Monday, August 31, 2026
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 Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they hid themselves among the trees of Eden. It was a foolish thing to do. God knew what they had done and He certainly knew where to find them. Still, God went looking for them, calling them to repentance, “Where are you? … Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Genesis 3:9b, 11b). Even then the Shepherd was seeking the lost. Like our first parents Adam and Eve, we try in vain to cover our sin and shame and engage in futile attempts to hide from the presence of our Creator. We might be successful—for a while—in hiding our sin from people, but we cannot hide from God.
God sent His Son, Jesus our Lord, “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10b). In His work of seeking and saving, the Son of God would, in the end, have no place to hide. He was nailed to a cross in full view of angry, shocked, and grieving spectators. He was taunted and ridiculed by His enemies. In His own body He carried our sin and shame—Adam’s sin and ours, the sins of all people—as He hung in helpless weakness for the world to see. His Heavenly Father saw Him and turned away, abandoning His Son to suffering and death as Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46b). Finally, Jesus’ body was taken down and sealed in a tomb. Then, on the third day, He rose from the dead! He appeared to His chosen witnesses, His victory over sin and death clearly displayed in wounds that marked His living body. As the apostle Paul explains, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins … But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:17, 20a).
Our sin and guilt were nailed to the cross, judged and condemned in the body of our crucified Savior. In humble, repentant trust, confident in the forgiveness won at the cross and empty tomb, we declare, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” God forgives the iniquity, that is, the guilt of our sin. There is no need to hide. God sees us through the cross of His Son, and as far as He is concerned, we never committed those sins. The guilt is gone. The transgressions we confessed are removed forever from the sight of God. Finally, the day will come when we will stand in God’s eternal presence and shout for joy over our salvation. Until then, we can be certain that the Shepherd is still seeking the lost.
WE PRAY: Dear Savior, I will praise You now and forever for the forgiveness that You won for me on the cross. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler.
Reflection Questions: