In the Bible, one of the primary messages that shines through is God’s unconditional love for each one of us no matter how much we fail him and his desire for us to walk in close relationship with him. We have been focusing over the last several weeks on how we grow spiritually which means how we have that closer walk with him, how we get to know him better, and reflect his character more.
The Reality of Sin and the Need for Confession
The Bible is clear however that one thing gets in the way of our spiritual growth, our relationship with God, sin.
Is 59:2 But there is a problem-- your sins have cut you off from God. Because of your sin, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.
Before we trust in Jesus Christ, our sin separates us eternally from God until we are covered by the blood of Jesus. Once we trust in Jesus as our savior and become Christians we are forgiven of our sin , however we still struggle with sin. God has set us free from sin, but we still battle with it. In 1 John he writes, “if we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing his words have no place in our hearts (v. 10).” Even as Christians, we sin, and our sin separates us from God, perhaps not eternally (we still will go to heaven), but we cannot grow spiritually with sin hanging around us.
As Christians we have the dangerous tendency to ignore our sin, after all I’m a Christian I shouldn’t be doing this. Or we cover up our sin because we think we are alone, the only Christian who is suffering with this or we are afraid of being condemned by other Christian believers. And so we hide it and suffer alone in the darkness, not willing to bring our sin into the light. Or perhaps we try to cover it up by doing more good things like serving Jesus, hoping that if we do enough good deeds for Jesus it will cover our bad acts. On the outside we might look like a good Christian but inwardly we are a graveyard, to use one of Jesus’ analogies.
Another thing we do with sin is excuse it by comparing our sin to other people to make us feel like were really not that bad. “Well my sin isn’t nearly as bad as his or hers.” Jesus taught on the mistake of comparing our sin to others. Jesus told a story about two men going to the temple to pray, one a tax collector and the other a Pharisee, a pious religious leader (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee stood and prayed, ‘thank you that I am not like these other men who do evil, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice and week and tithe all I own.’ When the tax collector prayed he wouldn’t even look up to heaven, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Jesus said, “I tell you the truth this man, rather than the other, went home justified (or made right) before God.” The tax collector was restored into relationship with God because he admitted his sin and sought God’s mercy. The Pharisee was not justified because he compared himself to the tax collector and not to God. We must be careful not to overlook our sin by comparing ourselves with others. We need to compare ourselves to a pure and holy God, demonstrated perfectly in Jesus Christ.
We are also good at making excuses for our sin, ‘it was my parents fault for raising me wrong,’ ‘it’s my genetics, I’m German, Irish, Polish, etc. that’s why I’m the way I am,’ ‘it’s a chemical imbalance.’ I just read of a new excuse we could use. I was reading an article on germs in last week’s copy of Newsweek magazine. Researchers at Nestle, of all places, believed they’ve discovered microbes which give people a craving for chocolate. So if you struggle with the sin of gluttony, no problem, it’s your bacteria’s fault. Too often we point the finger at someone else rather than ourselves? Of course you know I like football, and it’s always amusing to me when there is a penalty flag thrown in a game the players start pointing their fingers at the opposite team. How many marriages end up in divorce because one or both of the couple won’t look at themselves and admit their own part, their own sin? Or if we do confess, too often we qualify our confession, “I did this…but they did that first.” Or it begins as a confession but ends up an excuse, “sorry for what I did, I was having a bad day.”
Sin cannot be ignored, covered, or excused because it creates a wall between us and God and it sabotages every other effort we make at growing spiritually. It doesn’t matter how much you pray, read and reflect on Scripture, attend worship, serve other people, you will not grow spiritually with sin in your life. Sin also quenches the fire of the Holy Spirit and his power at work in our life, and his ability to help us become more like Christ. If we go on living spiritually immature and impotent lives, never receiving the fullness of what God has to offer us of himself we have to ask ourselves is there some sin blocking God’s work in my life.
The longer we harbor the sin, the more it flourishes in the dark, it grows deeper roots and becomes more entrenched, choking out the life of God within us. In the south are these parasitic vines that grow up the trunk of a tree and begin to choke the life out of the tree. Fortunately the fix is quite easy, cut the vine at its base and the whole vine dies. God’s solution to sin is the practice of confession. Confession cuts the vine of sin at its base and allows us to be restored by God.
Confession is taking responsibility for the sins we have committed. I recognize that Jesus’ life is not evident in my thoughts (2 Cor. 10:5), my attitudes (Eph. 4:31), my words (Eph. 4:29), or my actions (James 1:22). When I confess I seek God’s mercy and forgiveness, like the tax collector who beat his breast and asked God be merciful to him, a sinner.
When we make confession a regular practice in our life it prevents the wall from becoming so great between us and God. We are able to grow spiritually (this doesn’t mean we will but it opens the door) because there is nothing barring the way.
