Daniel's Prayer Of Confession, Part 2

Daniel says, ‘We have not listened to your servants the prophets.’

It’s hard to over-emphasise how important this is. Someone might say that sin is breaking God’s law and there is a sense in which that is certainly true. But it isn’t what sin is according to the apostle John.

John explains what sin is in one of his letters. It will help if you turn to the chapter. It’s 1 John 3. In verse 6 John says, ‘No one who abides in him [that is, Jesus] sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.’ ‘No one who abides in him sins’?! That’s astonishing, isn’t it? Surely everyone sins?! How can we understand it? It might give you a clue that ‘sin’ isn’t what you think it is. If we continue, the passage gets even more astonishing. In verse 8 John says ‘Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil.’ Wow! Do you commit sin? Would you accept that you’re a child of the devil?

The key to understanding what John is saying is in verse 4. John says, ‘Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.’

Here we have a definition of what sin is: ‘sin is lawlessness.’ John Stott, who I suppose many of us have heard of, called this the clearest and most revealing definition of sin in the New Testament.

I suggested a moment ago that someone might define sin as breaking God’s law. But the apostle John’s definition is different to that. He wrote, ‘sin is lawlessness.’

What is lawlessness? The dictionary says that ‘lawlessness’ means ‘contempt and violation of law, manifestations of disregard for law’.

That was the Israelites’ situation. They had not listened to God’s word. They had committed the sin that is the real sin. When Daniel confesses the people’s sin, he understands what the key sin is.

Daniel’s confession is an example for us. Maybe some of us need to reflect on whether we might have fallen into that sin, the real sin of not listening to God, of disregarding his law, and if we have, say sorry.

5. (v.7,8) To us

At the beginning of his prayer, Daniel said ‘WE have sinned.’ Daniel wasn’t primarily confessing his own sins. The Bible considers Daniel to be one of the most righteous people who ever lived. He probably didn’t have too much to confess. But Daniel confesses the sin of the Jewish people, of whom he is a member.

Let’s move on to verses 7 and 8. Daniel says twice, ‘to US belongs open shame.’

Let’s reflect on the ‘to us.’

To a degree, this is a difficult thing for us as 21st century westerners to feel. We live in an age of individualism. We think, ‘I’m responsible for my actions and you’re responsible for your actions.’ I don’t feel that I am responsible for what we all do or have done. But I said, ‘TO A DEGREE, this is a difficult thing for us as 21st century westerners to feel.’

In reality, we should be able to feel collective responsibility. It comes up all the time.

At the end of last year, Russia was banned for four years from all international sporting events. Some Russian athletes thought it wasn’t fair. Why should clean athletes be punished for what others had done? But the members of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which gave the ban, obviously believed in the idea of collective responsibility.