Incorporated in the worship
service of a local congregation was a video montage of the large staff confessing their
sins as church leaders. “We are here to say we have failed and we have been
wrong and we ask your forgiveness.” They confessed being cold, slothful and not
diligent in the study of God’s Word, or hearing the Word of God. “We have not honored
the Spirit of God; we’ve had little of the mind of Christ; and we courted honor
from men, not Christ.” I’ve never seen nor heard of such a confession and I’m trying
to wrap my head around not only the confession, but the manner of presentation.
James said, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other
so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and
effective” (James 5:16 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Confession is a thing of reason as much as a thing of spirit. It is obvious we all do wrong stuff. So, to do our part in maintaining righteousness, we simply speak that truth about the wrong we do.
-----To whom must we confess? I’ve seen people drug before the church to make a shameful show of confession. I suppose if what was done somehow affected the entire church directly, then that should be done. And some amount of incentive for making repentance as full as possible does accrue from all those other folks knowing. Moreover, if all those folks hearing the confession were holy in actual righteousness rather than just holy in being continually forgiven of their own ongoing hog wallows while merely viewed by the Lord as being righteous, then much purpose would certainly come from such public confession. But I honestly don’t think the general mass of people not directly affected by the sin being confessed have righteous enough behavior to properly handle such valuables as that confession. In speaking the truth to one another we must confess the fact that we are not actually righteous through and through. We all have many fibers of unrighteousness yet woven into our fabric. For the general listener, the confession of that fact is affective in that it is acknowledgment of a spiritual reality. “’Let God be true though every man be false,’ (Rom 3:4) and I am man, therefore I am false too,” covers all the details those outside the effects of your sin need to know.
-----It is to those who are directly affected that truth needs spoken in detail. Confession is neither a production nor a show. It is focused truth. It is like the needle of a sewing machine combining the thread of repentance from the doer’s spool with the thread of forgiveness from the victim’s bobbin to stitch up a little tear in a relationship. When Char sews my trousers, she doesn’t pass my entire clothes closet through the sewing machine. Nor does she run the sewing machine across every square inch of my torn trousers. She focuses the needle upon the tear and stitches it up tight enough to withstand further stresses, because sewing is a thing of focused truth. Its detail belongs to the tear. Its effect hangs the trousers back in the closet, rescuing them from the trash can. And that’s enough detail for the rest of the clothes in the closet.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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