ON THE PATH: CONFESSION
A Sermon by
1 John 1
8If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we
say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
My brother and I had a tendency to get into things that we
shouldn’t. Whenever my mother caught us,
she would ask for the truth, “Okay, who did it?” After much agonizing silence and after mom
repeated the question about 100 times, my brother would break down and say,
“Okay, okay, I confess—Billy did it!” Of
course the essence of confession is revealing yourself,
not someone else.
For the month of September we are looking at a five-step path to salvation:
Conviction—recognizing your actions as sinful
Confession—telling God about it
Repentance—being sorry for what you did and not wanting to do it again
Forgiveness—God forgives you
Salvation—God saves you.
Today we look at confession.
If my brother had the idea wrong, how do we get it right? Just what is confession?
Once I was called to a church member’s home to talk to her 8
year old son, Brad, who was attending a Catholic school and was getting his
beliefs a little confused. Now, 8 year
olds are not ready to talk too deeply in abstract concepts but some of his
little buddies were telling Brad that they had been baptized as infants and
that God might not love Brad because he had not yet been baptized. So youngster and preacher sat uncomfortably
in the living room as I described to Brad the difference between infant baptism
and believer’s baptism. No expression on
his face at all—I wasn’t getting through.
So I began talking about faith growing in our hearts until the day when
we decide to be baptized—still nothing clicking in Brad’s blank stare. I pressed on, “When you get a little older, Brad,
you will make a confession of faith....”
Then I realized that was a pretty big word so I asked, “Do you know what
‘confession’ means?” And his eyes lit up
like a jackpot on a slot machine, “Yeah,” he said, “Confession--that’s when you
go in the booth with the priest!”
Well, yes and no. The
dictionary says that confession is “the acknowledgement of sin and
helplessness.” John writes in the teeny
epistle called 1 John: “If we say that we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” If we
say we have not sinned, we are either lying, or deluding ourselves, or we have
a very narrow definition of sin. An
insurance salesman was attempting to sell an accident insurance policy to a
cowboy who said he didn’t need it.
“Haven’t you had any accidents?” the salesman asked. “Nope,” replied the cowboy. “Hasn’t anything bad ever happened to you?”
pressed the salesman. “Well,” said the cowpoke,
“once a bronc bucked me off and broke all my ribs…and once an old bull gored me
through the leg…and once a rattlesnake bit me on the ankle.” “And you don’t call those accidents??” the
salesman exclaimed. “Nope,” said the
cowboy, “They all did it on purpose.” He
had a very narrow definition of “accident.”
Perhaps we have a narrow definition of sin if we think we have not
sinned. Paul the Apostle says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God.” (Romans 3:23) But we don’t
want to face that or admit it or talk about it or least of all confess it. We are afraid. So we try to hide it from others and from God
and even from ourselves. We lie, cover
up, rationalize, try to distract ourselves by overcompensating somewhere else,
or we simply lose touch with reality. We
make ourselves miserable. Proverbs 28:13
says, “You will never succeed in life if
you try to hide your sins. Confess them
and give them up; then God will show mercy to you.”
Our Call to Worship today comes from Psalm 32 in the Good
News translation of the Bible. Did it
ring any bells for you? “When I did not confess my sins, I was worn
out from crying all day long…my strength was completely drained, as moisture
dried up by the summer heat.” What a
great passage to study in the middle of a drought! Have you experienced this drought of the
soul? Drained? Worn out from crying? Trying to work it all out before God finds
out or anyone else finds out. Trying to
handle it yourself, to make it right, to work out your own righteousness. Ronnie was a high school student in my youth
group who got an F in one of his subjects at school one six weeks. He talked to his teacher after she handed out
the report cards and promised her that he was going to improve. Since he had already made the decision to
improve, he saw no reason to worry his parents by showing them that F. So he took the report card, not a printout
but the real card, and he changed the F to an A. He never even considered what the teacher
would say when he brought the card back.
He was trying to make everything okay without having to face his failure,
but he just made it worse. Now in
addition to an F he had broken school rules and he had lied to his parents. All of which would soon come to light. Our efforts to take care of our sins usually
involve us in other sins of covering up.
How much better for Ronnie to have confessed his
failure to his parents—how much better for us to confess our sins to God.
For John writes, “If
we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Sometimes we are urged to confess in order to correct a situation. “Who broke my window? You did, Bill? Okay, you will need to pay for it.” That is confession for the sake of the offended. But the Bible concentrates on confession for
the sake of the offender—to clear up one’s heart, to get one’s life back
on track. We worry too much about
appearing guilty. We have to understand
that with God we are not guilty IF we confess, rather
we are guilty UNTIL we confess. “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful
and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
It doesn’t help us if we just think it and don’t speak it to
God. It doesn’t help us to slide by,
saying that God knows everything already.
It doesn’t help to hint or to ask for some overall general pardon for
sins past and future. Until we speak the
specifics to God, we still aren’t facing it.
“But we are too ashamed”—that’s part of what we need cleansed! “But it hurts too much to think about it”—that
part of what we need cleansed! “But we
don’t think God will understand”—that certainly needs to be
cleansed! Shame, pain, fear—these are
the legacy of sin. These are what we
need removed from our lives. And
confession will do it. Face it, confess
it, be free of it.
The little boy and his sister were spending the summer at
the farm of their beloved grandmother.
The boy, Billy, brought his brand new slingshot. His grandmother warned him not to shoot it
near any of the animals. But he was
itchy to try it out. On the very first
morning there, as he and Susie walked across the feed lot, he saw his grandmother’s
prized duck waddling along. “Why not?”
he thought, “I can’t hit it anyway.” So
he set a rock in the sling and drew back and POW, he hit the duck right in the
head. And it fell over like a…like a
dead duck. In a panic he hid the carcass
in the woods. After supper that night
when it came time for the children to do the chore of washing the dishes, Susie
said, “Gramma, Billy said he wants to wash them by himself tonight.” Billy snapped back, “Are you crazy??” And Susie just whispered, “Remember the
duck.” The next day it was more of the same.
Slop the pigs—Billy’s job. “Remember
the duck.” Vacuum the house—Billy’s
job. “Remember the duck.” Susie lived like a queen for a week. Billy was in misery—all covered up with work,
all filled up with guilt. Finally, he
couldn’t stand it any longer. Afraid and
shaking, turning away a dozen times, he approached his grandmother’s door. Head hung down, he stood
before her and confessed his terrible deed.
And she replied, “I already knew what happened with the duck; I was
watching from the upstairs window. And because
I love you so much, I forgave you immediately.
I saw what Susie was doing and I wondered how long you would let your
guilt and fear make you a slave to her demands.” Feelings of surprise, and joy, and relief flooded
over him and he rushed into the arms of the one who loved him so, freed,
cleansed, whole again. We can have that
also, freedom, cleansing, wholeness, all for the price
of a brief conversation with the One who loves us so much. Confession.