31
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Confession
If you confess your sins he
forgives them.
It’s one of the most beautiful
phrases ever written. The apostle John,
one of Jesus’ inner circle of three, wrote in the
ninth verse of his first letter to the church the simple line: “If we
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.” WOW. This is more than knowing that we are
sinners. Deep down we all know
this. This is also more than thinking about
the idea of forgiveness. That
concept alone is revolutionizing. The idea that our sins won’t be held against us. Amazing!
But in this verse we can know
that the amazing idea of forgiveness for our sins is available through
one simple spiritual discipline: confession.
What is confession all
about? If we are forgiven by it, then we
better figure it out. We don’t have any
other way to deal with our sin, so a lot is riding on it. Confession is the act of admitting our
sins. In order to see fruit in our lives
we must cultivate this most basic of behaviors for the believer. The fruitful life is gained by living the
confessional life..
But so often we move away from confession. We may confess sins early in our faith
journey—but then later on we are too embarrassed to confess. We think that confession is an act of
shame. But rather, confession is an act
of confidence and salvation. By
confessing our sins we take confidence in the salvation of Christ, rather than
depending on our own righteousness to save us.
In fact, 1 John 1:9 makes it clear that our faithful and just Lord will
cleanse us from our unrighteousness when we confess.
There are many dimensions to the
confessional life. Stretch yourself and
live a life of admitting sin in these six dimensions. If you cannot admit your sin in any one of
these areas—there is work to be done in you and your community life.
The
first person for you to confess to is Jesus Christ. If you haven’t said “I’m sorry” to Jesus then
you haven’t really confessed. Perhaps
you would rather hide your guilt and not admit sin to Christ. But admitting sin is the essence of
confession—and He already knows your sin anyway. You might wonder why it’s important to
confess to Christ, when you accept him initially and along the way in your
life. If he already knows why tell
him? It is a bit ironic. But it’s even more ironic than you
think. Usually, when you confess a sin
to someone you are telling them something they don’t know—then you fear that
they will remember that act for the rest of your relationship and hold it
against you. But with God it is entirely
the other way. Our Ironic God knows all
about it before… but once we confess our sins the Psalms say “…as far as the
east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.” So after we confess he truly forgets all
about it. It’s an amazing quality God
has, to be all knowing but once we let him know he chooses not to know
anymore. We are a new creation to
him. This is what makes God so much more
than what we are or can understand. Yes,
God is ironic. But I bet you like Him
that way. It keeps you on your toes.
It is
also crucial to have a friend to confess your sins to. We’ve spoken multiple times about
accountability in this book—but here it becomes black and white. If you don’t have someone to whom you can
confess sin to then you can’t open the doorway to true community and
authenticity with a broader group.
Here’s a crazy exercise for you if you don’t have a consistent
accountability partner: Find someone of
the same sex that you already have a fairly good relationship with and that is
your peer. Meet for the first time and
talk about how often you’re going to meet, what expectations you have for being
accountability partners, rules for complete and final secrecy, and what you’d
like to cover each time you meet. So far
this is standard operating procedure. Do
at least the previous stuff and get the accountability ball rolling. But one way to take it to another level is to
say, “Next time we get together let’s both share the worst thing we ever did –
no matter how horrible it was.” Many
accountability partners take years to get the point where they can share
everything. But you may not have years
to work on your worst sins or deal with your harshest temptations. And you may get in a pattern of not telling
your accountability partner everything along the way – a pattern that’s hard to
break. This sounds really scary, I know,
but believe it or not, it actually works!
If you don’t believe me ask MY accountability partner. (On the other hand, don’t ask, he knows way too much about me!)
Sometimes
you need more than accountability.
Sometimes you need wise advice.
Who do you go to in life when you need experienced, sound and wise
advice? Those people are likely your
informal mentors. It makes sense to
develop a relationship with at least one of these mentors that is more
intentional – meeting regularly to pick their brain and learn from them. But one thing that takes the relationship to
a whole new level is confession. Confess
to that mentor that you’re not as good as everyone else thinks. Reveal to them your incompetencies
and failures along the way. Two things
will happen: first, you’ll quickly find out that your mentor isn’t perfect
either, and may have even had the same incompetencies
and failures in their past or present, and second, you open yourself up to
being developed in your areas of confession.
Before this you weren’t being real with your starting point. And you can’t move from M to N in the process
if you’re really starting back at F or G.
All that “how to move to ‘N’” advice is useless to you. You need to move to “H.”
Things
start to get much trickier when you start to confess to more than just one
person. One person you can control
easier. One person you can trust better. But a group of people is hard to
control. Hard to
trust. You can’t predict what
will happen. But the benefits of
confessing to a group far outweigh these initial fears. Some small groups get to this point quickly –
others take months and even years. Many
others never get here at all. That’s
okay. Small group environments are not
always intimate environments. In fact,
people can violate a small group environment by sharing TOO MUCH too early
(this is called TMI – too much information.)
I don’t suggest going around the circle in your Sunday School class or small group and having everyone share the
worst thing they’ve ever done! Bad idea. However,
there’s something beautiful that happens when you confess just a little of your
struggles and hurt and sin to a group of people. Instead of one person supporting you, you get
5 or 8 or 15. And what’s more, you break
the ice of confession in the group. Here
is where confession is not just a negative act of admitting your faults—but it
becomes more like pioneering the way for the group. You become the “first one” to break the
confession ice. And often times, whether
it’s right away or over the next few weeks, several people will follow your
lead. This all depends on people responding
with grace and love to your confession, as Christ would, and being wiling to
“go where no one has gone before.”
When
your sin affects more than just yourself and your immediate circle you should
confess to your entire church. There are
few things harder than this in all of life.
But there are few things that can heal and minister in a broken
situation better. The principle is that
you should confess your sin to those your sin has hurt. If you are a well known member of the church
then you may need to confess to some 100 people. If you are a leader in a minister area over
others, you need to confess to the whole ministry team you’re involved
with. And if you’re a leader of a
church-wide ministry (or a minister yourself) then the confession should reach
the ears of the whole church. Now, there
are gentle and responsible ways to do this, and violating and needless ways to
do it. The leaders of the church make
that call. But the ultimate act of
humility and confession is offering yourself up to
these kind of confessions to the Church.
A friend of mine in the plains states sent me his restoration testimony
recently. He was a youth worker who
became involved in an improper and sinful relationship with a girl in his
church. Even after they had confessed to
Christ and a few others and re-established purity—they found out she was
pregnant. You see the sin in fact
affected a much larger circle than they had wished, which is so often the
case. Sin costs you, but it also cost
others—some you may not even think of.
So this young man took his brokenness in hand, resigned, and confessed
to his church. Then he submitted to a
multiple-year process of restitution and restoration, and married the young
woman carrying his child. A broken,
sinful and even shameful situation became a restored, pure and even joyful
situation. All because confessing our
sins to God and his Church shows Him to be faithful
and just, and forgiving of all our sins.
He cleanses us!
Donald
Miller, author of the book Blue Like Jazz, relates a
story from a different perspective when it comes to confession. He and very small group of Christian friends
went to an extremely liberal and permissive school in the
If we practice these many ways
to confess our sins we will see fruit like never before in our lives. Live a confessional life—and you will have a
fruitful one.
©
David Drury 2004