What is Confession, Anyway?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 3:14-21
Years ago, I fell for an April Fool’s Day joke that paraded as a news story. It was about a guy who had been indicting for making millions of dollars getting illegal inside information on companies, enabling him to buy and sell at just the right times. “There’s no way he could have acquired all that money in so short a time without insiders helping him,” declared an SEC official in the fake news story. The story went on to say that in order to avoid prosecution and imprisonment, the charged man told a judge that he was a time traveler from the twenty-second century and, incidentally, that he knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. This is what made this fake news story so convincing to me: The alleged criminal was more willing to be labeled insane than to confess his wrongs.

Confession is tough, for the follower of Jesus Christ no less than anyone else. It can be embarrassing and humiliating to confess our wrongs, whether we confess them to God, to others, or to ourselves. But followers of Jesus also know that confession is an essential component for healthy living. In confession—owning up to our faults and sins, coming clean—we clear away anything and everything that obstructs our relationship with God or keeps us from living life fully.

In our Gospel lesson for this morning, a man named Nicodemus visits Jesus. Nicodemus was a respected religious authority. But in Jesus, Nicodemus was beginning to understand that all his religious training, all the authority he enjoyed in the society of his time was meaningless. Still, Nicodemus was too concerned for his “place” in society, too worried about what the neighbors might think, and so, instead of owning up to the suspicion he had that Jesus was the Savior of the world, he sneaked to a meeting with Jesus under cover of darkness. He wanted to warn Jesus that powerful men—Jewish religious figures and Roman government functionaries—saw Jesus as an enemy to be killed. But in our lesson, which picks things up in the middle of their conversation, we find Jesus deflecting Nicodemus’ concern; Jesus tells Nicodemus that He has come into the world for the express purpose of dying. It’s by His death on a cross, Jesus says, that He will absorb all the horrors of human sin into His body, killing off its power over us forever. Jesus then turns the focus back on Nicodemus and his spineless nighttime visit when He says:

"..those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

When we are truthful with God, we can come into His blazingly true light, see our faults up close, seek God’s forgiveness, and know that God will light our way to better living. We can engage in confession.

As you’ve already heard me point out countless times, Martin Luther was fond of saying that the follower of Jesus Christ is called to live “in daily repentance and renewal.” We need to constantly re-focus our lives on Jesus, never being afraid to “come clean” about our faults and our need of God’s forgiveness and help. Confession needs to be a daily discipline for us. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about confession?

There are three elements that go into genuine confession. First: There is a genuine examination of one’s conscience. In shorthand, that means honesty before God. Richard Foster is a Quaker theologian and writer whose most famous work is a book called Celebration of Discipline. There, he tells a story from early in his ministry as a young pastor. His work was going well. But he felt the need for more of God’s power in his life in order to meet the almost crushing demand of human need that he confronted each day in his work. He prayed to God, “Lord, is there more You want to bring into my life? I want to be conquered and ruled by You. If there is anything blocking the flow of Your power, reveal it to me.”

Over a period of several days during his prayer time, Foster sat in silence, asking God to reveal things to him. At the end of three days’ time, he had filled three sheets of paper with sins and unresolved conflicts from three different phases of his life. He took those with him one day as he met with a trusted Christian friend. He went through each one and was putting the stack into a briefcase when his friend reached across the table, took the sheets in hand, and tore them into hundreds of little pieces. Echoing words that appear in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Foster says that he knew then that his sins “were as far away as the east is from the west.” It was shortly after engaging in that exercise in confession that Foster began to develop a closer relationship with God.

Psalm 139 in the Old Testament says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Confession begins with honesty, asking God to help us fearlessly face His inventory of our sin. It’s only when we’re honest with God about our sins that He can purge them from our systems.

The second element in genuine confession is sorrow. Sorrow, as it relates to confession, isn’t necessarily an emotion. I was talking with someone about his teenage years once. He told me, “As much as it may make me sound like a goody-two-shoes, I have to tell you that back then, I never did anything my parents didn’t want me to do. If they wanted me to be home by midnight, I was usually home by ten till. If they told me not to hang out with particular people, I didn’t do it.” I asked him, “Were you that afraid of your parents?” “I was never afraid of my parents,” he told me. “I just knew how much they loved me and I never wanted to hurt their feelings.” Sorrow over sin is animated by the same impulse that guy expressed about his parents. The cross of Jesus shows us how deeply and desperately God loves us. Sorrow over sin is a sense of deep regret and revulsion at the whole notion of having done anything to offend the heart of our Father God.

The third element in genuine confession is a determination to avoid future sin. When we confess our sin to God, we ask Him to change our hearts so that we want to avoid future sin. We ask God to change our wills and make us recoil and turn away from the very idea of violating any of God’s ten commandments, the thrust of which Jesus once summed up as to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves.

Writer John Ortberg tells about a mauve sofa that he and his wife bought. It was the first new piece of furniture they had ever owned. After the sofa was delivered, a new rule was instituted in their household, which included several small children. “Don’t sit on the mauve sofa. Don’t touch it, don’t play around it, don’t eat on it, don’t breathe on it, don’t even look at that mauve sofa.” But one day, a terrible thing happened. A red jelly stain appeared on the mauve sofa. Ortberg’s wife loved the sofa and was devastated. She lined up the three kids and told them the stain would stay in the sofa “forever” and asked the kids if they knew how long “forever” was. She then told the kids that they would remain standing forever until one of them came clean, owning up to eating and spilling jelly on the mauve sofa. But the kids didn’t say a thing.

Ortberg knew the kids wouldn’t say anything for three reasons. First, because they’d never seen their mom that mad. Second, because they didn’t want to spend forever in the time-out chair. And finally, because John Ortberg knew that it was he, not his kids, who had caused the red jelly stain on the mauve sofa. He knew that he had to come clean. He might not be able to remove the jelly stain from the sofa, but he could get his kids off the hook and try to start fresh with his wife.

When we confess our sins, exposing our faults in God’s bright light, we remove the walls between God and us, between other people and us, between us and our best selves.

I can't close today without saying a word to those of you who, like me, may be a little obsessive compulsive or even a bit neurotic. If we're in either of these categories, you and I are in good company. Clearly, Martin Luther was a bit obsessive, a bit neurotic, at least as it relates to this issue of confession.

When Luther was a young monk, he would spend hours confessing his sins with his confessor, a man named von Staupitz. Luther would no more than walk a few steps from the confessional when he would recall more sins he hadn't catalogued. Von Staupitz got so fed up with Luther's incessant confessing that he finally told Luther, "Quit coming to me with your puppy sins!"

Von Staupitz wasn't saying that some sins are greater or lesser violations of God's holiness. What he was saying is that confession isn't a religious hoop that you jump through by remembering every sin you've ever committed.

Who could possibly remember their every sin? I myself am often so oblivious to my sins that it isn't until years after I've committed them that I realize the wrong I've done.

You're a human being. God knows that. Your memory is imperfect. God knows that. Your salvation doesn't hang in the balance because of your faulty memory or your faulty sensitivity to sin.

When we confess our sins, known and unknown, we show God our intentions. Through Jesus Christ, we already know God's intentions: God wants us to be with Him for eternity. When we confess, we say, "Yes!" to the "Yes!" God already said to us when Jesus died and rose for us.

Confession is hard. But it’s the indispensable way to experiencing all that God intends for us as His children. Amen!

[The message was inspired greatly by a sermon by Pastor Dan Anderson, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota.]