(I John 1:1-2:1-6)

“There was an old man that wouldn’t say his prayers,” so the nursery rhyme tells us, “who was seized by his left leg and thrown down the stairs.”  Our old world is going clattering down the stairs to a hellish destruction because it won’t say its prayers – its prayers of confession for its sins.  This world of ours needs to be told, as Baron Von Hugel’s confessor used to say to him, “On your knees.  On your knees.”  It is being impressed upon us today with stunning clarity that the major part of all human tragedy is the direct or indirect result of unconfessed, un-repented and hence un-forgiven, sin.  If man and nations could only be brought to their knees to make a genuine confession of their sins how much human suffering could be averted.

“The aggressor nations, as we call them, or the “have-not nations,” as they call themselves, say, in pious pretension, “We are overcrowded and under fed.  We need more room.  We are only protecting ourselves and our neighbors when we make war.” They need to get on their knees and confess their sins of pride, lust for power, and desire to enslave their brothers.  The nations opposing the aggressors, we who call ourselves “the democratic peoples,” for all our loud protestations of high ideals, are very anxious to preserve our high and comfortable standard of living and hold fast to our material possessions.  We need to get on our knees and confess our sins of avarice, greed, and selfish irresponsibility.  Capital and labor are locked in bloody combat because neither will confess its sins and repent of them.  Labor unions which pose as the protector of the working man wax fat on exorbitant fees and dues, actually preying on the very ones they propose to protect.  Strife and misery flows directly from the unconfessed and unrepented sins of men and poisons all our common life.

What un-confessed sin does within the structures of our social life it also does within the individual.  Two old church fathers in the very beginnings of our Christian epoch wrote very realistically on this subject. Tertullian said, “Confession of sins lightens as much as concealment aggravates them.  For confession is prompted by the desire to make amends; concealment is prompted by contumacy.”  And Origen wrote, “See, therefore, what the divine scriptures teach us, that we must not conceal sin within us.  For just as people who have indigestible food detained inside them, or are otherwise grievously oppressed internally, if they vomit obtain relief, so they also who have sinned, if they conceal and retain the sin, are oppressed inwardly.  But if the sinner becomes his own accuser, accuses himself and confesses, he at the same time vomits out both the sin and the whole cause of his malady.”  There can be no healing nor help for us or our world save through the removal of our sins and through forgiveness — and this can come only after confession is made.

How make confession of sin?  Confess to God, or to a psychiatrist, first?  No.  By God’s help confess first to oneself.  There is no real confession to God without that.  Until we recognize ourselves that we have done wrong and accuse ourselves we cannot confess our sin to God. Don’t tell God any lies. There is far too much deceiving of ourselves about this matter of confession.  We kneel in prayer and say, “forgive me my sins.”  Then we go to church and repeat, “We have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and there is no health in us,” and we call ourselves making confession of our sins.  But we fail to mention specifically in what way we have sinned — we do not say what we have done and what we have left undone.  So we may have a general shamed feeling but it never gets to grips with reality.  It does not say, “to that person, and in that way did I do this thing that I ought not to have done.”  There is a world of difference between “I have been untrue in speech,” and “On last Monday I exaggerated the story I told about John so as to discredit him and cast a slur on his character.”

Just as we fool ourselves in making confession of sins by using broad generalities instead of picking details, so do we oftentimes confess peccadilloes to hide from ourselves our greater, more grievous sins.  Like the Pharisees who gave to God a tenth of all they had including even spices and condiments, yet left undone the weightier matters of the law such as justice and mercy, so we confess to an untruth told here or a harsh word spoken there and never mention, nor admit to ourselves, our more serious sins of both omission and commission.

A confession of sin spoken only by the lips in a perfunctory sort of way without any force of emotion, without any true self-accusation, is no genuine confession.  Man must with genuineness confess unto himself with his heart before he can confess to God.  Soren Kierkegaard says, “If one be more ashamed in the presence of others than when alone, what else is this than to be more ashamed of seeming than of being?  Should not man be more ashamed of what he is than of what he seems to be?”  A man must search his own conscience as scrupulously as the Prophet Nathan probed the soul of King David, and say to himself concerning his secret sin, “Thou art the man.”

