The God Who Knows
You can fool yourself, you might be able to fool other people but you can’t fool God.
In an interview, Bob Cousy, a former NBA player in the hall of fame, was recalling his religious experience, and he said something that caught my attention, he said “We used to go to confession. Why did we go? We did something wrong and needed to get it off our conscience. The priest listened and said, ‘Don't do it again.’ So, you walk out of there feel ing like you don't need anything more than that.”
That is not how the Bible views sin and confession. Sin isn’t a guilty feeling to get off our conscience. Sin is rebelling against God’s loving authority. It is the self-elevation of ourselves, whenever we try to play God. Sin can be actions that can be clearly recognized like murder or adultery, but sin can also be hidden from recognition in the inner workings of our heart and mind like lust and anger.
Hebrews 4:13 says “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
And so, again, people can fool other people, but no one fools God.
Psalm 139:1–4 (ESV): “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.”
We are completely known by God. David here exclaims “You have searched me and known me!” God knows everything about us. In fact not only does he know us as much as we know ourselves but he actually knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our words before we speak them, he knows our thoughts before we have them. He knows everything about us even the worst parts and he has still chosen to love us and save us.
And so we go to God with our sin because we recognize that Jesus has paid the price for our sin and so we can go to our Heavenly Father not in fear but in humility knowing that he already knows everything about us. We don’t confess our sins because God doesn’t know about them but we do it because he does know about them and so when we confess our sins to God, even in the silence of our heart, we are declaring to ourselves and to God our need for him and the forgiveness he offers through Jesus.
Prayer
Father, nothing is hidden from your sight, everything is uncovered before you. Even the darkness, is not dark to you, the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. We say along with the Psalmist “Search us, O God, know our hearts! By the grace that saved us we ask for the grace to recognize and renounce the sin in our lives. And so we confess our individual sins to you now in this silence.
Father, we count everything as loss, as worthless when compared to the surpassing value, the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus as our Lord, and as the ransom for our sins. Your word says:
“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and so we thank you for your mercy and grace that you have poured out on us.”