Continued...
A telling side bar to all this is well exposed by the commentators Keil and Delitschz. When Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit, the most critical concern of theirs immediately afterward was not the ugliness of their sin, it was the disgust with their nakedness and perverted sensitivity to their shame. Isn’t it like children to cry more about losing their bike for a day than to shed even the driest of tears for lying? Even for adults it is a universal tendency to care mostly about the punishment of sin and care not even the least whit about the sin itself. It is the getting caught that whips our hearts around, not any anguish about sin being evil. I read once where a writer asked why we so cavalierly toss out the expression, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” I understand the grace of God and the largeness of forgiveness but isn’t it true that you cannot really separate out the sin from the sinner? It is not that murder was committed. It is that a specific person committed a murder. A lie is not told as much as a specific person tells a lie. The sin and the sinner are intertwined inseparably just as flesh and blood cannot be taken from each other.
Confession is not picking out levels of culpability. I did some of it but Jane also did part of it. I have longings that make it tough to say “no”. God made me this way so He’s also to blame. The worst part of the consumerism form of Christian faith we have embraced so heartily lately is not the tendency of believers to flit from church to church or ministry to ministry based on personal likes and dislikes. It is the erosion of the “I” in confession it engenders. The focus of American Christianity is now as outward as Adam’s and Eve’s. For Adam it was Eve…for Eve it was the serpent. For modern Christians it is the music, the preaching, the coldness or the members, the flamboyance of the worship, the lack of friends, the too small children’s ministry, the youth program, the distance, the time, the mission statement, the politics. When Jim Bakker wrote his autobiography, he entitled it simply, I Was Wrong. That is a shocking assessment to make for our time. There is nothing in the title about Eve, the serpent or the boring sermons, loud music or limp handshakes that led him to do what he did. Jim Bakker simply said he was wrong. Quite nearly revolutionary for us in the Church. Can those words even come out of our mouths without a stutter? I was wrong.
The psychological tendency is as old as Adam…and Eve. Downplay the bad in me. Accentuate the bad in others. Critique and correct and you can be just as good as you want to be. I was wrong cannot camp with criticism. Peter, when given his charge by Jesus asked the universal question, “But what about John?” Confession is never about anyone but me. I sinned. I ate. I lusted. I lied. I was lazy. I ignored. I was selfish. I lacked faith. I wasted what God gave me. I was wrong.
Take one statement in scripture and ponder it a minute. The wages of sin is death. What does this mean? It means that sin is the worst of poisons. Take a second statement. All have sinned… Let this sink in for a moment. Who is that talking about? Adam thought it meant Eve and Eve thought it meant the serpent. Go to a final statement. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It certainly is pointless to ask what might have happened differently if both Adam and Eve had simply said, “I ate and I was wrong.” That part of the story is over. But the part we have here is where you and I fit into it. It is the part where I say, “I _________ and I was wrong.” You say, “I ______________ and I was wrong.” Nothing about the church you attend, the troubles you have faced or the people who have let you down is relevant when it comes to confession. I cannot go any further down this Christian road until I do the first thing…confess my sins.. “I ___________ and I was wrong.” That is how it is done.
But what happens when we do this very simple thing? There are two benefits specifically. First, God works with us in a different way than before we confess a sin. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV) We can spend all day quibbling about what “heal their land” means for each of us but it seems like a very good thing to me. Secondly, confession changes the way our life is going. 1 John 1:9, quoted earlier uses a lovely term to describe the impact confession has upon us. It is translated “cleansed” but has the idea of pruning for the purpose of making more fruitful. Each time we confess our sins, God makes us a bit more fruitful, a bit, if we can say it this way, more Christian and more effectively Christian.
A moment by moment practice of confession does more than just make us feel better about ourselves; it makes us literally better people. Confession was never intended to be a stored up unloading every time we need help; confession is a lifestyle of becoming fruitful and happy Christians. Take a moment. Consider a sin you have committed this past hour. Confess it and admit to God you were wrong in it. There is no magical formula for becoming a fruitful and happy Christian. The way is as old as Adam and Eve and as fresh as your affection for Jesus. Be the first. Say it. “I was wrong”.
