When you feel convicted of sin in your life, what do you do?

Do you confess? Or do you try to explain?

Do you acknowledge your sin and accept God’s forgiveness according to His clear promise in the
Bible?

Or do you attempt to vindicate yourself by making excuses?

Recognition and confession of sin is evidence of spiritual maturity. Trying to explain away sin by
making excuses is a sure sign of spiritual adolescence.

Confession opens a door! Excuses slam the door and bolt it in God’s face!

Confession opens the heart to God’s healing grace, mercy, and love. Excuses barricade the soul
against the Divine initiative.

Someone has said, "The blood of Christ cannot cleanse excuses … it only cleanses sin!"

God sent His Son into the world to solve the sin problem. Christ offered His life on the cross as
the solution. His resurrection demonstrated the adequacy of His offer.

There is no need for further sacrifice. There was a once-for-allness about Christ’s crucifixion …
a never-to-be-repeatedness about His sacrifice for sin!

All that remains necessary is for man to acknowledge his sin_confess it to God_and receive the
forgiveness Christ died to provide. (Of course you can’t explain it, but you can experience it!)

This does not make it easy to sin. The man who has experienced the forgiveness of God has a
growing repugnance to sin which is one of the fruits of forgiveness.

The man who handles forgiveness carelessly_takes a shallow view of sin_does not know the first
meaning of God’s grace. He does not comprehend the awful price the Son of God paid.

On the other hand the man who takes sin seriously, hates it, resists it, will find an easy (not cheap)
forgiveness with God by virtue of Christ’s sacrifice.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1
John 1:8,9).