What glory does God receive from our confession? First, confession is admitting that God is, “righteous in all his ways” (Psalm 145:17). Confession is glorifying to God because we are saying, “God, You are right, and I am wrong!” We are dethroning ourselves and coming to a right view of our sin. Second, confession glorifies God because when we confess our sins, we are acknowledging that only He can deal with our sin. 

A friend of mine once said, “You know why we don’t confess our sin? Because we want our lives to look like a George Muller biography.” What he meant was, we often fail to confess our sin because we so badly want to be perceived as strong in the faith. If we confess, then people will know that we are just as weak and sinful as the next man. And that kind of knowledge doesn’t work well with the image we are trying to maintain. It is an unfortunate fact that you and I want people to think better of us that we deserve.

The sad thing is, sometimes we get away with it. Sometimes we let the praise of men linger too long. We hear others speaking well of us, too well of us, and we love it. Sinful pride creeps into our hearts, and we begin to deceive ourselves and believe our own press. But deep down we know. We know that we are not good. We understand it theologically, but we also know it experientially. Even our best days are riddled with mixed affections and conflicted motives. Our willingness to hear our own praises, mixed with a lack of confession, presents a faulty reality to those around us. We set up a false image of ourselves for others to marvel at. And when we fail to acknowledge our shortcomings and allow people to think better of us than we deserve, we perpetuate a culture that lacks confession, sin remains undealt with, and ultimately God is not glorified.

A Culture Without Confession

When we fail to confess, others are less likely to confess. This same friend said to me, “It’s really hard to confess my sin when everyone around me just wants to go die for Christ.” Those extreme feelings of devotion are good and godly, but they’re not the whole truth.

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