Confession: The Voice of Repentance
Hey, there! How have you been? Hopefully, this is catching you at a good time. Today, I want to talk about the importance of confession as a key component of repentance. I’ve already talked about the importance of actively participating in the renewing of our minds elsewhere (See attached link here), but I haven’t really talked about the value of confession; I would like to rectify that. This won’t be a terribly long post, but I encourage you to take some time after you’ve read it and look into the subject matter yourself.
Confession is an unavoidable aspect of any sincere Christian or Messianic faith; it is part of the bedrock on which everything else is built. A core aspect of confession is humility, after all, and God is very favorable towards the humble. But let’s look a little bit past that; humility is commonly understood to be one of the virtues, but why is that? And why does that translate to confession? Well, to confess something is to reveal something that has been kept secret– oftentimes some wrongdoing or embarrassing circumstance–to another party. Usually, in the case of wrongdoing, that confession is directed towards the injured party or some agent who is overseeing a judicial process between the wrongdoer and the wronged. In some cases, confessing something willingly produces a more favorable outcome than waiting to confess until it is unavoidable. For example, I like to watch police bodycam footage in the evenings to unwind. As someone with a lifelong interest in criminology and criminal justice, it fascinates me to see the ways various people and officers behave in these candid interactions. One of the things that tends to stand out the most to me is this: the people who confess readily and are respectful to the officers almost invariably have it better. Sometimes, they are let off with just a warning.
Do you know what happens when the offenders try to punch, spit on, curse out, or just refuse to comply with the officers?
They end up with broken car windows, in cuffs, on the ground, and in jail, where they eventually have to confess anyway.
Do you see the difference? Ready acceptance of guilt–guilt that was earned–tends to produce a different response than the aggressive denial of that guilt.
It’s honestly quite similar to a relationship with God; the apostle John puts it succinctly in 1 John 1:5-10: “5 This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” 1 John is a beautiful letter that can be summarized as, “How to Know if You are Saved,” and the introductory principles he gives us are these: don’t be a lying hypocrite, and confess your sins ongoingly so that they may be forgiven. (To clarify, my use of the word “may” isn’t meant to suggest that you may or may not be forgiven. I used “may” to point out that, if you won’t confess or ask for forgiveness, you shouldn’t expect to receive what you refuse to ask for.)
Why is this important? Well, to answer that, allow me to give a brief gospel summary: God wants to have a relationship with us–each and every one of us, individually. He wants to know us and be known by us, but our actions–our sin–create a wedge between us and God that can’t be removed without certain things happening first. To start, you need repentance. Repentance is much more than just a simple expression of, “I’m sorry,” it is a deep, systematic, alteration of behavior and desire. (The Greek word used in the New Testament is metanoia, literally a change of mind. See 2 Corinthians 7:10 and Psalm 51). Secondly, you have confession, which naturally follows true repentance. It is wonderful to have a change of heart and mind, but what do you do after that? It does you no good if that change lives and dies internally; it requires outward expression. This is where confession comes in: it is when you acknowledge the wrongdoing and start to outwardly seek the change that has already begun within. It is here where relationships can heal and past harms can begin to be made right, if God permits. Just look at Zaccheus in Luke 19:1-10 or King Manasseh in 2 Chronicles 33:10-20; Zaccheus was a crooked tax collector who ripped everyone off and Manasseh was an idol worshipper who sacrificed his own children; yet God heard them both when they repented and confessed and sought to make things right. Lastly, though most importantly, you need a sacrifice, because, “...without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness…” (Hebrews 9:22). Under the Law handed down in the Old Testament, almost everything could be forgiven through the blood of a sacrifice. (I say almost because there were some exceptions, but for our purposes right now I won’t be addressing those.) The thing is, those sacrifices didn’t help you if you were unrepentant and only offered them out of habit. Amos 5:21-27 expresses, quite vividly, how God feels about sacrifices offered in vain.
Here lies the beauty of the cross.
The sacrifice of Christ is not, was not, and cannot be in vain. We may fail, but His sacrifice can’t. We can reject His sacrifice, we can scorn it, we can trample it, and we can cut ourselves off from it–all very foolish and dangerous things to do, by the way–but we cannot tarnish it. Do you know why?
Because, like I said earlier, God wants to know us and be known by us, and the sacrifice made by Christ on the cross is the ultimate expression of that desire. On the cross, mankind got to experience God reaching down to offer His hand to each of us. Unfortunately, most of us will reject that offer. Some of us will mistreat it. Far fewer will take hold of it and live a life fully led by it.
Even those of us who do accept His hand will still sin, unfortunately. We still do things that produce a wedge. The difference between how things once were and the way they are now is that there is no longer any other sacrifice (Hebrews 10:26): there is only Christ. It is unnecessary to go kill a bull or a goat anymore, because the ultimate sacrifice has been made. The other components, however, are still fully in effect. The cost of spurning the sacrifice is eternal, but so is the reward for humbling yourself and taking the hand that has been offered.
If you take nothing else away from reading this today, then let it be this: God loves you dearly and wants to forgive you–He doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9)– but you and I have an active part to play in our relationship with Him, and it starts with our repentance and confession. I want to challenge you this week to look at yourself closely and ask, “when did I last confess my sins to God?” Think about what sin and confession really are and be honest with yourself. Just be careful not to be cruel in your assessment. I do this sort of evaluation pretty regularly, and it is humbling how often I realize how low my own standards are.
