Hard Words: Confess
When we hear the word, “Confess,” a few images might come to mind. We might think of a police tv drama with some hard-boiled detective questioning a suspect in an interrogation room; hoping to convince them to give a confession. We may think of our Roman Catholic brethren, off in partitioned closets, where a parishioners tells his sins and the priest listens and assigns them a penance – pray the rosary this many times, or say the Lord's Prayer that many times – before the sins are absolved and the confessor is dismissed to go in peace.
For me, I think of the scenes at the end of the movie, “Braveheart,” where William Wallace is imprisoned by the English and a big scary London magistrate is bellowing at him, “DO YOU CONFESS?” trying to get him to admit to treason. And at the end of that scene, when Wallace refuses, the magistrate tells him that the next day he will be “purified by pain.”
Confession, as we've come to understand is, is a scary word. When we're asked to confess it's rarely for anything good. Nobody's interrogating us, asking us about the clothes we donated to charity, or the cases of peanut butter we bought for the food pantry, or hounding us about the kids we tutor.
“Yes, yes! I confess! It was me! I did it! Little Jimmy can divide fractions now and it's all my fault!”
To confess, as we usually think of it, is to admit guilt. If we are confessing, it is because we have done something wrong and we are trying to rid ourselves of the burden of sin and shame.
In the context of the church, that conception of confession is absolutely part of the story. The reason I didn't like calling our “Prayer for Grace” a “Prayer of Confession” is because confession is a word with lots of negativity around it. That word does make us feel guilty and sinful and shameful. And, to some extent, that's part of the point of that prayer; to recognize and admit that we're not all we could be; that God expects more and better from us, and that we know God's Word and too often choose not to listen to it. So that's absolutely part of the point of that prayer, and not just of that prayer, but as our lives as faithful Christians.
That's the tone of Ezra's prayer, when he says, “I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.”
Ezra gets that part of the confession down good. That part where we know we don't measure up, where we wallow in sin, where we keep our eyes fixed on the ground because our shame is too great to even look up. Ezra's confession is a masterclass in the recognition of his peoples' depravity.
But that only gets to part of the point.
Because we know there's more to the story. There's even more to that word.
The word that Paul uses in our passage from the Romans this morning, “profess,” when he writes, “... and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and be saved...” that's not the right word. It's not the right translation. I don't think our NIV Bibles get that one right. Other translations have it this way: that you confess your faith and are saved. The word that Paul uses homologeo is the same word that John uses in 1 John 1:9, “...if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” And the same word shows up again in the Letter of James 5:16, “...therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed...”
We can absolutely profess our faith. We can declare our faith. We can sing and shout our faith from the mountaintops. And there are words and exhortations in the Scriptures to that effect.
But we are also told, specifically, to confess our faith.
Which takes carries the same meaning, but with a much different tone.
When we confess our faith, we do acknowledge our own sin and brokenness, we acknowledge and repent for the shortcomings in our lives and in our failures to live into God's word.
But we also say that in our confession there is grace. There is forgiveness. There is God's awesome power.
Confession is not a one-way street, of us copping to the bad. Whether it's admitting to a crime, telling a priest about our vices, or simply owning up to mom and dad that yeah, we took the last cookie.
Confession in our context, in the context of Jesus Christ comes with an assurance. That at the end, when all is said and done, that our confessions will be met with forgiveness.
It's the reason the standards of our faith, the theological documents which summarize what and why we believe – why they're called the creeds and confessions.
They're us saying what we know to be true. All of it. The good and the bad.
When we say the Apostles Creed we are confessing. Confessing our faith in a God who will come to judge the living and the dead; but also that that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, and the forgiveness of sins.
When we read the Heidelberg Catechism – as I'm sure we all do each and every night – we read that “True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in His Word. At the same time it is a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me, God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits.”
We find statements like this throughout all of our standards, from the shortest creed to the most thorough treatise. That we confess our faith from a place of sin and lowliness, and into a place of grace and forgiveness.
Our confessions take on so much more than just professing or declaring our faith, though it's important to do those things to. It's to believe in an overwhelming goodness in our world. A transcendent love and mercy that overcomes all sin and brings light into every darkness.
So we know that the first part of confessing is an accounting of our sin and brokenness. And this second part of confessing is keeping faith in God's grace, that his love is so much greater than his anger.
And the third part of confessing is what is captured in the NIV translation we read this morning. That when we confess, we also profess. We do declare our faith. We do open our mouths and say the words. Words of the creeds, words of prayer, words of the scriptures.
It's one thing to have a thought in your head.
It's quite another to say it out loud.
To give breath to an idea and put your voice behind it. That makes it real.
That's why Paul says if you believe in your hearts and you profess (or confess) with your mouths – that Christ is Lord... then you will be saved.
So altogether our confession is that we are indeed sinful, borne of a brokenness. And we know that.
And that by God's own grace we are saved in our judgment; that we are forgiven and treated with love and mercy.
And finally, that we speak this truth that we hold in our hearts. That we make it real to ourselves.
Brokenness. Mercy. Truth.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we pray to you in confession of the faith you give us. We are each marked with guilt, yet in your grace we are forgiven. For this outpouring of mercy into our lives and into our spirits, we are ever-grateful. We pray in thanksgiving for the saving work of Jesus Christ in our world, through his holy name. Amen.
