I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.(Psalm 32:5)

The Psalmist has described his a­gony of spirit as long as he “declared not [his] sin.” But once he had overcome his pride and ad­mitted his guilt, he discovered that God had already forgiven him. If I suffer the anguish of unfor­given guilt, the fault is all mine. God forgave us all long ago (2 Corinthians 5:19 [“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them.”]). He has accepted us in Christ as we are. Why should we torment ourselves further by defending our wrongdoing and by bu­rying our guilt inside ourselves? The freedom of the gospel consists precisely in this that God has forgiven me in Christ as I am and that he gives me the power of his Holy Spirit to become what he wants me to be.

This 154 word devotion was found in the Arthur Carl Piepkorn Papers, Box 62, Folder 12, in the ELCA Archives. In the upper right hand corner the words “A Thought for Today 1964” have been penciled in, apparently by an archivist. There is no indication of authorship, but presumably the devotion is by Arthur Carl Piepkorn (1907-1973+) since it was very typical of him to file a carbon copy without his name on it of items that later appeared in print somewhere.  Sometimes he initialed or wrote his first name on these carbon copies; sometimes he did not.  In this case, the printed copy has not been located as of 7/14/04.

Copy courtesy of the Arthur Carl Piepkorn Center for Evangelical Catholicity, Storrs, CT.