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Getting Rid of Sin, May 5
He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and
forsaketh them shall have mercy.
Proverbs 28:13
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For a Babylonish robe and a paltry treasure of gold and silver, Achan
consented to sell himself to evil, to bring upon his soul the curse of God, to
forfeit his title to a rich possession in Canaan, and lose all prospect of the
future, immortal inheritance in the earth made new....
So great had been his hardihood and persistence, that even at the last
Joshua feared he would assert his innocence, and thus enlist the sympathy
of the congregation and lead them to dishonor God. He would not have
confessed, had he not hoped by so doing to avert the consequences of his
crime. It was this hope that led to his apparent frankness in acknowledging his
guilt and relating the particulars of the sin. In this manner will confessions be
made by the guilty when they stand condemned and hopeless before the bar
of God, when every case has been decided for life or for death. Confessions
then made will be too late to save the sinner.
There are many professed Christians whose confessions of sin are similar
to that of Achan. They will, in a general way, acknowledge their unworthiness,
but they refuse to confess the sins whose guilt rests upon their conscience, and
which have brought the frown of God upon His people. Thus many conceal
sins of selfishness, overreaching, dishonesty toward God and their neighbor,
sins in the family, and many others which it is proper to confess in public.
Genuine repentance springs from a sense of the offensive character of
sin. These general confessions are not the fruit of true humiliation of soul
before God. They leave the sinner with a self-complacent spirit to go on
as before, until his conscience becomes hardened, and warnings that once
aroused him produce hardly a feeling of danger and after a time his sinful
course appears right. All too late his sins will find him out, in that day when
they shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering forever. There is a vast
difference between admitting facts after they are proved, and confessing sins
known only to ourselves and God.—
The Signs of the Times, May 5, 1881
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