Does Repentance Require Confession?

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: During a Q&A session at one of Ligonier's conferences, Dr. Sproul answered the following question: Does repentance require confession?

DR. R.C. SPROUL: It certainly requires confession. Repentance does not mean simply a resolve to change and behave differently in the future from what I do today.

I don't believe that I need to confess every one of my sins of my childhood, or at any time, to everybody in the world or to all of the people in my family. Ultimately my sin is against God, and what repentance does require, always requires, is confession of our sin before God. And confession, not only confession, but confession accompanied by contrition, real remorse. I don't know about you...yeah I do, I know about you, too...I know that I have never in my life approached the full measure of remorse and contrition for my sin that I should have, but I also know that's true of you as well as it is of me. I think it was Thomas à Kempis who said that the greatest saints rarely come anywhere close to feeling the full measure of weight of their own sinfulness. And I'm glad that the Holy Spirit reveals the depths of my sin gradually to me. If He would reveal to me right now the full measure of my guilt before God, I would be destroyed just at that one moment when Isaiah said he was coming apart. He disintegrated with his vision of God.

But yes, we have to confess, and with that confession comes a real godly sorrow, not just a fear of punishment, what we call "attrition." But a broken and contrite heart, God doesn't despise. But He desires it as the reality of our repentance.