Do Christians have to confess sins to God?
Posted by Grace Revolution on December 19, 2008
Do Christians have to confess sins to God to get Forgiveness?
I believe the answer is NO.
“NO” because the Messiah Jesus has taken away the punishment for our past, present and future sins already at the cross 2000 years ago. For those who believe in the Lord Jesus and confess with their mouths the Jesus is Lord, they have already received the FULL instalment of forgiveness.
But we still do confess because we want to walk in honesty and openess before God and ask Him to help us to overcome our weakness and areas of struggle. Not to confess to get forgiveness, but for for fellowship.
Illustration:
Think of it this way between a father and son. The father will love his son unconditionally regardless of what his son does. So the son goes and does something bad such as stealing from a shop, but the Father in a sense of already forgiven him because of he loves him unconditionally.
But if the son does not open up and talk to the Father about it, then there is no fellowship between them although the father will never remove his love from him doesn’t matter what he does and the father has already forgiven him in his heart. So the son feels sorry will go and confess to his father and say, “I’m really sorry for doing this.” knowning full well that his father loves him unconditionally anyway and has already forgiven him.
So the son is not confessing to get forgiveness, but he is confessing to restore that fellowship back on his side. The fellowship was never broken on the father’s side- the father’s arms was always stretched out to us, but we took our arms back when we decided not to talk to God about it.
GOD NEVER BROKE HIS FELLOWSHIP WITH US, BUT WE BROKE IT WITH HIM BY NOT CONFESSING IT.
So the truth is God has already forgiven us through One Act in history on the execution stake at calvary approximately 2000 years ago even before we committed any sins.
This is the difference between SALVATION FORGIVENESS and FELLOWSHIP/FAMILY FORGIVENESS.
Well it’s good to look at both sides of the argument…
Email reply by Michael Eaton
Some people emailed Michael Eaton asking similiar questions of this sort, and he emailed them back hurriedly with a document. I managed to get a hold of it and feel responsible to put this up as I’m changeing my point of view and leaning more towards what Michael is saying to be more biblical.
Here is it:
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I think Anonymous is 95% right but he goes 5% too far in my opinion and makes a few mistakes – or at least has a few severe obscurities!!
I myself am in the process of writing a book called “Not Guilty Even When You Are Guilty!” I think Anonymous had got hold of something that is true, but that he lacks clarity in connection with the difference between our objective status in Christ [where guilt is banished for ever] and the shame we feel (rightly) when we sin. We are free from guilt objectively and we can know that we are free from guilt objectively (and so this means we are free from servitude or despair). But it almost seems that Anonymous is saying we need never feel ashamed in any way at all and God is never displeased with us. If he is saying this [I won't accuse him but I am not sure what he is saying at this point] then he is making a deduction from Romans 8:1 that is a false deduction!
What is true is that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. My own (as yet unpublished) exposition of Romans 8:1 reads as follows. Anonymous would like it.
Now Romans chapter 8 brings to a climax everything Paul has been saying in this part of Romans. The basic point of the chapter is put forward in the first verse. … Verse 1 is the text; the rest is exposition. The theme is that it is not possible, as a fact, and it is not necessary, as a feeling, for the Christian ever to come into condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:1). Some translations add some extra words ‘who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’. These words are not in the best manuscripts and were added later by scribes copying New Testament manuscripts. They are found in verse 4 but the scribes inserted them into verse 1 as well. But actually they spoiled verse 1 by adding these words. Paul’s point is simple and unconditional.
Romans 8:1 is dealing with two things at the same time. He is dealing partly with ‘objective’ truth. What I mean by ‘objective truth’ is sheer fact that is true in and of itself whether we feel it or not. He is also dealing with ‘subjective’ experience at the same time. By ‘subjective experience’ I mean the way we feel things and sense them, the way we taste and know things within ourselves. One may be moved at the sight of a sunrise; that is ‘subjective’ experience. But the sun rises even if we are asleep at the time. It was an ‘objective’ fact whether we experienced it or not.
Objectively, in Christ we Christians are not condemned as a matter of sheer fact and we never shall be. The word ‘therefore’ points back to what he has said. Because of the cross of Jesus (Romans chapter 3), because of our transfer to a kingdom of grace (Romans chapters 5-7), there is ‘therefore’ no condemnation.
