But Confession Is So Hard!!

I’ve mentioned the book I am working through:  A Year With God – Working Through the Spiritual Disciplines, and the topic right now is confession.  The passage referenced today was Numbers 5: 5-8, and the focus was two-fold: confession and restitution, both required according to the Law. One thing that caught my attention in the Numbers passage were these words:  “When a man or a woman wrongs another, breaking faith with the Lord, that person incurs guilt and shall confess the sin that has been committed.  The person shall make full restitution adding one fifth to it, and giving it to the one that was wronged.”

When I teach about confession, I always teach it as two directional.  You confess to God, Kind of a vertical confession, and your relationship with Him is restored.  No because He ever moved away, but our own feelings of guilt and shame make it hard to have fellowship with Him.  Then there is horizontal confession, making it right with the one offended, and the ground work for restoration of that fellowship has been laid.  I put it that way because sometimes the person offended may not be ready or want that restoration.  Nonetheless, it is important that we act in love, apologizing for our failure, and the next step belongs to that person.

Well, as I thought about confession, here in the Old Testament, I wondered what the New Testament said.  Apart from the passages that encourage us to confess our faith, there is another one that deals with sin issues and confession: James 5: 16, “Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that ye may be healed.”  As I thought about those words, it came to me that my sin not only affects my relationship with God and the person I have offended, but it wounds me, and I need healing.

The Greek word here for fault is paraptoma meaning a lapse or deviation from truth and uprightness, a sin, misdeed. The one for healed is iatomai meaning cure, heal; to make whole; to free from errors and sins. My unconfessed sin, the ones the Spirit of God  brings to my attention, scars me or damages me in some significant way.  As I thought that through, it came to me that the more I make excuses for my faults or sins, the greater the gap I build between God and me.  The harder it becomes to hear or pay attention to the Spirit of God or the Word of God, and the greater the distance between us grows.  My self-inflicted wounds of failure to confess and make right my own short-comings grow like scar tissue that must be removed for healthy tissue to grow.

And James speaks to the importance of the Body of Christ.  We are to confess our faults to each other and pray for each other, so the healing process can take place.  There is something about transparency that builds or facilitates the building of relationships.

I have been talking my Ministry Com students about mentoring, and that is a great place for this kind of confession to take place.  Accountability relationships are another great place for this transparency.  Family, both physical and spiritual, is designed for this kind of relationship building. 

All of that to say, that I have been thinking a lot about confession these last couple of weeks, and have realized afresh how important it is.