Ps 51:3 For I know my inquity, and my sin is ever before me.

AELW 12:334

"In this way David prays, too, that he will be forgiven; “for,” he says, “I know my transgressions.” “What is it to me,” God could say, “if you acknowledge your sin and are sorry for it from your heart? You have the fruit of your works.” The Law would answer this way and let a man perish in this sense of sin. A judge customarily attaches a punishment to a confession of guilt. But God does not want to be a judge. He has replaced the Law with the preaching of the Gospel, in which He attests that He has extracted a satisfactory punishment if a heart is afflicted and desperate which previously was smug in its sins. This is not because there is some merit in the acknowledgment of sin. It is because He Himself has promised that He wants to forgive those who make such an acknowledgment. And He wants to be wrathful to those sinners who do not feel their sins, but either are proud of their own strength and want to be justified by their own merit, or sin smugly according to the lust of the flesh, without the fear of God. These coarse sinners are still better than those who cover their sin with a double covering, trusting in their own powers and spurning mercy."