Confession: It Really is Good for the Soul

James 5:16a

16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Dear Friends in Christ,

When I was a fairly young lad growing up in Staunton, IL, the summer months were the highlight of my year.  I lived for summer because I knew that every day I would spend outside with my neighborhood buddies doing what boys did back then.  We didn’t sit in our houses watching TV or playing computer games or fiddling with our cell phones because we didn’t have computer games and cell phones back then.  Nor did we sleep in till 10 or 11 o’clock like I’ve heard some of you young folks like to do.  No sir!  We were up and at ‘em pretty early so that we could get on with our day’s activities that might include playing army or going down to Russell’s Furniture Store and bringing home some washer and dryer and refrigerator boxes and transforming them into tanks that we could use for tank wars.  Or maybe we’d find an old sofa or mattress there that we’d drag home and use as our landing spot for a high jump or pole vault pit that we’d construct. I remember one summer we made go-carts out of scrap pieces of wood and baby buggy wheels.  Another summer we had our own Olympics with events that included the shot put, hurdles, sprints, and other things.  We played lots of whiffle ball, hide and go seek, kick the can, and capture the flag.

And when we could get a bigger group of us together we would spend an entire afternoon playing softball over at the Lutheran school which was about a block from where we lived.  They had a pretty decent playground that also had a backstop, which made it perfect for a game of ball.  The only problem was that the playground was not made of grass and dirt like most ball diamonds, but rather some type of oil and sand mixture that would leave its mark on your body if you decided to slide into home plate or any other base for that matter.

Now usually we would play with a softball because there were homes across the street at least just beyond right field and we wanted to be careful not to do any damage there, but one day we didn’t have a softball.  However, we did have a regular baseball, so we decided to use that.  After all, a left-handed batter like myself would have to really connect with that ball to hit any of those houses across the street.  So guess what happened?  I connected with one and it flew over the street, took one bounce on Mrs. Ficker’s front porch, and went right through the glass part of her door.  And almost quicker than that glass could shatter, everyone scattered – everyone, that is, except for me.  I liked Mrs. Ficker.  She bought Christmas cards from me whenever I had to sell them as a fundraiser at our school.  I knew I had done wrong and I knew running away would only compound my wrong, especially when I saw a rather irate Mrs. Ficker appear on her porch.  So with head hanging low, I walked over to her house, confessed that I was the one who broke her window, and promised I would make sure it got fixed, which I did, with a little help – ok, a lot of help – from my dad’s wallet!

Confession: it is good for the soul.  But when we deal with this topic, we may very well have certain images that come to our mind that probably aren’t very positive.  For example, we didn’t like having to confess that we were the one who told the lie or stole the apple from the grocery store or hit our little brother or sister when mom and dad weren’t looking.  When it comes to religious confession, those of you who come out of a Roman Catholic background may think of speaking to a priest in this small, closet-like room with a screen between the two of you and you having to divulge things that you felt very uncomfortable talking about.

So sometimes our images of confession are not all that positive.  But I hope to change that today as we examine what I’m going to call the 2 directions of confession – confessing upward to God and confessing outward to one another.

And the 1st point I want to make today is that upward confession cleanses us.  When you examine the Scriptures, it’s amazing how many times the word “cleanse” is used in connection with confession.  We  heard it before in our Epistle reading where it says in I John 1:9:  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  The fruit of upward confession, then, is a sense of cleansing, a sense of being made pure and given a new start, a fresh beginning.

You see, through confession God wants to do with you what many people would like to do with the bottom of Wassaw Sound.  Wassaw Sound is a body of water off the coast of Georgia.  57 years ago an Air Force jet was carrying a 7600-pound nuclear bomb as part of a training mission.  Thankfully it did not have a detonator on it because due to a mid-air collision with another plane the pilot needed to dispose of it, which he did right over the waters of Wassaw Sound.  So it’s down there right now at the bottom.  While some people say it poses no problem, no threat, others say, “No, it is a problem and we need to get that thing out of there.”  Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m ever fishing in Wassaw Sound, I’m going to be very, very careful because if you go to the wrong area and the wrong depth, you might just find yourself fishing with Jesus in little more than the blink of an eye.

Well, what about you, my friends?  Do people have to be very, very careful with you?  Do those who know you well know that there are certain areas, certain topics where they can’t go very deep with you because if they do there’s going to be an explosion and that explosion is going to come from you?  If so, confession is God’s way of going down deep to the bottom of our hearts and pulling those things to the surface so that we can begin dealing with them and getting rid of them.  Maybe it’s anger that you feel toward your spouse or some relative or guilt that you’re carrying over something you once did that to this day you are still ashamed of.  Or maybe it’s bitterness or resentment that you’ve been harboring in your heart toward a friend or co-worker who once hurt you.  Whatever the case, in confession God says to you, “Let’s bring that bomb to the surface and start defusing it.  Let’s dismantle it before it explodes and does major damage to you or someone else.”

