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| “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” |
| —1 John 1:9 |
A few years after I entered the workforce, writer Thomas Anthony Harris wrote a book in 1969 that took the business world by storm. Titled I’m OK—You’re OK, this book provided an easy-to-understand introduction to a psychological tool called “Transactional Analysis” (TA).
Basically, TA asserts that the neurological research of Wilder Penfield could be merged with the psychotherapeutic work of Eric Berne to create a model for assessing and understanding human interaction within the framework of interpersonal relationships. Harris creates a model for this analysis that casts each participant in an instance of interpersonal relationship (transaction) as either a Parent, Adult, or Child.
In my role at the insurance company where I worked for most of my career, I taught the basics of TA for many years. It proved most helpful in giving students a way of divorcing themselves from the emotions of an interpersonal transaction, so they could critically analyze what was taking place and how to bring agreement, or harmony, to a disharmonious relationship.
As Christians, we often lose sight of the fact that our relationship with God is transactional—in fact, a covenantal relationship. God created us that we might know Him and that He might enjoy a relationship with us for all eternity. But, our first parents, Adam and Eve, failed to obey His single command. As a result, sin entered the perfect world God had created. That sin became passed down to every successive generation, right to the present time.
Early on, God set apart a people to be His ambassadors to the troubled and needy world. God formed a covenantal relationship—a transactional relationship— with these very special people. These chosen ones, the Jews, were given a means of temporarily covering their sins through the shedding of the blood of animals. God told them, through His spokesmen, that this act was a foreshadowing of a once-for-all atonement for sin that He would bring about in the future.
God’s relationship with His chosen people was a rocky one because they continually strayed from following close to Him and obeying His commands. But, out of the line of King David, God caused His one and only Son to take on human form. Born of a virgin, this God-man, Jesus, would eventually die on a cruel Roman cross of torture and shed His blood to cover the sins of all those God would call to Himself.
God then grafted in to the line of the Jews certain non-Jews, or Gentiles, thus extending redemption through His Son to people from every tribe and nation whom God would call to Himself.
The forgiveness of sins is transactional. And, we are a blessed part of that transaction. As the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 1:5-10:
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Throughout this new day, let’s remember to confess our sins to God and receive His pardon. While the penalty for sin has truly been paid by the blood of Jesus, we must strive to overcome those sins that would still enslave us. Because we bear the sin nature of Adam, until we pass from this life to the next, we will always sin. But, we can learn through the transaction of confession to become more and more like Jesus.
