Confession Is Good For The Soul

If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear.

Psalm 66:18

In pre-Revolution Russia, one of the most influential people in Czar Nicholas II’s court was a wandering Orthodox monk named Grigori Rasputin. Empress Alexandra fell under Rasputin’s spell and his doctrine of immorality—that it is the believer’s responsibility to sin with abandon in order to experience the joy of repentance. The greater the sin, the greater the joy.

Rasputin clearly had not read Romans 6:1–2: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” And had he read Psalm 32:3–4, he would have discovered that David found no pleasure in sin: “My bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.” The Bible is clear that sin is what separates us from God. Choosing not to confess our sin and turn from it is like cutting the communication lines with God.

Confession means to say the same thing about our sin that God says about it. And agreeing with God is always good for the soul.