Psalms 51:3

Singing to the Lord, we have asked Him to turn away His face from our sins, and to blot out all our crimes. But you can notice, Brothers, that in the same psalm we have heard: For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is ever before me. However, it is said to God elsewhere: Do not turn away your face from me, to whom we have said: Turn your face away from my sins. While therefore man and sinner are one person, man says: Do not turn away your face from me, the sinner says: Turn your face away from my sins. This is thus said: Do not turn away your face from the one whom you have made, turn your face away from what I have done. Your eye, he says, distinguishes both, lest the nature perish because of the vice. You have made something, and I have made something. What you have made is called nature; what I have done is called vice. Let the vice be healed, so that nature may be preserved.

As the holy old man Pachomius was journeying to his own monastery and had come near the desert called Amnon, legions of demons rose both on his right hand and on his left, some following him and others running in front of him, saying, "Behold the blessed man of God." They were doing this, wishing to sow vainglory in him. But he knew their cunning, and the more they shouted, the more he cried out to God, confessing his sins. And undoing the demons' cunning, he spoke out to them, saying, "O wicked ones! You cannot carry me away with you into vainglory, for I know my failures, for which I ought to weep constantly over eternal punishment. I have therefore no need of your false speech and guileful deceit, for your work is the destruction of the soul. And I am not carried away by your praises, for I know the cunning of your unholy minds." And although holy Pachomius said these things to them, they did not stop their shamelessness; they followed alongside the blessed man until he drew near his monastery.

"For mine iniquity I acknowledge, and my delinquency is before me ever" (ver. 3). I have not put behind my back what I have done, I look not at others, forgetful of myself, I pretend not to pull out a straw from my brother's eye, when there is a beam in my eye; my sin is before me, not behind me. For it was behind me when to me was sent the Prophet, and set before me the parable of the poor man's sheep. For saith Nathan the Prophet to David, "There was a certain rich man having very many sheep; but a poor man his neighbour had one little ewe sheep, which in his bosom and of his own food he was feeding: there came a stranger to the rich man, nothing from his flock he took, for the lithe ewe sheep of the poor man his neighbour he lusted; her he slew for the stranger: what doth he deserve?" But the other being angry doth pronounce sentence: then the king, evidently knowing not wherein he had been taken, declared the rich man deserving of death, and that the sheep be restored fourfold. Most sternly and most justly. But his sin was not yet before him, behind his back was what he had done: his own iniquity he did not yet acknowledge, and therefore another's he did not pardon. But the Prophet, being for this purpose sent, took from his back the sin, and before his eyes placed it, so that he might see that sentence so stern to have been pronounced against himself. For cutting and healing his heart's wound, he made a lancet of his tongue. ...