Confession - Take Hold of the God-Given Encouragement You Have to Confess Sin

Matthew Henry, this morning in my "Praying the Way the Bible Prays", offering said:

I must take hold of the great encouragement God has given me to humble myself before him with sorrow and shame, and to confess my sins.

It is important that we not just make the list of sins that we have committed but that we grasp his forgiveness in our prayers!

I think that this, perhaps is more important than listing them. I don't really think that God is interested in a laundry list, of our sins He is aware, painfully so. He has known them from eternity past. They are the reason for which He sent His only Son, Jesus my Lord to suffer and die. Those stripes were the stripes numbered for each and every one of my sins, counted severally and known intimately by my God. No, I don't think He need to be have the list enumerated particularly before Him for His benefit.

Now it could be, and very often is, that I need to confess particulars for my own benefit. I need to be sure that I am recognizing that all of what I am doing is horrid and awful before God. But I ought not fall down into the very sacramental idea of enumerating my sins before God so that they are "covered" simply because I have confessed them.

After all, the announcing of them is not what covers them anyway. Nowhere in the Bible when men of God fell on there faces and confessed their sins do them going into the gory details. Rather we see them dwelling on the offense that their sin was before God and lamenting the fall itself, the offense that the sin was to a holy and pure God.

I think that our idea of listing our sins and running through the "forgive me for…" routine is really a left over from old Roman Catholic days. That is the routine in confessional. The specific confession specific sins and the assignment of specific acts of penance to "atone" for them. That skewed idea of atonement and erroneous idea of how sin is paid for carried over into Protestantism after the Reformation to some degree. It is not Biblical and never has been. The idea that we must go to the church for forgiveness and must enumerate our sins was God's intention. Further, the idea that I must list all of my sins or I don't get forgiven undercuts the very idea what Christ came to do in the first place. It puts sanctification at the very least on a works basis and that is unacceptable.

We are saved by Grace alone through Faith alone because of Christ alone. There is nothing more than that involved in the mix. When we confess our sins, we must remember that! Matthew Henry put it well when he gave us these examples of how we ought to confess our sin:

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared; Psalm 130:3-4 with you there is steadfast love; yes, with my God there is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 130:7-8(ESV)

Your sacrifices, O God, are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise; Psalm 51:17(ESV) indeed, though you are the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; Isaiah 57:15(ESV) though heaven is your throne and the earth your footstool, yet this is the one to whom you will look, he who is poor and humble, broken and contrite in spirit, and trembles at your word, Isaiah 66:1-2(ESV) to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15(ESV)

You have graciously assured me that those who conceal their transgressions will not prosper, yet those who confess and forsake them will obtain mercy. Proverbs 28:13(ESV) And when a poor penitent said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," you forgave the iniquity of his sin; therefore, let everyone who is godly, in like manner, offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Psalm 32:5-6(ESV)

I know that if I say I have no sin, I deceive myself, and the truth is not in me; but you have said that if I confess my sins, you are faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8-9(ESV)

With the attention on God and not on us, on the work of Christ and it its finished character and magnificent nature, that kind of prayer brings great glory to God and gladness to the heart!