Now the Greek word for confession is an interesting word.  In fact, it’s one of my favorite Greek words.  It’s pronounced homologeo.  It’s a compound word.  “Logeo” means to speak.  And “homo” means the same.  So homologeo means to speak the same, or to agree with.  So when you confess something to God, you say the same as God.  You agree with him.  You say, “God, here’s what you say about morality, and I agree with that.  Here’s what you say about honesty, and I agree with that.  Here’s what you say about marriage, and I agree with that.”  But in confession we not only agree with God about those things, we also agree that we have not done them the way he would like for us to.

So confession is really coming clean with God.  It is an honest conversation that we have with our Creator in which we bare our soul and no longer try to hide anything from him.  It’s what David did in Ps. 51.  That psalm was written after David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba and all that that entailed.  Recall how David had not only committed adultery with her and got her pregnant, but also tried to cover it up, even going so far as to have her husband killed in battle so that he could take Bathsheba as his wife.  But God who knows all and sees all was not fooled.  So he sent the prophet Nathan to David and Nathan helped David to see very clearly that he had not swept anything under the rug as far as God was concerned and that there would be repercussions, there would be consequences for his wrongdoing.

It was then that David wrote that great psalm of confession, Ps. 51:  “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.”  David is waving the white flag there, isn’t he?  He’s surrendering to God.  No more lies.  No more cover-ups.  No more trying to hide his sin.  In essence he’s saying, “There’s a bomb in me, Lord.  Let’s bring it to the surface and do something about it.”

And what was the fruit of this honest and upward confession?  Well, we heard it before in our Old Testament lesson from Psalm 32 where David wrote in response to the same sin:  “Oh, what joy for those whose rebellion is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!  Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!” (NLT)  So the fruit of upward confession is relief, joy, and forgiveness.  And please understand that all that is our not because of anything we’ve done, but because of everything our Savior Jesus Christ did for us through his perfect life that he lived on our behalf and his sin-paying death that he died on Calvary’s cross and his victorious resurrection that he experienced on that glorious Easter morning.  When we believe that, when we receive that saving work by faith, then the relief, the joy, and the forgiveness that David wrote about in that psalm is ours to enjoy as well.

So we confess upward to God which cleanses us.  And then secondly, our text for today encourages us to confess outward to one another.  And you know what that does?  It connects us; it binds us together; it puts us all on equal ground with each other.  When we confess our sins to one another and in the presence of one another like we do at the beginning of our service each week and we are truly genuine and sincere about it, we are saying, “I’m no better than you and you’re no better than me.  In the eyes of God we’re all the same.  We are sinners in need of a Savior.”

And you know what, my friends?  We need to be reminded of that regularly because there is a natural human tendency in us to do what the Pharisee did in the temple when he was praying.  He stood up in front of everyone and proudly proclaimed, “God, I thank you that I’m not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers.  And I especially thank you that I’m not like that pitiful tax collector standing over there in the corner.  Why, I fast twice a week.  I pay tithes of all that I get.  Surely you must be impressed with me, Lord.”

Now I’m sure that none of us would ever be that bold and brazen, that dramatic or arrogant when speaking to God, but we do nevertheless like to do what the Pharisee did.  We like to play the comparison game.  “Sure I’ve done my share of bad things, but at least I’m not as bad as so-and-so down the street.”  Or, “At least I’m better than Adolph Hitler or Charles Manson.”  The only problem with playing that game, my friends, is that God doesn’t play it – at least not the way we do.  Oh, he plays a comparison game.  But instead of comparing us to others, he compares us only to himself.  And he says, “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.”  And when we understand how dreadfully and drastically unholy we really are when compared to his perfect, absolute, and exquisite holiness, we can’t help but come to grips with the fact that from his perspective we’re all in the same boat.  We’re all on equal footing.  And confessing our sins to one another and in the presence of one another simply reminds us of that and confirms it.

I might also add one more thing before I close and that is that there is something very therapeutic about confessing our faults to one another and saying those 2 beautiful words that sometimes don’t come out of our mouths very easily, the words, “I’m sorry.”  Whether we say that to a spouse, to one of our children, to a friend, or to a fellow Christian in whom we have confided, their response of “You are forgiven” or “I forgive you” can lift that burden of guilt from our shoulders and give us a whole new perspective on life and a fresh new start.  That’s why I’ve said in my sermon title for today that confession is indeed good for the soul – confessing upward to God for cleansing and confessing outward to one another for connection.

Allow me then to close this sermon on confession with this beautiful promise from God in Prov. 28:13 where it says:  “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”  May you find rich, abundant, and much-needed mercy as you confess your sins to God and your sins to one another.

Amen