Confession To God

To repent, one does not necessarily need to announce one's repentance or particular sins to other people, for it is the turning of an individual away from sin, which is an inner change of heart.  Genuine, thorough repentance consistently clung to will lead to an avoidance of irrationality and other sin, or else a person only insincerely, incompletely, repented or merely pretended to.  Confession to ecclesiastical figures or to the person, if applicable, who one has sinned against can be entirely unnecessary.  What is the determining factor here?

Numbers 5:5-7 says every man and woman who wrongs another is to confess their sin and make restitution when this is the attached penalty in God's laws, yet not all sins against other people are prescribed monetary restitution as their just punishment (examples of sins that do receive this punishment can be found in Exodus 21:18-19 and 22:5-7).  If restitution is required, a sin has been committed, and even the giving of the restitution is an acknowledgement that a person has erred and is at least wanting to outwardly make things right.  Confession here is commanded by Numbers 5, seemingly to the victim.

Crucially, this would mean that even if restitution to the victimized party (such as with petty theft) along with confession of the sin to their face is necessary, not all sins would need to be confessed to the victim in this way for their to be justice enacted or repentance on the part of the sinner.  Not all sins are crimes, and not all criminal sins are penalized with restitution and thus the implied or explicit confession connected to it.  1 John 1:9 also says to confess our sins to receive divine forgiveness, but it does not say to mention every sin to other humans, only to confess the sin.  It is to God that confession and repentance must primarily or sometimes exclusively be directed.

After his adultery with Bathsheba, David says in Psalm 51:4 that he has sinned against God and God alone.  On an ultimate, literal level, of course his sin was not strictly against God: he enticed Bathsheba to participate in a capital sin (Deuteronomy 22:22) and he behaved wrongly towards her and her husband (by having him killed and not just by committing adultery with his wife).  However, nothing could be morally erroneous unless God has a moral nature and a given deed deviates from that nature; otherwise it is only at most subjectively disliked or pragmatically harmful, not immoral.  David is right in that his sin, like all sin, is against God first and foremost even if it is committed with or against another person.

God never demands confession to other people, in general or to specific individuals, for all sins against them by default, whether to a class of priests/pastors, to close Christian friends, or to the wronged person (this is only in the aforementioned relevant cases).  He would be the one that confession is owed to.  What, also, of someone who has sinned against another person who has since died or who cannot be contacted?  Though he or she has become repentant, would they be sinning by not having the opportunity to confess to the offended party, even if the latter never realized they had been mistreated?  No!  Confession to God is morally mandatory.  To people, it is sometimes a supererogatory thing, or good but not obligatory.