But Paul is concerned about something subjective as well. If we grasp hold of what he has been saying we shall not have any experience or feeling of being condemned either. He is taking it that we do not feel condemned in our experience of the Lord. He is dealing with both fact and feeling at the same time.
There are two reasons for understanding it this way. Firstly, this is the meaning of the Greek word for condemnation. It means both condemnation as a fact and it also means the experience of condemnation, penal servitude. As a verb it is used in Mark 14:64, ‘they condemned him to death’. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. He was condemned so that we might never be condemned.
The word also means ‘punishment’, the experience of being condemned. Romans 8:1 also means there is no doom, no torture, no experience of being guilty, no penal servitude.
A second reason for taking it this way is that this is the way Paul develops the point. In Romans 8:1 Paul lays down a basic statement: there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Then he says ‘For…’, and goes on to argue his point in a number of small paragraphs showing why there is no condemnation. We have been released from the law (8:2-4), we possess the Spirit (8:5-17), sufferings will outweigh glory (8:18-25), the Spirit helps us in weakness (8:26-27) and God has a determined purpose to bring us to glory (8:28-30). At that point he asks a question (‘What therefore shall we say to these thing?’, 8:31a). He argues out our security further, answering all possible difficulties (8:31b-37) and then he comes to his great climax and conclusion (‘For I am persuaded … Nothing is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’). The whole argument from 8:1 to 8:39 has been a tremendous development of the point that we can never and shall never be condemned. As he develops this matter he does so both ‘objectively’ and ‘subjectively’, in terms of facts and in terms of experiences. It is a fact that the law has been dealt with, we are in the Spirit, God has predestined us to glory, and so on. But also it is a matter of experience. The Spirit leads us. We know how to pray in the Spirit with groanings too deep for words. We have the Spirit of adoption and cry ‘Abba, father’. As a matter of sheer fact we are not condemned, but also God is not laying upon us any experience of being sentenced to imprisonment or bondage. God does not condemn us; He does not sentence us to hard labour.
All of this is well-argued by Lloyd-Jones in his sermon on Romans 8:1 (The Law, pp.271, etc).
BUT Anonymous leaves himself open to being interpreted as going A STEP TOO FAR and making a DEDUCTION that is false.
He seems to going a step furthers and saying that even if we sin we do not have to be conscious of it. This is a mistake.
He seems to be saying that because we do NOT have to confess our sins to get our salvation back, THEREFORE we do not have to confess our sins for any purpose whatsoever.
There is a confusion here between security of STATUS and a good friendly subjective relationship in which we please our Father and our Father lets us know that we are pleasing to him.
About Lloyd-Jones.
Lloyd-Jones is misused by Anonymous. When LJ says we do not have to confess our sins and need not keep going in-and-out of condemnation he is referring to our STATUS as justified men and women – and he is surely 100% correct in this. But the Lloyd-Jones sentence that one should take notice of is this: “The apostle is not talking about his experience, but about his position, his standing, his status; he is in a position in which, being justified, he can never again come under condemnation” (page 271).
Actually Lloyd-Jones was very strong on our having to be convicted of sin. In my M.Th. thesis on Lloyd-Jones my one-and-only criticism of him was that he demanded conviction of sin and confession of sin too much!! LJ would have strongly disagreed with Anonymous at this point. There are dozens (maybe hundreds) of LJ sermons I could quote to show how heavily LJ stressed conviction of sin and confession of sin. The obvious place to begin with is LJ’s book on Psalm 51 [Out of the Depths, Evangelical Press of Wales] where the first of four chapters is entitled ‘The Sinner’s Confession’. He applies it to Christians as well as the unsaved, and says “It was the prayer of a man who had believed God and had experienced the gracious dealings of God”. All 70 pages, and all four sermons are detailed expositions of the various steps and stages we have to go through in confession of sin in order to know the blessing of God.
But this does not at all mean that LJ is contradicting himself. His exposition of Romans 8:1 only has to do with our status. His remarks about confession and restoring fellowship have to do with spiritual experience.
Another strong statement in this respect is in chapter 6 of Faith On Trial [Psalm 73] where LJ makes much of the fact that we must take our time in confessing sin. “First and foremost we must really confess what we have done.” (p.69). “We must not spare ourselves … we must deliberately hold these things before ourselves… We must hold the facts before ourselves deliberately and say ‘This is what I did…’. ” (p.70).
