After beginning with God, we turn to much more familiar Lenten language: confession and sin. Yet we should not move too quickly into confession and sin. Before we tackle these serious topics, we need to stop and consider once again the God to whom we confess.
As we noted last week, we approach a merciful God. But a careful reader will notice that we completely ignored the second part of God’s own self-revelation: “but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). This too is part of who God is.
We approach a merciful God, yes, but also a God who cares about sin and how we live our lives. This God is not only merciful, but also holy and just. As the uncreated creator of all things, He has the right to determine which paths are correct and lead to flourishing, and which paths are destructive and lead to death. His mercy, though, does not leave us on the destructive path. He provides a way for us to return to the flourishing path, but it is not an easy way.
Sin and guilt cannot simply be ignored. Sin must be purged from us as we approach a holy God. In the life of Israel, God provided the incomplete sacrificial system to atone for sin, but this acted as a type and shadow of His real plan: the sacrifice of His Son Jesus on the cross. God, rather than allowing us to die in our sins, chose another route. He bore the weight of our sin. In doing so, He made a way by which we can return to the path of flourishing and back into a relationship with Him.
Yet it is not simply a “get out of jail free” card, as if we were playing a cosmic game of Monopoly. It requires that we do something, and that something begins with an acknowledgement of our own failure. It begins with confession.
Confession is an interesting concept. It contains both positive and negative attributes. We can confess that “Jesus is Lord” and confess that “we have sinned.” And because confession is something we do both as a people and as individuals, this prayer, for use in corporate settings, appropriately uses plural language: “we.” But when used devotionally, in personal prayer, it is appropriate to make it singular: “I confess that I have sinned.”
That turn makes it a bit more uncomfortable. I am no longer drawn together with a faceless corporate mass of people. I now stand alone, exposed, before the Creator God of the universe, confessing that I have sinned.
With this confession there is no equivocation, no blaming another as Adam did in Eden when he blamed Eve for his choice to eat the forbidden fruit. I confess my sin. I own it. It is no one else’s fault; it is no one else’s sin. It is mine, and I feel the weight of my shame standing before a holy God.
But the prayer does not stop there. It goes on to detail just how I have sinned: “against You in thought, word, and deed.”
My sin is against God. Even if I do not intend to sin against God, even if my sin could be said to be against my neighbor, or spouse, or child, it is also always a sin against God. My sin against others is also a sin against God because I have failed to live in the path that God has set for me. I have chosen my own way and caused damage to myself and others.
Yet it goes further: my sin is in thought, word, and deed. My sin is not just something I do; it is also things that I say and things that I think. If we go back and re-read Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, we see this is exactly what Jesus tells us.
- Jesus tells us that saying “You fool” to a brother is the same as murder, and we will be held accountable as if we had murdered.
- Jesus tells us that if we think lustful thoughts about another, we will be held accountable as if we had committed adultery.
Sin, we learn, is all-encompassing. Even if we think no one else can see our sin, that it is only in our heads, God does see. He holds us accountable not just for our actions, but for our thoughts and intentions, and nothing is hidden from His sight (Hebrews 4:12-13).
Therefore, we confess our sins. Not because God needs to hear our sins (He already knows them), but because we need to confess our sins. We need to know how we have fallen short, hurt others, and walked the path to destruction and death. This is how God begins to show us the way back to the path of flourishing. Unlike Adam, we have to acknowledge and own our sin, not to earn forgiveness, but to receive what God is already offering. Only then does He pick us up in His arms of mercy and lead us in our journey through Easter and back to Him.
Joshua Strickler 