WE CAN’T GET AROUND THE FACT that we are sinful people. We sin against God in words, thoughts, and actions. We don’t do what God commands us to do and we do things he commands us not to do. In the process, we sin against other people. In that sense, we are debtors. We owe a relational debt to God (we should honor and obey him and we fail to do that) and we create relational debts with other people by not loving them as we should.
Without confession and repentance, we end up bitter, full of resentments, and hardened in our attitudes. We become defensive, feeling like we have to prove to everyone that we are right about what we say and do.
Jesus taught us to include confession and repentance in our prayers, and the psalms give us some wonderful models of prayers of confession.