In my M.Th. I actually criticised LJ for going too far in this matter. He regarded a Romans 7:14ff experience as indispensable to the receiving of the baptism with the Spirit and I accused him (in a respectful manner!) of being introspective and of being guilty of “preparationism”. I myself was criticised by Iain Murray in the Lloyd-Jones biography (volume 2) and was told I did not believe in conviction of sin – because I complained LJ made too much of conviction and confession! So it is rather amazing to find Anonymous quoting LJ to show that you don’t need to confess your sins!
LJ is right in what he says about objective freedom from condemnation – but Anonymous has taken LJ further than LJ would have wished – as can be easily demonstrated. LJ would NOT have said there is ‘no guilt’ in the sense of feeling ashamed and needing to confess our sins to get our fellowship with God back again.
My interpreting Romans 8:1 subjectively as well as objectively goes further than LJ (in the Anonymous Rufus direction). LJ never made this point. He took Romans 8:1 wholly objectively and did not link it with our experience of fellowship with God.
[[[PS. Lloyd-Jones was not a Greek expert. He had no formal training in Greek. He was self-taught and did his best in this area – and he read the commentaries – but occasionally he makes mistakes when handling the Greek (as, for example, when he says Romans 3:23 refers to sin in Adam because of the aorist tense; his knowledge of Greek tenses was weak at that point!)]]]
But more important is the Bible.
Anonymous is right in his teaching that objectively we cannot be condemned. I think he could rightly go further than most people and say we do not need to feel condemned. I myself make this point. But what I would mean by it is that we do not need to feel rejected or “no longer justified”; we do not need to feel we have lost our salvation; we do not need to confess our sins in order to get our justification back (we never lost it!).
BUT surely one cannot take the further step and talk as if sin does no damage whatsoever.
1 John. Anonymous finds a clever way of ‘getting round’ 1 John 1:9 but it is easily shown to be a mistake. The kind of argument that says “We don’t need to take notice of this because the situation was special…..” – is always a bit suspicious and has to be carefully checked out. It is a common trick for getting rid of something you don’t like!
Consider 1 John 1:5-8 again. “God is light…” Why say this? Because if we want fellowship with God we had best remember his holiness. Verse 6 warns against our pretending to have fellowship while we are in the darkness and actually are NOT having fellowship. It is possible to be a Christian but not be having fellowship at this very moment. Why does John tell us about the fact that we might lie if we are not meant to “feel” in any way guilty about such a sin? Lying is something we ought not to do. If we know this, we know “guilt” of some kind or another [I would be content if you only want to call it shame]. It is NOT a guilt that involves lost status, or lost salvation – but it is still being ashamed of ourselves. Walking in the light brings fellowship. Lying and walking in the darkness prevents fellowship. What can verse 9 mean except what it is traditionally thought to mean. We (yes, “we” Christians, including John himself) have to confess our sins not in order to get our salvation back [we never lost it] but to get our fellowship back.
Anonymous is mistaken in saying or implying that John was only addressing Gnostics in 1 John 1:9. It is true that the heresy in Ephesus was proto-gnostic but John is clear that the Gnostics had already left the churches around Ephesus. “They went out from us” is a clear statement in 1 John 2:19. The Christians had already overcome the world. It is true that the Gnostics had done some damage, and the Christians had lost a lot of their love. They – the Christians – have to confess their sins to get their fellowship with God back. 1 John 1:9 cannot be got rid of in Anonymous’s manner and no reputable expositor gets rid of 1 John 1:9 in this manner. Lloyd-Jones and RT Kendall (and M Eaton) all have published expositions in which this verse is applied to Christians. RT makes much of the fact that “walking in the light” involves confessing our sins. [His sermons on 1 John were published in Westminster Records]. The very fact that Anonymous has to find an artificial way of “getting rid” of an awkward verse is proof that his thesis is pressed too far (though I agree with his spirit and if he would pull back a bit I think what he says is good).
John goes on: If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar… If we don’t deny we have sinned – i.e. if we confess our sins – we agree that what God says to us when he convicts us is the truth. Is it wrong or right to sometimes say “We have sinned”? If it is “Gnostic” to say “We have not sinned”, then it is Christian to say we have sinned”. If so we are confessing our sins!!! Is Anonymous wanting us to say “We have not sinned”? The total refusal of guilt in any sense at all would be tantamount to saying “We have not sinned” – and this is the very thing that John is denouncing.
