A Serial Confessionist & The Holiness of God

Often in the early days of my walk with God I walked under many misconceptions which plagued me deeply. First of all when I sinned I would just confess my sin and pour out guilt upon myself continuously. See I believed that I was supposed to master my sin all alone, that I was “supposed” to be strong enough to win the “Victory”. But misconception was very deadly for one BIG reason. Christ had already paid for my sin on the Cross!! See God had come down into human history as a man, Jesus, and lived a sinless life and died on the Cross for my sin.
So as I began to grasp Christ’s forgiveness of me because I truly confessed my sin as 1 John 1:9 says “ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I felt the weight of his forgiveness and Grace which was poured out upon me. But I quickly became what I like to call a “Serial Confessionist” which was someone who confessed their sins and truly believed that they were forgiven but never truly walked in freedom.
In many ways I still feel as though I walk in that serial confessionist way. I had known about the Holiness of God before but it never really sunk in until we began to talk about it and look at the text. But as we have been going thru 1 John in the college group at my church I have begun to realize a part of freedom that I had been missing and that is the Holiness of God.

1 John 1:5-10”This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

A lot of theses concept I had heard and studied but never really personalized them until recently. I knew that a Christian had to live a life of repentance but what did that look like? I thought it looked like confession and me fixing myself. But now I see that the Holiness of God is why Jesus came to die, not only for forgiveness.
See The Wrath of God and the Forgiveness of God or Grace collide at the Cross. And that is what gives us freedom as we receive His Forgiveness and pursue God, we also forsake our sin and pursue God’s holiness because we cant be in fellowship wit Him unless we are living holy lives. So will you confess and forsake and pursue God in holiness and forgiveness?