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| Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin. |
| —Psalm 32:1-5 |
| 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 yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by 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 has no place in our lives. |
| —1 John 1:5-10 |
From time to time on this blog site, I’ve written about confession, repentance, restitution, and reconciliation. These four individual elements form an interdependent, interlocking, life-sustaining process that some have called “The Circle of Forgiveness.” This process becomes a very important part of the pathway for a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ—that is to say a “Christian” or “Christ’s-one”—to develop into a fully obedient citizen of the Kingdom of God.
At the same time, each of these elements offers its own set of challenges to our normal understanding. While the basis for the fundamental morality of the United States has deep roots into the soil of Judeo-Christian values, time has tended to soften, or distort, some of the concreteness of certain of those values. As a result, people end up with a skewed, or distorted, view of what these values really mean. “Confession” is one such value.
When I have written about the need for confession, as a part of The Circle of Forgiveness, some reader feedback has characterized this word in a way that does not synchronize consistently with the way the Bible characterizes confession. For example, one reader asked if by “confession” I meant the kind of teary-eyed response that a televangelist might make to his or her viewers when caught in some moral failure. Many of you will remember such scenes from not all that long ago. Well, I can say emphatically that such a display does not at all represent what I mean when I use the word “confession.”
Other readers have asked if I meant the kind of emotional response that certain denominations in the Protestant Christian family of churches might make when they hear a fiery sermon calling for them to confess their sins and receive God’s grace and mercy. Again, I can confirm that such a display of emotion does not fairly represent what I mean when I write about the word “confession.”
Another reader suggested that the more staid Protestant denominations might avoid talking about confession purely on the basis that it calls to their minds distasteful images of behavior that simply does not mesh with their natural reserve. I admit that I had to laugh when I read that comment. I laughed, not at the dear person writing to me, but at the very idea that some denominations believe they have risen above the obedience that comes from confession.
Still others have written to assert that each Sunday during their Worship Service, they pause in the Order of Service to pray a “Prayer of Confession.” In fact, in the church that I attend—a semi-liturgical Evangelical Presbyterian Church—not only do we have a unison corporate “Prayer of Confession,” we follow that prayer with a time of silent prayer for personal confession of sin. Nevertheless, when I write about Confession as the first step in the four-step process of Forgiveness, I mean much more than the exercise of corporate and private confession that takes place in the church I attend each Sunday.
You see, for the most part, we have lost an understanding of church history. The denominations that, today, many people think of as staid and reserved to the point that little seems to move them emotionally were actually the leaders during the times of the greatest revivals in the history of our nation. It was John and Charles Wesley’s protege, George Whitfield, through whom God brought about the national revival known as the Great Awakening in the time period just prior to the onset of the Revolutionary War. The Wesley’s, of course, were the founders of Methodism.
Similarly, significant periods of genuine revival in our nation—including the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s and the Great Lay Prayer Revival of 1857 and 1858—had significant leadership from Presbyterians. In fact, the Welsh Revival of 1904 and 1905 began with the testimony of a young Presbyterian preacher-in-training, Evan Roberts.
So, you can see why I might laugh a little at some of the misunderstandings certain of my readers may have about the subject of Confession. The very denominations that we may think of today as “too cool for school,” at least when it comes to emotional response to a message from God, are the very denominations that God once used in a significant and mighty way to ignite the fire of sweeping revivals. Why in the Welsh Revival, within six months of its beginning, 150,000 souls were added to the church rolls because they acknowledged the Gift of Salvation that God had given them through His mercy, grace,and love.
No, Confession is not about emotion. Although at times, when people sense the Holy Spirit convicting them of their sins, they do weep in remorse. Confession is really about obedience. The Scripture passages at the beginning of this blog post capture the real idea of confession.
King David became overwhelmed by the awareness of his sin. This awareness came to him as a gift from the Holy Spirit. One of the Spirit’s principal tasks is to bring an awareness of sin to the mind and heart of a sinner. Before someone acknowledges the gift of salvation God has given that one through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that awareness opens up an understanding, deep within the human heart: that God loves us with an everlasting love and has made provision for our salvation through the suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of His precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Once an individual acknowledges this work of God’s grace, the Holy Spirit becomes the One who comes alongside us on our spiritual journey and directs our pathway. Part of that pathway guidance is to convict us of sins that we commit, as we walk our daily road of life.
So you see, confession is not necessarily an emotional outburst expressing great sorrow at what one has done. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that one has committed a sin. A good example of this comes to us from Jesus’ Parable of the Lost Son in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15:
When he [the son] came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.” So he got up and went to his father.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.
Did you notice what happened to the Lost Son? He came to his senses. That’s right. He came to his senses. And, when he came to his senses, he made a simple—and seemingly unemotional—acknowledgement: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”
So, when I write in my blog posts about “Confession,” that’s what I’m talking about. Not a tearful, moaning, wailing, emotional outcry concerning one’s sin. No—just a simple, straightforward acknowledgement that one has committed sin. That’s all there really is to genuine Confession.
When faced with the need to enter the Circle of Forgiveness, believers take the first step when they acknowledge that they have committed sin. That is to say, they confess their sins.
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