Word of Encouragement (4/23/2020)

Today, we want to move on to confession, the second element of prayer as outlined in the acronym, A-C-T-S: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. You can see the logic behind the prayer of confession coming after the prayer of adoration: when we reflect on the glory of God, we cannot help but feel our inadequacy—how terribly we fall short of God’s glory.

In prayer of confession, we acknowledge our guilt before God. Here, I’d like to address what may seem like a silly question—why do we need to confess our sins? Answering this question will help us understand its importance more fully.

We ask this question because God knows our sins already. Why does God want us to confess when He already knows all our sins? We can see right away that our confession is not for God’s information; it is a divinely ordained means for our transformation. “Confession” in Greek means “to speak the same, to agree.” In confessing our sins, we are not just acknowledging that we did something wrong; at the more fundamental level, we are agreeing with God that what He calls sin is sin and that it is wicked. We cannot “speak the same” with God, who sees what is in us, without having our hearts in tune with God’s own heart. And having our hearts conform to God’s heart is at the center of our transformation (i.e., our sanctification).

We can ask the question also because God has already forgiven us of our sins. Why do we need to confess when God has already forgiven us of our sins in Jesus Christ? This shows us, then, that the purpose of confessing our sins is not to receive forgiveness—as if God forgives only those sins that we actually confess. If so, how can we ever hope to enter into heaven? This is why the Roman Catholics have the idea of purgatory—a place where believers must go before they enter into heaven in order to pay for their unconfessed sins. The Reformers rightly saw this as a blasphemous insult to Christ’s once-for-all, all-sufficient atonement for our sins. If we have to pay for our sins in purgatory, what did Jesus actually achieve on the cross?

Then, why does God command us to confess our sins still? Again, it is for our transformation. (1 John 1:9 does speak of God forgiving us and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. But these are not objective, judicial acts: there is no condemnation [or judgment or punishment] for those who are in Christ Jesus [Rom. 8:1]. Rather, they speak of our subjective experience of God’s forgiveness when we confess.) It is to conform our hearts to God’s. It is a means of helping us to hate sin as God hates it.

So then, we cannot confess our sins as if we were mechanically checking off the list of our sins so we can feel better afterwards, like getting done with our shopping list. If we understand what God intends our confession to be, what should our confession be like?

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