In the case of David’s sin “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:25). If a Christian did what David did would it NOT be right to say “”the thing that I did displeased the Lord”. Should we NOT admit to God what we did? Is this just “old covenant”? Is the contrast between old and new so great that what displeased God under the Old Covenant no longer displeases him!? These questions only have to be asked for us to see this whole line of thought is nonsense!
In 2 Samuel 12:13a David immediately confessed his sin. 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
In 2 Samuel 12:13b David receives total and immediate forgiveness! “And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die”.
BUT in Psalm 51 David writes a psalm confessing his sin, publishes his psalm, and makes arrangement for it to be sung publicly – and we are still reading his “confession” today. He did this even though his sin was already forgiven (2 Samuel 12:13). Is all of this so “old covenant” that we should not do these things that David did because we are “not guilty”.
Are we forbidden to pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses”` is surely a confession! It admits guilt – even if we are not guilty in STATUS. Indeed the Lord’s prayer says we shall not be forgiven if we do not forgive others. This does not mean we shall not be justified if we do not forgive others. It means we shall not have the experience of enjoying God’s forgiveness if we do not give others the experience of having our forgiveness. It has nothing to do with status in salvation, or with justification.
It is true that evangelicals sometimes say “Jesus died for all sins past, present and future”. There is a sense in which that is true. Jesus has already atoned for the sins we have not committed yet! Objectively we have justification. We have already gone through judgement day and have been declared “not guilty”. An amazing thought! “The terrors of law and of God with me have nothing to do. My Saviour’s obedience and blood hide all my transgression from view” (Toplady). OK! But this is not to say that the experience of forgiveness has already been received, even before we sin. Forgiveness is not objective; it is subjective. It has to do with a felt relationship. In THIS connection what our sins are not forgiven if we do not confess them insofar as we know them – insofar as the light of God has made them clear to us. We do not have to harass our souls to find sins; the Holy Spirit convicts of sin! We do not have to convict ourselves – but the Spirit does do this work.
Paul. It is surely nonsense for anyone to say Paul does not want us to confess our sins.
Why is there a lot of rebuke in Paul’s epistles if he did not want anyone to admit anything? Are we never to be made to feel bad – no matter what we do?
In 1 Corinthians 6:5 Paul says “I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong?” Is he not wanting them to feel ashamed of what they are doing? If anyone says “They are not to feel guilty in the sense that they are no longer justified” – I agree!! But is he not wanting them to feel “guilty” in the sense of wanting them to be ashamed and to confess they have been doing something wrong.
In 2 Corinthians 7 Paul distinguishes between worldly grief [like Judas' suicide?] and true grief? 10Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. Are we to believe they reacted in this way without feeling “guilty” [or ashamed]. True, they did not need to feel rejected but did they not feel bad in any way at all???
Elsewhere John the Baptist got people to be baptized ‘confessing their sins’ (Matt.3:6; Mark 1:5). Are we to believe he made a bad mistake and God would not have approved of his ministry. Or was it OK because it was Old Covenant? I thought JB was a man whose ministry we should admire.
Acts 1918 Many also of them that had believed came, confessing, and declaring their deeds. Was this ‘confessing’ a bad mistake? After all, Jesus had died for them and they had believed!
Old Testament . I am rather perpelexed at Anonymous’s way of talking about ‘the Old Covenant’. The ‘Old Covenant’ is the Mosaic system. We are not under it. But does this mean that all the great prayers of confession in the Psalms and in Daniel 9 and Joel and elsewhere are all irrelevant to us. We shall have to throw away half of our Bibles! In the Bible (I extract some phrases from the Tyndale Dictonary) individuals confess that they have sinned and are therefore guilty before God, often confessing a particular sin (Lv 5:5; 1 Jn 1:9). In such confession one agrees or acknowledges that he or she has broken God’s law (Ps 119:126), that its penalty is justly deserved (Rom 6:23), and that in some specific way God’s standard of holiness has not been met (Lv 19:2; Mt 5:48). In Old Testament times the high priest would confess the sins of the whole nation (Lv 16:21); the nation of Israel was expected to confess when it had rebelled against the law of God (Lv 26:40; 2 Chr 7:14). Pious Jews were quick to confess; Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah confessed their nation’s sins, agreeing with God that his punishment of the people (including themselves) was just, yet praying for God’s mercy and deliverance (Dn 9:20; Ezr 10:1; Neh 1:6).
