Confession: Sin Hurts God

CONFESSION: SIN HURTS GOD

If you’re part of a big family, you probably remember those times when a little nephew would come up and slug his older uncles. The nephew’s mother probably chided him, but I can almost hear the uncle say, "No! That’s all right. The kid’s got to flex his muscles once in a while." It’s good-natured horseplay, but once in a while, the kid surprises the uncle and actually hurts him. But does the uncle smack the kid back? No way! The uncle sucks it up and takes it. He loves the nephew and knows the nephew wasn’t hurting him on purpose. The nephew has no concept of how much he may or may not have hurt the uncle and might even break into tears himself if he knew what he’d really done.

In a similar way, I believe that God emphasized the phrase "They have abandoned me" to help me understand that my rebellious ways may be rationalized as "I can’t help myself" or "It was just a ‘little’ sin," but our disobedience hurts him. It’s like some people ask me why an OMNISCIENT (All-Knowing) God needs to have us confess our sins to Him. God DOESN’T need us to confess our sins to Him. WE need to confess (literally means, "to say the same as, agree with") so that we can see what we have done or failed to do from God’s perspective.

I truly believe that if most of us understood how much our sinful rebellion hurts a Holy God, we wouldn’t sin so unconsciously. We would seek God’s help in conquering the sin problem.