If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Our sins ...  It is not the principle of sin merely that is to be acknowledged but the plurality of sins.  This has been misunderstood as meaning "all of our sins publicly"; but no such meaning is in it.  Rather the need for acknowledging and confessing sin again, and again, as multiple occasions arise requiring it, is the true meaning.  The right course is not repetitious confessions of all the sins one can remember, but the admission of sin on the successive occasions when the believer stumbles.  If this is done, the aggregate is "confessing our sins," no less than the indulgence of such things as the group confessionals mentioned above.