Dr. John V. Fesko explores what Scripture teaches about confessing our sins.
The following is a transcript of the video above.
How do we correctly confess our sins?
How do we correctly or best confess our sins when we recognize that we’re sinners? I think that all of us perhaps get to that point when we’re in the midst of prayer, whether it’s maybe at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, or some other point therein, and we recognize that we’ve been sinful, we know that we sin moment by moment. But as we think about the day, maybe it’s difficult for us to remember precisely how and in what ways that we have sinned. As we read the Word of God, the spirit will convict us of our particular sins because it’ll become more aware to us the many ways that we can sin. And then, as the Spirit convicts us of our sins, particularly, we can confess, and we can repent of our sins particularly.Perhaps if there’s a big event in our lives, maybe we lash out in anger at somebody, then we can, of course, we can repent of that. And we can say, “Lord, forgive me for my outburst of anger.” Or “Forgive me, Lord, for my impatience”, so we can confess our sin that way. But one of the things that the Westminster Confession says, and it says this in chapter fifteen, paragraph five, is that we should confess and repent of our sins particularly. Thus, our confession should be particular for each and every particular sin that we commit. So I’m just like anybody else, sometimes I say, “Lord I don’t recall what I did. I know that I said, so please forgive me of my sins.” But at the same time, I think the more that we’re in the Word of God, read the law of God, meditate upon it, see what the larger Catechism has to say or the many manifold ways in which we can violate God’s law, read the book of Proverbs, read the Gospels and see how varied and how minute sin can be, whether big things or small things. And as we do so, hopefully, as we read the Word of God, the spirit will convict us of our particular sins because it’ll become more aware to us the many ways that we can sin. And then, as the Spirit convicts us of our sins, particularly, we can confess, and we can repent of our sins particularly.
