Concerned with Consequences

“I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.”—Psalm 32:5

After we confess our sins, we know that we are forgiven (1 John 1:9), but that doesn’t mean that everything in our life becomes neat and clean right away. I have encountered many believers who have repented and confessed their sins, and once that is done, they think that all will be well and life is ready to go back to normal, not realizing that there may be consequences to the sin that they just confessed. The mature and grateful forgiven one will often seek to clean up the debris left behind by their sin, demonstrating both the genuineness of their repentance and a Christlike humility.

In a recent baptism service, a very young girl described her view of forgiveness. She said that when she takes a shower, she thinks of God’s grace as washing over her and cleansing her of all her sins. Sin, by its nature, is dirty, filthy, and stains the person who commits it. Whenever we sin, we are, in large part, rolling in mud and filth, staining our garments with the dirt of sin. Because we are dirty all over, we must step into the shower of confession to be cleansed. Doing so enables God’s grace and forgiveness to wash over us, cleansing us from our sin. After confession, we step out of the shower cleansed, but there is still the mud that we tracked into the bathroom—the bath mat is muddied and the floor is dirty. Though the shower of confession makes us clean, that does not mean there won’t be consequences left over from the dirt and grime of our sin—the bathmats are still dirty after we are clean. We must take care of the dirty bathmats in life through the process of “restitution” whereby we either get the bathmats cleaned, if possible (e.g., pay back stolen money, or seek reconciliation with an estranged family member), or, in those cases where restitution is not possible, endure the consequences resulting from our sin—in other words, the bathmats are stained and there is nothing we can do to get it out. Allow me to illustrate: someone may get drunk and then decide to drive his car and then get into a car wreck in which someone is killed. When he comes to his senses, he may be deeply repentant and seek the forgiveness of God, which is given because of the greatness of God’s grace. He then could try and make restitution of some sort, but no matter what he does, it’s not going to bring back the one he killed. He has to live with that consequence that was the result of the choice he made to drink and drive.

Some of the sins we confess have great consequences, while others seem not to. But one thing is for sure, however—all sin does have consequences. It may be internal or external, but sin always does damage, both to the one who does it and to those who are connected to that person.

God gives grace to forgive us of all of our sin—which means that the eternal consequences of that sin were paid for on the cross, even though the temporal consequences may still remain. Confession does not remove consequences; rather, confession enables us to have the moral stamina given to us by the Holy Spirit to endure under them.

May we all understand that Christ thoroughly paid for our sin and took the eternal consequences of our sin upon Himself by dying in our place. While we continue to live on this earth day by day, we know that the consequences we face because of past choices need not plague us—Christ took on our sin and shame. We can only live in the state of being forgiven, knowing that we are objects of grace, beneficiaries of a forgiveness and salvation we do not deserve, conducting ourselves in humility, love and forgiveness—knowing that our past has been forgiven, but that we have grace to bear up in the present so that the power of Christ might be seen in and through us. Amen.