With fresh blood drops on his white shirt, a man, locked away behind bars, insisted that he was innocent. “You’ve got the wrong man!” he pleaded over and over again. 

“It wasn’t me!” A young boy declared forcefully as his sister laughed and pointed to the icing smudged on his cheek.

The psalmist must have made a similar choice in this verse—at first refusing to admit what he had done. Perhaps merely thinking about his sin caused his heart to race and his eyes to drop low to the ground. How do we know? We know because we have all been there.

The psalmist related to God in a different way than we do today. He lived out his life in search of a Savior who was yet to come. We live our days in light of the Cross. We no longer need to offer a sacrifice for forgiveness—we have redemption in Christ.

But even on this side of the Cross, we have been instructed to confess our sins because what was true of the psalmist is still true today—hidden sin is painful, paralyzing, and even debilitating at times.

Confession might make you sweat; it might make you stutter. It hurts coming out, but it heals!