What is confession, and how does it cleanse the believer?

Confession is the first habit of the Christian life, and cleansing is what it accomplishes. Because Jesus Christ paid for every sin ever committed, sin committed after salvation can be dealt with rather than carried — “when we do sin and break fellowship with God, we can confess and be forgiven” (1 John 1:9). God “wants us to come boldly to the throne of grace when we sin, in full assurance that all our sins were paid for at the cross” (Heb. 4:14–16); He “is not honored when we come crawling and cringing into His presence, begging for something that He has promised to give.” When we confess we are “immediately cleansed and can walk away confident that we are restored to fellowship, filled by the Holy Spirit, and empowered for His work” (Psalms 32; 38; 51; 1 Cor. 11:28–31; 1 John 1:7–10). It is the first habit because “without confession, we cannot be filled by means of the Spirit, and apart from the filling of the Spirit, we do not have the power to live the Christian life.” And cleansing is continual rather than a one-time act: applied day by day it makes the believer “a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work” (2 Tim. 2:20–21).