1^st September 2019

The practical question is,---Are our prayers of confession a necessary regular up-date to guarantee our acceptance by God? 

The early life of Martin Luther set in the 16th century and depicted in an old black and white BBC production was powerfully confronting. Robed monks were spread in cruciform fashion across a stone floor. Stretched out and face-down they were subjected to each others agonising scrutiny as they confessed their sins and inner faults in minute detail. One monk had failed to open a gate for a colleague and so the interrogation continued until they were drenched in their own perspiration. Confession had become penitential. Forgiveness was gained through the work of the offender confessing. A sort of satisfaction was gained through intense prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, and self sacrifice. It was a sort of ‘heavenly medicine’ to heal the wounds caused by sin.

One of the first heresies faced by the early church came with the subtle deception that said it was necessary for believers to do something to ensure that they were right with God. With extreme urgency Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” (Gal 3:1). Earlier Jesus had described Satan as a deceptive spirit, ‘a liar and the father of lies’ (John 8:44) so here Paul alerted the Galatians that false teachers had ‘bewitched’ them and they had yielded to the idea that they had to add to Christs death by being circumcised. If the Galatians had grasped the gospel of Christ crucified, that on the cross Christ had done everything necessary for their salvation they would have realised that the one thing required of them was to receive the good-news by faith. To add extra good works to Jesus death was a rejection and an offence to Christ’s finished work.

The serious question raised here is, “Do our Christian acts of devotion stem from our faith in the finished work of Christ so they flow from a liberating awareness of complete forgiveness, or does our frantic activism, our prayers, fasting, church programmes, social action and fund raising stem from a ‘bewitched notion’ that we have to prove ourselves? Do we have to add something to Christ’s death for us? Is there a subtle Christian stupidity today similar to that which enveloped the early church in Galatia?

Today with its ‘good works’ has the church been seduced by what in Paul’s calls ‘works of the law,’? Today the clamour of the church to prove and assert itself by adopting an activism that promotes new methods, programmes and worship formats can be a self-justifying works programme that seeks to add to what Christ has done. Today as never before it seems we need to unpack God’s transforming act of grace that comes with a focus on what Jesus has already done for us in his death and resurrection?

Focusing on the one question of confession may help us to clarify our thinking.

While we are not bound by the extreme doctrines of the medieval church, how do we approach the practise of confession? Is it simply a form, an accepted routine component of worship or is it a motivating means of assurance?

We know that suppression of guilt is unhealthy and that it can be a cathartic relief ‘to get things off our chest.’ After all, things we have done can weigh us down and leave us ashamed. For others, confession seems to be a weakness, a kind of unhelpful introspective put-down, even a ‘crawling’ to God. For some, confession is a church ritual, a simple acknowledgement of sin that is like an accounting transaction that requires a constant, week by week updating.

Confession takes a number of forms. In the Scripture confession primarily is an acknowledgement of God and His Son. There is a confession which is a proclamation of Christ’s Lordship. The confessing church is the sign of the believing community embracing salvation and laying claim to God’s acts. A minor portion deals with the confession of sin. Psalm 32 tells of the serious consequences of concealed sin and the release which comes from confession. It is not simply a ritual matter of owning up to the sin of falling short of God’s intention for us or of His Glory. Confession is that witnesses to the real fact of what God has done with our sin that makes a difference.

Paul makes it clear when he writes, “For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:24) In his booklet, ‘The Question and Comfort of Confession’, Geoffrey Bingham points out that in fact, “ all accusation for all sin, for all time fell upon Jesus. The bearing of sins meant the bearing of guilt and all evil. What it amounted to was that every element of human guilt was borne in Jesus body on the cross. Yet Jesus defeated death on the cross once and for all by taking the death of humanity into himself yet not dying. (2 Corinthians 5:14, Romans 6:10) So the writer of Hebrews says, “He through death destroyed him who has the power of death, even the devil.” again he says, “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10:12) “In other words what Christ had come to do was complete. He had finished and dealt with my sinful state and yours forever. The liberation was total. ---Jesus had said, “If the Son shall make you free. you shall be free indeed.” The guilt chain had been broken and nothing had the right to tyrannise or exploit us.”

The idea that week by week we must repeatedly confess our sin in order to gain forgiveness in short instalments can be a distortion, a blurring of the gospel similar to the medieval practice where confession was confused with penance. In his Epistle John writes, “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 cleanses us from all Sin” (1 John 1:7) He is saying that the blood of Christ, i.e. the death, is constantly working itself. Since the blood of Christ goes on cleansing we do not have to invoke its work.”

Bingham points out that the only negative, limiting thing then comes from our own attitude, and the limiting obstacles we put in the way. Christians who hold to the finished work of Christ can still fail to experience its dynamic, liberating truth when they fail to admit the fact that while walking in the light they still fall short of the purposes of God. In other words walking in the light is not a total guarantee that we will not sin. (though we will sin less) In other words it is no longer a matter of us detailing or mulling over our sin as a form of ‘pay-off’ or penance.

The real message of the passage is, “Don’t be foolish. Don’t lock your sins into yourself. Admit them. Agree with God. See that your confession does not twist God’s arm in some way to move to forgive.---Know that God has already made provision for this in the death of His Son (1John 4:10).---This means that as Christians,

WE DO NOT CONFESS IN ORDER TO BE FORGIVEN, BUT WE CONFESS BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY FORGIVEN. That is that Romans 8:1 and 5:1 assure us that our guilt has now been permanently removed.”

This means that during worship on Sunday when we pray the prayer of confession we are not attempting to earn or ask for forgiveness as much as confessing that we are always falling short of God’s glory and we want to be refreshed in the wonderful truth of already being one of God’s forgiven people.

This may seem to be too good to be true but this is why the New Testament speaks of receiving the forgiveness of sins as a total gift (Ephesians 1:7, Colossians 1:13-14), and we can boldly say Christ has loosed us from our sins. (Rev 1:4). Every day we need to live in the powerful grace of the cross knowing that our past is dealt with, no guilt remains. On the basis of knowing the relief that God’s forgiveness is total every day we can live in peace and confidently sing with Wesley, ‘Bold I approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own.’

This means that instead of being motivated by guilt, instead of trying to prove ourselves or our sincere devotion by well meaning spiritual disciplines, religious activism, or social action we can be motivated by the good-news and the love of God. So Bingham concludes, “Confession is primarily an attitude of admission which is unchanging and continuous from which on the one hand we confess the Lordship of Christ, and on the other, the fact of our sins, knowing that, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”’’

E.A.(Ted) Curnow