When we hear the word, “Confess,” a few images might come to mind. We might think of a police tv drama with some hard-boiled detective questioning a suspect in an interrogation room; hoping to convince them to give a confession. We may think of our Roman Catholic brethren, off in partitioned closets, where a parishioners tells his sins and the priest listens and assigns them a penance – pray the rosary this many times, or say the Lord's Prayer that many times – before the sins are absolved and the confessor is dismissed to go in peace.
For me, I think of the scenes at the end of the movie, “Braveheart,” where William Wallace is imprisoned by the English and a big scary London magistrate is bellowing at him, “DO YOU CONFESS?” trying to get him to admit to treason. And at the end of that scene, when Wallace refuses, the magistrate tells him that the next day he will be “purified by pain.”
Confession, as we've come to understand is, is a scary word. When we're asked to confess it's rarely for anything good. Nobody's interrogating us, asking us about the clothes we donated to charity, or the cases of peanut butter we bought for the food pantry, or hounding us about the kids we tutor.
“Yes, yes! I confess! It was me! I did it! Little Jimmy can divide fractions now and it's all my fault!”
To confess, as we usually think of it, is to admit guilt. If we are confessing, it is because we have done something wrong and we are trying to rid ourselves of the burden of sin and shame.
In the context of the church, that conception of confession is absolutely part of the story. The reason I didn't like calling our “Prayer for Grace” a “Prayer of Confession” is because confession is a word with lots of negativity around it. That word does make us feel guilty and sinful and shameful. And, to some extent, that's part of the point of that prayer; to recognize and admit that we're not all we could be; that God expects more and better from us, and that we know God's Word and too often choose not to listen to it. So that's absolutely part of the point of that prayer, and not just of that prayer, but as our lives as faithful Christians.
That's the tone of Ezra's prayer, when he says, “I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.”
Ezra gets that part of the confession down good. That part where we know we don't measure up, where we wallow in sin, where we keep our eyes fixed on the ground because our shame is too great to even look up. Ezra's confession is a masterclass in the recognition of his peoples' depravity.
But that only gets to part of the point.
Because we know there's more to the story. There's even more to that word.
The word that Paul uses in our passage from the Romans this morning, “profess,” when he writes, “... and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and be saved...” that's not the right word. It's not the right translation. I don't think our NIV Bibles get that one right. Other translations have it this way: that you confess your faith and are saved. The word that Paul uses homologeo is the same word that John uses in 1 John 1:9, “...if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” And the same word shows up again in the Letter of James 5:16, “...therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed...”
We can absolutely profess our faith. We can declare our faith. We can sing and shout our faith from the mountaintops. And there are words and exhortations in the Scriptures to that effect.
But we are also told, specifically, to confess our faith.
Which takes carries the same meaning, but with a much different tone.
When we confess our faith, we do acknowledge our own sin and brokenness, we acknowledge and repent for the shortcomings in our lives and in our failures to live into God's word.
But we also say that in our confession there is grace. There is forgiveness. There is God's awesome power.
Confession is not a one-way street, of us copping to the bad. Whether it's admitting to a crime, telling a priest about our vices, or simply owning up to mom and dad that yeah, we took the last cookie.
Confession in our context, in the context of Jesus Christ comes with an assurance. That at the end, when all is said and done, that our confessions will be met with forgiveness.
It's the reason the standards of our faith, the theological documents which summarize what and why we believe – why they're called the creeds and confessions.
They're us saying what we know to be true. All of it. The good and the bad.
When we say the Apostles Creed we are confessing. Confessing our faith in a God who will come to judge the living and the dead; but also that that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, and the forgiveness of sins.
When we read the Heidelberg Catechism – as I'm sure we all do each and every night – we read that “True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in His Word. At the same time it is a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me, God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits.”
We find statements like this throughout all of our standards, from the shortest creed to the most thorough treatise. That we confess our faith from a place of sin and lowliness, and into a place of grace and forgiveness.
Our confessions take on so much more than just professing or declaring our faith, though it's important to do those things to. It's to believe in an overwhelming goodness in our world. A transcendent love and mercy that overcomes all sin and brings light into every darkness.
So we know that the first part of confessing is an accounting of our sin and brokenness. And this second part of confessing is keeping faith in God's grace, that his love is so much greater than his anger.
And the third part of confessing is what is captured in the NIV translation we read this morning. That when we confess, we also profess. We do declare our faith. We do open our mouths and say the words. Words of the creeds, words of prayer, words of the scriptures.
It's one thing to have a thought in your head.
It's quite another to say it out loud.
To give breath to an idea and put your voice behind it. That makes it real.
That's why Paul says if you believe in your hearts and you profess (or confess) with your mouths – that Christ is Lord... then you will be saved.
So altogether our confession is that we are indeed sinful, borne of a brokenness. And we know that.
And that by God's own grace we are saved in our judgment; that we are forgiven and treated with love and mercy.
And finally, that we speak this truth that we hold in our hearts. That we make it real to ourselves.
Brokenness. Mercy. Truth.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we pray to you in confession of the faith you give us. We are each marked with guilt, yet in your grace we are forgiven. For this outpouring of mercy into our lives and into our spirits, we are ever-grateful. We pray in thanksgiving for the saving work of Jesus Christ in our world, through his holy name. Amen.