1 John 1:9
“Confessions of the Heart”
INTRODUCTION
Are we basically good or basically bad?
Hollywood religion is undecided.
Basically good = Tarzan or Pocahontas. “Out there” there are still pristine societies to be discovered – deep in the jungles there exist tribes without sin – untainted by the failings of western “civilized” society.
Basically bad = Lord of the Flies. In this story good British school boys find themselves abandoned on a deserted island and they immediately turn in to savages (of course they do – they’re boys!). The point of the story is that deep within each of their little hearts lives a monster that, left unchecked, goes wild. In other words, we’re basically bad.
"Mosquito Coast" with Harrison Ford is another example. In that movie he leaves modern America and moves into a South American jungle. While he’s there he discovers that the evils that lurked in him back home are still there – his corruption comes with him.
So are we basically good, or are we basically bad?
The Bible tells us that humanity was once basically good – but since the Garden of Eden event we have been basically bad – we are born corrupt. And we each experience that – almost daily.
Illustration: I stood up a friend this week and had to confess to him that I had simply been careless. I could come up with no excuse. The best I could do was to buy him a coffee as a peace offering.
But you see, just as the bible points out that humanity is now, since the Garden of Eden, basically corrupt – with a propensity to fail and do wrong – it also points the way forward out of that state. And part of this way forward is the practice of confession.
Confession is hard, but if we believe the bible, confession is good news.
PR 28:13 He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
Confession has been described as a daily baptism (Augustine). That is, each time we confess our wrongdoing we die to that part of the old self. Then leaving our sin, shame and guilt behind we are washed clean by the mercy of God and his forgiveness and we are free to rise from that moment to a renewed life reconciled to God – free of any unresolved guilt and released from any lingering shame.
And confession is not only for individuals. As a nation we are struggling with the question of reconciliation with Aboriginal Australians. Should our PM confess and say “sorry” for the sins of our forefathers on our behalf, or shouldn’t he?
And even now, more than 50 years after the event, people are being tracked down for crimes committed in WWII. All of this simply illustrates a widespread longing in our culture, for confession and reconciliation. It’s almost instinctive for humans to want an acknowledgement of responsibility and an admission of guilt.
And alongside all this is the church – the community of Christian Believers who have been given a ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18).
It seems to me, that if we want to move deeper in our understanding of God or in our Christian experience and if we want to see God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven – then an understanding and practice of confession will improve our chances.
1 John 1:9 points out how we might start.
1JN 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1. Confession is our responsibility.
The first thing that jumps out here is the fact that confession is our responsibility.
“If we confess our sins”
It’s been said that God loves us so much that he would take 1000 steps just to be closer to us – but the last step is always up to us. God is always willing to forgive – but confession is our responsibility.
Confession must be our initiative
And the word ‘confession’ actually means, “to say the same things about.” So to confess sin then is to say the same thing about it that God says about it.
Confession is not about praying a beautiful prayer, or making excuses, or trying to impress God or other Christians. True confession is naming sin – calling it by name what God calls it: envy, hatred, lust, deceit, or whatever it may be. Confession simply means being honest with ourselves and with God, and if others are involved, being honest with them too.
I’ve said it before – but I honestly believe that Christians are the most courageous people. They are willing to be honest with God about themselves and their short comings as ugly as that sometimes may be. Confessing Christians are under no deception – they admit their sin, face it squarely and judge it for what it is – a falling short of God’s standard.
That all sounds very morbid – but the good news is that God forgives confessed sin (but more on that later).
Confession is our responsibility.
Get in to the practice of regular and specific confession.
Is our church a place where confession can be made in safety? Are we providing opportunities for people to be cleansed from guilt and shame?
Perhaps you’ve never confessed anything to God. I hope your beginning to understand that confession is the only true way to escape the human problem of guilt and shame.
2. Don’t take confession and forgiveness for granted.
he is faithful and just
And the discipline of confession is a priceless gift that we shouldn’t take for granted.
Once the Israelites – God’s people – took confession and forgiveness for granted.
HOS 6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. …. HOS 6:3 Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."
They sound so sure that God will do what they want. But then God replies saying ….
HOS 6:4 "What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.
God is shaking his head in frustration. You see, his people had taken confession and his mercy for granted. Their apology was skin deep and God was havening none of it.
Ever been in a fog?. By lunchtime in the heat of the day, the mist is gone.
Israel’s love was like that. Thick at one point, but in the light of day, when the heat was on, it was gone! Theirs had become a love of convenience. For them the gift of confession and God’s mercy was cheap – an easy apology – shallow - insincere.
Thank God his mercy is not dependent on us and our changing temperament. Thank God that the success of confession is not reliant upon human nature.
You see, confession is only successful because of the character of God.
Sure we should initiate confession, but its effectiveness is not based upon our willingness to come clean. Our hope in the success of our confession lays fairly and squarely in God’s characteristics of faithfulness and justice.
1JN 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.
God’s forgiveness is not an act of mercy in response to some religious act of remorse that we perform. God is, by nature, faithful and just and willing to forgive.
