by R.C. Sproul

Confession
After expressing adoration, we must come with hearts of confession. Remember that we have no right to come before God at all, apart from the finished work of Christ. We can make no claim, in and of ourselves, to the ear of God. We have no intrinsic right to his presence. The Scriptures tell us that God is too holy to even look at sin. God delights in the prayers of the righteous, but we are not very righteous in our daily lives. Nevertheless, the God we serve invites us into his presence in spite of our sin.

In our study of the Lord's Prayer, we have already considered some of the important elements of confession. As the model prayer indicates, confession is to be a normal part of our conversation with God. Confession is not a frivolous matter to be engaged in only at appointed times and dates throughout the year. Confession should be a daily activity for the Christian, whose entire pilgrimage is characterized by the spirit of repentance. The principal reason why confession must be on a daily basis is because our sins are committed on a daily basis against divine law. We do things we ought not to do and leave undone those things God commands us to do. We run up a daily indebtedness before God. Consequently, our daily prayers must include genuine acts of confession.

It is no accident that the Roman Catholic church elevated the rite of penance to the level of a sacrament. Because the sacrament of penance was at the eye of the tornado of the Protestant Reformation, a backlash of negativism toward penitence set in among Protestants. Here is the classic case of overreaction and the throwing out of the baby with the bath water. The Reformers sought not the elimination of repentance and confession, but the reformation of the church's practice of these things.

The Roman Catholic sacrament of penance contains several elements: verbal confession, priestly absolution, and "works of satisfaction," that are required to fulfill the demands of the sacrament. The works of satisfaction may be for perfunctory tasks such as saying so many Hail Marys or Our Fathers or even more rigorous acts of penance. The works of satisfaction are designed to accrue "congruous merit" for the penitent Christian, making it fitting for God to restore the grace of justification.

It was this third aspect of the sacrament of penance that created so much controversy in the sixteenth century. The works of satisfaction, in the Reformers eyes, cast a shadow on the sufficiency and the efficacy of Christ's finished work of satisfaction in our behalf on the cross. The "congruous merit" of which Rome spoke obscured the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone.

In the controversy over penance, the Protestant Reformers did not repudiate the importance of confession, nor did they necessarily repudiate the concept of confessing one's sin to another person. They did, of course, challenge elements of required confession to a priest. Nevertheless, they acknowledged that confessing one's sins to another human being is biblical. The principle of priestly absolution was not a major issue. The Roman Catholic church has always taught that the priestly words Te absolvo ("I absolve you") find their strength in the premise of Jesus to the church that "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19), granting the spokesmen of the church a right to speak the pardon of Christ to penitent people.

The Roman Catholic church understands that the power to forgive sins does not reside ultimately in the priest. The priest is merely a spokesman for Christ. In practice the priestly absolution differs very little from the Protestant minister's "Assurance of Pardon," which is given from pulpits across the land every Sunday.

Saint John tells us, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9, KJV). Here we find the promise of God to forgive our confessed sins. To ignore or to neglect this promise is to steer a perilous course. God commands us to confess our sins and promises to forgive our sins. That we should confess our sins daily is clear. What confession means and what it involves are matters that need some elaboration.

We can distinguish between two kinds of repentance: attrition and contrition. Attrition is counterfeit repentance, which never qualifies us for forgiveness. It is like the repentance of a child who, caught in the act of disobeying his mother, cries out, "Mommy, Mommy, I'm sorry. Please don't spank me." Attrition is repentance motivated strictly by a fear of punishment. The sinner confesses his sin to God, not out of genuine remorse, but out of a desire to secure a ticket out of hell.

True repentance reflects contrition, a godly remorse for offending God. Here the sinner mourns his sin, not for the loss of reward or for the threat of judgment, but because he has done injury to the honor of God. The Roman Catholic church uses a prayer in the confession called "The Act of Contrition" to express the sinner's repentance:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. I detest all my sins because of thy just punishment, but most of all because I have offended thee, O my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.

This prayer goes beyond attrition, the mere fear of punishment, to a godly sorrow for offending God. Notice that the sinner acknowledges that God is all good and deserving of our love. This acknowledgment silences all attempts at self-justification.

