Tag Archives: Sin

Out of the Water

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There was a story told (probably apocryphal) in seminary about how crusaders, as they were preparing for battle, would be baptized with thier sword hand out of the water.  The soldiers would march through the water, with the water washing over thier heads, but their hands held high out of of the water.  They didn’t want to baptize the hand that would be used to kill their enemy.   Everything else had been consecrated and set apart for God, but their hand was their own, to do with as they please.

While this may seem rediculous to us today, its surprising how many of us still think this way.  We come to God and say, “Lord, here I am.  You can have everything I am, except for ________ (you fill in the blank).” 

Maybe it’s your playlist on your iPod.  Maybe it’s your wallet and the way you spend you money.  Maybe it’s your conversations (I knew one man who’s daily conversation was so riddled with “colorful metaphors” that I wondered if he had stuck his tongue out at baptism).  Maybe it’s your world view, your relationships, your career, you lifestyle. 

We’re afraid to let these things go.  Like an old pair of jeans, we’re comfortable with these things just the way they are – they provide physical and emotional security.  We’re afraid of the change that might come in our lives if everything came under the authority of Christ.  We’re afraid of how we might change, how other people’s consideration of us might change, if we give ourselves over entirely to the Lordship of Christ.  We’re afraid that Jesus might just say to us, “Lay down that sin – that pride, that promiscuity, that temper, that greed, that ungodliness – lay it down, let it be washed away.  Let me clothe you in righteousness and peace.”  And so we march on with our sin held high out of the water.

What are you keeping out of the water?  These unconfessed sins are actually keeping you from the fullness of joy that God has intended for you in Christ the Lord.  We struggle under the weight of these sins, clinging to them desperately, fearing the pain and uncertainty of letting go, when in reality, Christ’s “yoke is easy, and [his] burden is light.”

We aren’t meant to go through this life fragmented and disconjointed – this part of my life I will live for God, but my way of thinking or speaking or living I will choose what is best.  Everything we have, all that we are, ought to fall under His sovereign reign.  Eugene Peterson’s The Message summarizes the direction of a maturing Christian life so well, by saying that we to to fit “every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.”

Brothers and sisters, lay that burden down – let it go.  “Lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb 12:1).  Let Christ wash you, all of you, by the water and the word (Eph. 5:26), that you might be holy and blameless before Him.

SDG

Get Real

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“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 
(I John 1:8-9 ESV)

Today being Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten Season, there is a lot of attention placed on penitence and confession.  Fat Tuesday was spent in wild celebration so that there would be something to confess on Ash Wednesday (as if there wasn’t enough already). 

But what does it really mean to confess your sins?  What does a genuine confession look like?  Now that there’s an App for Confessions (see here), what is the proper form of confession?

If you do a quick study on the word “confess” in Scripture, you will find it has less to do with producing a laundry list of the things for which we feel sorry, and more to do with a humble and heartfelt acknowledgement of the truth.  In the Hebrew, the primary word used for confess is “yadah,” which literally means to throw or shoot, but is also translated as to give thanks and praise to God, to confess that the Lord is God (2 Chron 6:24), and to confess the truth of our sinfulness before God (Lev 5:5).  Interestingly, this word is closely related to the word “yada” which means “to know.” 

In the Greek, the word for confess is “homologeo” which literally means “to speak as one.”  Again, in the Greek this refers not only to our confession or acknowledgement of our sins (James 5:16), but also our confession of Jesus as Lord (Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11), and even His confession of our name before the Father (Rev. 3:5).

So to make a confession is to acknowledge what we know to be true (we do this every week in worship when we make a “Confession of Faith”).  The word confess means that you stand with God and you say what God is saying.  It means to acknowledge the truth of Scripture.  It means to acknowledge the truth of Jesus Christ.  It means to acknowledge the truth about ourselves and our sins. To confess is to say about your sin exactly what God says about it. You call your sin what God calls it. That is what it means to confess.

I heard one pastor put it this way: “To confess your sin is not simply that you come with this general acknowledgment that you have messed up, that you have not been everything you should be as a husband or a wife, that you have not attained to all that you would like to have attained in your life. Confession of sin is not some vague, acknowledgment of being a general flop. But it is a confession of your sin: that you have deliberately missed the mark of God’s call and God’s law.”

Kevin DeYoung writes in the book “Why we love the Church”

It’s all to easy for me to say, “I’m sorry for not doing more to help the poor, and I’m sorry I haven’t been more loving, and I’m sorry I haven’t done more for the homeless.”  But is this real repentance if I don’t go out and do something differently after my confession… Before we loudly protest all our general failings, we would do well to remember that repentance entails a change of direction and not merely a public declaration that “I could have done more.”  We shouldn’t say we’re sorry because it sounds good or makes us look good before others, but because we actually feel regret for some wrongdoing and are intent on living more like Christ in the future. (DeYoung, Kevin.  Why we love the Church (Moody Publishers, Chicago; 2009) page 137).

As long as your confession of sin is kept at arm’s length, an utterance of the generalities that, yes, we are all sinners, nobody’s perfect, but never really acknowledging the truth about ourselves, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.  We are not saying the same thing God is saying, we are, in fact, calling God, and His word, a liar.

But if you confess…  If you acknowledge the revelation of Scripture, that God is Holy and Righteous in His judgment against sin; that we are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God and stand condemned under His righteous judgment; that Jesus is the Christ, the only begotten Son of God, the sinless one upon whom all our sins were laid, died to redeem us and to set us free from sin and death, and has taken God’s judgment and wrath upon Himself that we might be free to live for God… If you confess, if you acknowledge the truth, then you stand with God and the truth dwells in you (I John 4:15).

Friends, let today be a day of confession.  A day of acknowledging the truth about God and the truth about ourselves.  Get real with God.  Confess your sins, yes, and confess your faith as well. 

SDG