This means that we must never take advantage of it. Confession must go deeper than a superficial apology.
We must never presume upon God’s mercy. Repentance must be for real – more than skin deep.
PS 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite [remorseful] heart, O God, you will not despise.
3. God promises forgiveness and purification.
and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
And as a result of true and genuine confession God promises forgiveness and purification.
You see God’s purpose is not to shame us but to revive us …
ISA 57:15 For this is what the high and lofty One says-- he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite [remorseful] and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
God’s purpose for us in confession is to bring revival to us both in fact (“forgive us our sins” – i.e. through Christ) and also in our ongoing experience (“and purify us from all unrighteousness” – i.e. to cleans us from feelings of shame).
a. Forgiveness
For God to forgive really means, “to let go.” God is willing to let our sins go – he is willing to cancel the debt of our sin.
LK 7:41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. LK 7:42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" LK 7:43 Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
Just like a debt can be cancelled, God will cancel the debt of our sin when we confess it.
b. Purification
Purification carries a slightly different meaning. In purifying us God removes the residue of sin – the stain of sin – consequences that hang on, such as shame, broken heartedness, and sometimes difficulty and hardship. Purification deals with that part of us that needs to “feel” forgiven and clean. And there’s a wonderful promise in scripture for us that ….
RO 10:11 "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
Hold on to that.
Maybe you’ve had an experience like the school boy whole stole a milky bar from the local deli. He was terrified that he’d get caught, and horrified when he remembered that God had seen it all.
He pleaded with God to forgive him, but the yucky feelings stayed. The episode haunted him for years. From time to time he’d think about it and the same queasy feeling would return. He knew that God had forgiven him, but he just didn’t “feel” forgiven.
Then one day as an adult in church he heard that sometimes we need to make restitution for what we’ve done wrong. Aha, he thought. That’s why I still feel awful about this. I haven’t made restitution. So he went back to the deli, waited for the shop to be empty, and left a dollar on the counter and quickly walked out. But he didn’t feel that much better. In fact it was years before he got the point.
That’s because he was actually feeling two things: guilt and shame.
He felt guilty because he had done something he knew was wrong. And the answer to his guilt was to seek forgiveness from God and make restitution.
But the reason forgiveness and restitution weren’t enough is that he was also feeling shame. When he felt guilty he felt bad about something he had done. When he felt shame he felt bad about who he was.
You see, no one likes to think of themselves as dishonest, as the type of person who would steal. But the milky bar episode proved to the school boy that he was. And no matter how often he owned God’s forgiveness or made restitution he still felt that shame.
Eventually he learnt that guilt tells us there’s something wrong with what we sometimes do. Shame tells us there’s something wrong with who we are.
When we confess its God’s forgiveness that clears our guilt and it’s his purification that goes on clearing our shame.
So there is hope. God wants to revive us, both in fact and in experience.
If we confess, God is willing to forgive us for the wrong-doing of our past and its errors. And he is also willing to go on purifying us of all our shame and guilt.
That means that true, deep, and sincere confession frees us from those things that bind us up – like the guilt we have for our past and the shame we carry today.
CONCLUSION
What do we do with our sin? What do we do with all the wrong things we have done? What do we do with our guilt? What do we do with our shame?
We confess it.
And if we do God’s promise is that he will forgive and purify and we will be free.
Gabrielle Carey
Gabrielle Carey is an Australian author most widely known for the movie Puberty Blues, based upon the book of the same title. In a later book, In My Father’s House Carey relates an incident that led to her conversion to Christ. Carey was raised in an atheist humanist household. Her father was a university lecturer with a passionate commitment to the left side of politics. Throughout her upbringing he railed against oppression, capitalism and was a key figure in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years. He also railed against God and the church, finding it impossible to believe in a God when the world was full of so much suffering.
But that left Gabrielle tremendously burdened. In her book In My Father’s House she writes, "One of the hardest aspects of growing up as the daughter of a humanist was the worry of having to live up to incredibly high intellectual and moral standards. And worse, what happened when it was discovered that you hadn’t? Would you be given a second chance? Could you confess your weaknesses? Would you ever be forgiven? What would my father say if he found out that I was just another brainless, mind-moulded, media-manipulated failure to humanity?"
It was this burden of guilt Gabrielle found lifted when she converted to Christian faith. "Perhaps what I liked most about Catholicism" she writes, "or at the least the Catholicism the abbot had introduced to me, was knowing I could be wrong, knowing I could behave badly, awfully in fact, and that I would still be loved. That all I needed to do was own up and I’d be forgiven...At least with a Catholic God and father you could fail without feeling that it was the end of all hope. And that was such a relief."
Source: Scott Higgins, based on Carey’s In My Father’s House (Pan McMillan, 1992)
Only Christianity offers an effective solution to overcoming sin, wrongdoing, guilt and shame. And in a world that doesn’t know what to do with its imperfections, its guilt and its shame Christian Believers can show by example, that deep, true and sincere confession leads to reconciliation to God –and that’s good news.
www.australindbaptistchurch.com