Many psalms contain some or all of the following ideas: (1) I have sinned; (2) I became ill and nearly died; (3) I prayed to God, who delivered me. The psalmist began by admitting sin and God’s justice, and he ended by confessing God’s forgiveness and delivering power. Have we now got to stop using the psalms? And Daniel’s prayers? And Ezra’s? And Nehemiah? And the Lord’s Prayer?
In only a few passages does the NT discuss confession of sin. Those being baptized by John the Baptist publicly admitted their sins and repented (Mk 1:4–5). All Christians, in fact, must agree with God that they are sinners (1 Jn 1:8–10). James presented a fuller picture: when a Christian is ill, the elders are to visit and give the person opportunity to confess any sins. As in the Psalms, forgiveness and healing (the moral and the physical) are tied to confession. Recalling that principle, James urged Christians to confess their sins to one another.
Some historical points
1. When in the 17th century the Puritans began to highlight the doctrine of justification of faith, there were a few extremists who said “God cannot see sin in us at all”. He can never be displeased with us. This was rejected as a mistake. It is true that “God cannot see sin in us at all”, with regard to justification and status. It is not true with regard to the Father’s relationship to his son. We can displease God. When the people who lost Canaan sinned so badly that God swore an oath against them, God said “I have pardoned … But as surely as I live, … all those men … who … have tempted me these ten times … shall in no wise see the land…”. They were forgiven but they lost what God wanted to give them. Their status as Israel did not change. They were not un-redeemed and sent back to Egypt.
Hebrews uses this as an example to Christians. “How shall we escape….?” Something can be lost even when salvation is not lost. The idea that God cannot see sin in us in any way at all – is a mistake.
2. When in the 18th century Calvinists and Arminians began to attack each other, the greatest offence came from them who said “No falls or backslidings in God’s children can ever bring them again under condemnation” [Works of John Fletcher, vol.1, p.181]. There is a sense in which this is true but it must not be pressed to mean that sin does no damage to our conscience at all and that we can sin without our relationship to God being damaged. The Wesleyans protested. “It represents the sins of the elect as forgiven, not only before they are confessed, but even before they are committed!” [Works of JFletcher, 1, p.183] It would have been easier if the grace-people had distinguished between an unalienable status (on the one hand) and (on the other hand) a father-son relationship which could be damaged by sin and require confession and works of amendment for the relationship to be put right. Psalm 66:18 says “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me”. Is this no longer true for the Christian? Surely our position is the same as the psalmists. But it has nothing to do with our Romans8:1-status.
So I conclude:
1. There is a lot of truth in what Anonymous says. Christians are far too guilt laden. We should learn to forgive ourselves.
2. We are not to feel “guilty” in the sense of feeling rejected or treat ourselves as having the status of a sinner.
3. We do not have to practice confession in the sense of dragging everything out of our memories. The Augsberg Confession rightly said about the Lutheran “confessional” – “an enumeration of sins is not necessary and … consciences should not be burdened with a scrupulous enumeration of all sins because it is impossible to recount all of them. So the Psalm testifies, “Who can discern his errors?” Jeremiah also says, “The heart of man is corrupt and inscrutable.” But if no sins were forgiven except those which are recounted, our consciences would never find peace, for many sins can neither be perceived nor remembered.” Yes, they were right!
4. The Catholic/Anglican/Lutheran stress on “confession” is overdone, and we should put more stress on liberty in Christ. Maybe the Puritan-Lloyd-Jonesean stress on conviction was too introspective. I reckon so. But the thought of confession cannot be thrown out altogether.
BUT:
4. 1 John 1:9 and the Lord’s Prayer and the Old Testament examples of godly pray-ers must not be got rid of. When God convicts us, we should confess the truth of what he says. We need to be convicted when we do what is wrong. Large parts of the New Testament epistles are given over to convicting Christians that they are making mistakes. Nor is the New Testament Christian vastly different from the Old Testament saints. We recognize that the prayers they prayed were in spirit and heart suitable for us to pray, following their great spirituality. Are we more spiritual than David, the man after God’s own heart? I doubt it? Surely the Christian might often want to use Psalm 51 in his own prayers. Is Psalm 51 something to be avoided as “inferior”? Surely not.
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We should give a vote of thanks to Anonymous for making us think about these things, but perhaps his word is not the last one that could be said.
Extra notes added 9th June
