True Confession

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 NASB

Confess – This verse was standard protocol while I was growing up. I heard it over and over, perhaps because I used it so much to wash away my guilty feelings. But, you know, it never really worked. Oh, I don’t mean that it isn’t true. God really does forgive. We really are restored—from His perspective. But that’s only part of the battle. There is still the part where I haven’t forgiven myself. I still carry the unrighteousness of my actions and as a result, I don’t feel forgiven. In fact, I don’t even feel like I have truly confessed. If I had, then I wouldn’t feel this way, right? And since I still remember my sins and they still affect me because their history is now a permanent scar on my desire for purity, it must follow that I really didn’t confess properly. Ultimately this leads to the conclusion that I need to confess for being born because it seems to me that being born is what started this path to perdition. Maybe Pedro Calderón de la Barc, the Spanish playwright, was correct. Man’s greatest sin is being born. All the pain starts there.

Confess is an interesting word. In Greek it’s homologeo, that is, “to say the same thing.”   It’s used to describe promises. How many times have I promised God that I would go the other way? And failed to do so. Each one of those confessions was really a lie, wasn’t it? It didn’t materialize. It wasn’t effective. Another strike against me. Homologeo also means “to confirm, to agree.” I have confirmed my mistakes and my deliberate disobedience. I don’t deny them (or at least I try not to), but that’s an intellectual process. It doesn’t produce the change that I am looking for, and the change that I suspect God desires. After all, in Hebrew thought, if there isn’t any change in life behavior, then the event hasn’t happened.

This situation is worse than John’s hoped-for promise. Having failed so many times at true confession, you know, the kind that radically changes my direction, I realize that my version of confession is more like admission. As much as I wanted it to turn me around, it didn’t. As a result, this confession becomes another sin on the pile of many, many sins. Now I have to confess for confessing.   It certainly seems as if man’s greatest crime is to have been born. Maybe the circle of sinfulness is endless and every “confession” is tainted by our own justifying rationale.

But somehow I don’t think this is what John had in mind. I think that I am a victim of the Western world’s view of law and grace, a view that makes grace unobtainable by human effort (so why try, right?). Somehow I think John really did mean that we can confess and find peace. I just am not sure how. My feelings betray my academic theology. The “belief” is there, but the emotions don’t match. Maybe I need to know more about God’s version of “cleanse from unrighteousness.” I’ve been under the illusion that this phrase is about being perfect. That if I confess properly, I will suddenly become the perfect little someone that God really wanted all the time. This illusion prevents me from actually being human. What God wants is a holy automaton, something I cannot be. Here we are, back to being born.

But what if I’m wrong about “cleanse from unrighteousness”? What if this is really about removing something that interferes with a relationship with God in spite of my failure? What if the only thing that really matters here is that God removed the defilement, not that I become a perfect little angel? The Greek verb translated “cleanse” is about ritual defilement. Things like touching a dead body or bodily emissions. It’s actually not about guilt. When we are cleansed, we are treated as if the defiling object has been ritually purified. Confession in this sense is about removing the ritual obstacles to fellowship. Furthermore, since cleanse is an action taken by God, the result is the removal of unrighteousness. And unrighteousness (ádikos) is really a word that means “violation of law.” So what God does through our confession is remove the defilement that occurred as a result of our violation of the law.

This is not the same as forgiveness. Forgiveness is pardon. In this same verse, John states that confession produces pardon (aphíēmi), or release from the implied and necessary consequence. In other words, confession does not necessarily alter my feelings. It alters the relationship I have with God because it allows God to release me from the imposed penalties and remove the offending action. Confession initiates God’s actions. It does not mean that I will suddenly experience a great inner transformation. That might happen, of course, but the essential action is God’s, not mine. If, as a result of this experience, I turn another way and find my emotions relieved, liberated or assuaged, then mazel tov. But it might not happen that way. Confession does not require that I feel the same way He does. Confession motivates God. The by-product changes how I feel.

We say that confession is good for the soul. We mean that it makes us feel better. But that’s not what John has in mind. John explains how God reacts to our confession. What happens next depends on your personal journey.

Topical Index: confess, homologeo, forgiveness, aphíēmi, 1 John 1:9