made me that way, but because I have turned my back on the very glory He put in me. But, even as God tells me the hard truth, and as I utter my acknowledgement of that truth in repentance, He extends His hand. As I struggle toward Him, He keeps picking me up. If I refuse to admit who He is, however, I struggle alone.
Repentance brings me directly into God's throneroom, at His feet, in His presence. If I stand on my own strength, unwilling to admit fault, I stand alone and know the fear of it.
If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives.--1John 1:8-9
Until your old age, I am unchanged, and until your hoary years I will carry you; I made you and I will bear you, I carry you and I will rescue you. To whom can you liken Me, or consider equal, or compare Me that we should seem alike?--Isaiah 46:4-5
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