The French Ambassador to Scotland once complained to the Edinburgh Town Council about the freedom with which John Knox had from the pulpit denounced his royal master (the King of France) for his sins and wrongs.  The Town Council informed the ambassador that, so far from being able to assist him were they, they were not even able to prevent John Knox from denouncing themselves!  Thus should a man deal with his own soul.

One must make a thorough and complete and sincere confession to himself, then he is prepared to make a real confession to God.  But why confess to God?  Is it not enough to see wrong, acknowledge it, be sorry for it and resolve to try to do better?  Why must one confess to God?  Why?  Because it is God and His righteous rule that we have primarily sinned against in all our evil doing.  We have wounded God.  We have rebelled against him.  When David admitted to Nathan that he had slain the man Uriah by the hand of the Ammonites and taken Uriah’s wife to be his own, he went in and, prostrating himself before God, said: “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.”

Then again, confession must be made to God for it is always God who calls us to a true repentance and confession.  Chadwick, the biographer of Theodore Parker, tells us that when Theodore was a child he once saw a spotted turtle and lifted his hand to strike it.  All at once something checked his hand and a voice within him said loud and clear, “It is wrong.”  He was frightened and, running to his mother, asked her what it was that told him it was wrong.  She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron and taking him in her arms said, “Some call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man.  If you listen and obey it, then it will always guide you right, but if you turn a deaf ear and disobey, then it will fade out, little by little, and will leave you all in the dark without a guide.  Your life depends on hearing this little voice.”  Yes, man must confess his sins to God, because it is always the voice of God that calls us to confession.

Yet again, man must make confession of his sins to God for he needs to have God speak a word to him about how reparations for his wrong may best be made.  Only the divine wisdom is sufficient for this difficult task.

But most important of all, we must confess our sin to God because only God can forgive sin, only God can cleanse from sin, and only God can give the power to overcome sin.  “To forgive and be forgiven is the only lasting cure for guilt and the bitterness that often accompanies it.  People suffering from a sense of guilt always have other spiritual burdens as well.  There is always pain and guilt, or fear and guilt, or loneliness and guilt, or bitterness and guilt.”  (R.L. Dicks — The Art of Ministering to the Sick) Yes, we must confess our sins to God, for God alone has the power to forgive sins, cleanse them, and enable us to overcome them.

“Having made our confession as honestly as we can and sought for pardon, we then open our hearts — a great act of faith — to a message of absolution.  But often we bring our sin and the shame of it to Him and we come away still burdened and depressed.  We do not deserve to be released and find it difficult to realize that our deserving has no share in this.  It is all God’s love.” (G.S. Steward — Lower Levels of Prayer)

There is no doubt about the reality of this forgiveness, cleansing and healing.  The Prophets, The Apostles, and our Lord Himself, declared the certainty of this action of God toward penitent souls.  Listen to the assurances:  “As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”  “Thou hast cast my sins behind Thy back.”  “Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”  “If we confess our sins He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  Dr. George S. Steward says that so sure are God’s promises of deliverance that he counsels the people in his parish to stand up after they have made confession of sin to God to impress upon their minds the reality of the acceptance of this genuine gift of God’s grace.

The final step in the confession of sin should be a definite act of will in which we, with honesty and strength of purpose, renounce our sin.  It is possible for us to turn our confession of sin into one of the indulgences of life that have little or no effect on conduct.  We may confess sin and ask for pardon and keep the door open to sin.  “For example, we may ask for forgiveness for some sin which has become habitual in our lives, while at the same time we refuse to give up the practices that make the habit easy, or the companionships in which the habit thrives.  We go through the form of entreating God to save us from the sin, but we do not want the answer enough to burn the bridges across which the sin continually comes.”  (H.E. Fosdick — The Meaning of Prayer)

We cry as St Augustine did, “O Lord, make me pure,” and then we hear our real self add, as his did, “But not yet.” A genuine confession concludes with a definite act of will to renounce the sin and, trusting in God’s pardoning grace, to walk in the way He would have us go, supported by the new life and strength which this grace gives.