The prayer includes a firm statement of resolve not to commit the sin again, a willingness to abandon the evil pattern and to avoid even the occasion of it. A humble recognition of dependence upon divine mercy and assistance is also included.

Of course, it is possible to use this prayer in a perfunctory manner, merely reciting it as a formal exercise with no heartfelt remorse. Still, the words of the prayer capture the elements of true contrition.

Contrition has lost much of its meaning in our culture. It is not difficult to convince people that they are sinners, for not one in a thousand is going to say that he is perfect. The common response is, "Sure, I'm a sinner. Isn't everyone? Nobody's perfect." There are few, if any, who claim they are blameless, that they have lived lives of ethical consistency, keeping the Golden Rule in every situation. The rub is in acknowledging the intensity of our sin, the extreme godlessness of our actions. Because we are all sinners and know that we share a common guilt, our confession tends to be superficial, often not characterized by earnestness or a sense of moral urgency.

Psalm 51, a contrite sinner's prayer for pardon, is delivered by King David after he has committed adultery with Bathsheba. David does not approach God with excuses. He does not ask God to consider the circumstances that produced his sin or the loneliness of his government position. David does not seek to minimize the gravity of his sin in God's presence. There are no rationalizations and no attempts at self-justification, which are so characteristic of guilty people.

David says, "I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. . . . Thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment" (verses 3-4). In other words, David believes that God is absolutely justified if he gives him nothing but absolute punishment. David exhibits what God has said he will not despise: a broken and contrite heart.

David pleads for restoration to God's favor:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (verses 10-12)

He understood the most crucial element of confession: total dependence upon God's, mercy. David could not atone for his own sins. There was nothing he could do and nothing he could say to undo what he had done. There was no way for him to "make it up to God." David understood what Jesus later made clear--that we are debtors who cannot pay our debts.

Confession is like a declaration of bankruptcy. God requires perfection. The slightest sin blemishes a perfect record. All the "good deeds" in the world cannot erase the blemish and move us from imperfection to perfection. Once the sin has been committed, we are morally bankrupt. Our only hope is to have that sin forgiven and covered through the atonement of the one who is altogether perfect.

When we sin, our only option is repentance. Without repentance there is no forgiveness. We must come before God in contrition. David put it this way:

You do not delight in sacrifice. . . . The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17, NIV)

Here David's profound thoughts reveal his understanding of what many Old Testament persons failed to grasp--that the offering of sacrifices in the temple did not gain merit for the sinner. Sacrifices pointed beyond themselves to the perfect Sacrifice. The perfect atonement was offered by the perfect Lamb without blemish. The blood of bulls and goats does not take away sin. The blood of Jesus does. To avail ourselves of the atonement of Christ, to gain that covering, requires that we come before God in brokenness and contrition. The true sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

There was an important element of surprise in David's experience of forgiveness. He had begged God to wash away his sin and to make him clean. In a certain sense, forgiveness must never be a surprise. We should never be surprised when God keeps his word. In 1 John 1:9, God tells us that if we confess our sins, he will be faithful to forgive those sins. God keeps his promises; man does not. God is the covenant Maker; we are covenant breakers.

Looking at the issue from another perspective, however, we ought to be surprised every time we experience forgiveness. We ought never to take God's mercy and forgiveness for granted, even though we live in a culture that does. It is terrifying to consider the ease with which we take God's grace for granted. I occasionally ask collegians, seminarians, seminary professors, and ministers the questions, "Is God obligated to be loving? Is he bound to forgiveness and grace?" Again and again their answers are in the affirmative: "Yes, of course, it's God's nature to be loving. He's essentially a God of love. If he didn't show love, he wouldn't be God. If God is God, then he must be merciful!"

He must be merciful? If God must be merciful, then his mercy is no longer free or voluntary. It has become obligatory; if so, then it is no longer mercy, but justice. God is never required to be merciful. As soon as we think God is obligated to be merciful, a red light should flash in our brains, indicating that we are no longer thinking about mercy, but about justice. We need to do more than sing "Amazing Grace"--we need to be repeatedly amazed by grace.

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This is part ten of R.C. Sproul's small book Does Prayer Change Things?. Over the coming weeks we will be posting the complete text of this short but profound and practical book right here at the Ligonier Ministries blog. We have already posted Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.