Confess to One Another
Let’s go back to our memory verse, “confess your sins to one another.” Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church has something on us Protestants on this one with their tradition called penance. That is where they have the confessional booths where Catholics are expected to come in and pray to confess their sins to the priest, confessing their sins to another human being. While I may not agree with the theology behind it, the practice is Biblical. There is something that happens when we name our sin to another person. Our own tradition, the Methodists, began with small group meetings where they would share weekly about their walk with God including sin that needed to be confessed.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t like the idea of that do we? Confessing to God is hard enough, but to another person is even tougher. Why do we have such a hard time with confession, especially confessing to other people? One word, fear. By sharing my sins, failures, and weaknesses there is a fear that I will be rejected by the very people who should love and care for me. Perhaps you have experienced rejection or humiliation in the past when you have exposed your inner struggles or confessions to another person, perhaps you shared with someone you thought to be a friend, a trusted confidant but they hurt you instead, perhaps they gossiped to someone else. Now the idea of confessing to another person seems too risky for you, not worth the reward.
But here’s the rub, James tells us in our memory verse that the act of confessing to another Christian (“one another”) brings healing. Perhaps you have wronged another person. Confessing to God isn’t enough, in order to receive God’s complete healing you must confess to the individual you hurt. If we have hurt the church, confession should be made to the church for complete healing and restoration to occur. In fact if you look at historic revivals they are usually accompanied by this level of confession. In order for the Holy Spirit to be manifest in a powerful way requires confession.
While I don’t think the confessional booth was what James had in mind, the principle is still valid, where do we confess our sins to other Christians?
Did you know that Jesus has also given to all Spirit-filled Christians the authority to hear confession and forgive sin in Jesus’ name?
John 20:22 Then he [Jesus] breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you refuse to forgive them, they are unforgiven."
Dietrich Bonheoffer once wrote, “Our brother…has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ’s stead and he forgives our sins in Christ’s name. He keeps the secret of confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God. ”
When we make confession to each other we come out of the darkness into the light. We are able to hear and extend the words of forgiveness on God’s behalf, “in the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven” and then we find healing.
I need to add though that we must be cautious in whom we confess. I would like to believe that we can confess our sins to any Christian believer, but unfortunately not everyone is spiritually mature enough to handle our confessions and offer God’s grace and forgiveness. We need to find someone who is trustworthy, able to hold our confession in confidence, compassionate, and spiritually mature.
Be Specificin our Confession
Maxie Dunnam writes in the Workbook on Spiritual Disciplines, “The more specific we are in our confession, the less likely we are to fall into the tempting snare of covering up and suppressing.” The more specific we are the more freedom we will experience from that sin and the more healing we will receive from God.
When we offer some generic blanket prayers like, “We confess we have not loved you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we have not loved our neighbor as our selves.” It’s probably true, but not specific enough. We need to be more concrete in our confession. Not just confessing something like “I confess I have been selfishness,” but where have I been selfish? Be specific, “I have demanded my own way with my spouse.”
Examination of Conscious
Traditionally confession has been accomplished by what is called the examination of conscious. For those who have been on an Emmaus Walk Retreat you know that we end each day with an examination of conscious, where we look back on the day or week or however long it has been since we last confessed and examine our thoughts, our attitudes, our heart, our actions, did they reflect Christ?
Have we exhibited:
A sin of the heart: pride, anger, greed, fear, jealousy, hatred, envy, or a
Sin of the flesh: laziness, gluttony, greed, adultery
Sin of the tongue: lying, gossiping, swearing
Sin of attitude –
In the examination of conscious we seek the Holy Spirit to reveal our sin. Remember that the conviction of sin is the work of the Holy Spirit. If we don’t listen to the Holy Spirit we can fall into one of two problems. 1) We blame ourselves for things God doesn’t hold against us anymore because we already asked for forgiveness and God forgave us, we don’t need to carry the guilt around with us because we have already been forgiven. 2) If we don’t listen to the Holy Spirit we will have a tendency to overlook ongoing sins in our life. If we are honest with ourselves and open to the Holy Spirit, he will reveal to us where we really are.
What if you don’t sense the Holy Spirit revealing anything? Rejoice and be glad, give thanks and praise to God for working in your life to purify you from all sin, but don’t become prideful because it is a work of God, lest we become like the Pharisee who gloats about himself for his self-righteousness.
Remember, the purpose of confession is to receive God’s forgiveness and healing. The promise in God’s word is that:
NIV 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
God loves us and desires for us to experience his forgiveness and healing. God wants to see us experience wholeness through his grace. God doesn’t want us carrying baggage around that damages our body, mind, and soul.
Communion
As we go into a time of communion this has traditionally been a time of examination of our hearts.
The Apostle Paul, when writing about the Lord’s Supper, or communion, said:
1 Cor. 11:27 So if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, that person is guilty of sinning against the body and the blood of the Lord.
28 That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking from the cup. 29 For if you eat the bread or drink the cup unworthily, not honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself.
[During communion lead the congregation in a prayer of examination of conscious from the Emmaus worship book p. 14.]
Imagine God is speaking to you, he asks you: my child, think about your interior attitudes and disposition. Have your thoughts, your aspirations, your actions been worthy of one of my disciples?
How have you used your time? Do you make time to be my disciple? What have you done that I may be better known, that I may be better loved? Are you with me or against me? At work – in your profession – at recreation – have you been my disciple? Would you have been proud to have me accompany you through the day?
Please spend as much time as necessary to examine your heart this morning and confess to God what he reveals. When you are ready please come forward to receive the bread and the cup of the Lord as symbols of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
