Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 014. Chapter 4: Confession

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 014. Chapter 4: Confession



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 014. Chapter 4: Confession

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CONFESSION.

THE Bible gives an important place to confession of sin. Its message may be summed up in the words, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. The Old Testament teaches that confession of sins is the necessary expression of true repentance, and is also the condition of the Divine forgiveness. And though confession of sins is only once expressly named in the Gospels, the New Testament takes full account of its importance. “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel.” His last recorded words declare that” repentance and remission of sins should be preached “in His name unto all nations, and neither repentance nor remission of sins is considered possible from the Biblical standpoint until sins are confessed. “Father, I have sinned,” said the prodigal when he came to himself. The publican who went down to his house justified had smitten upon his heart, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” whilst the Pharisee whom our Lord pilloried made no confession of sin. If we desire to claim the promises of pardon for our sins, we must fulfil the condition by confessing our sins. “With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” “The Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God our Heavenly Father, but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart, to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same by His infinite goodness and mercy.”

1. In confession the worshipper’s keenest; consciousness is of his weakness, his guilt, his unworthiness. “O my God, my sins are many, great are my transgressions,” is the confession of the sinner in one of the penitential psalms of the Babylonians. “I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me,” says a Hebrew psalmist. Yet always, mingled with the consciousness of his own sin, the penitent has the vivid consciousness of God, else this were no religious experience, and the consciousness of intercourse with God, else it were no prayer. In penitential prayer I am conscious of my weakness, my failure, my sin, not as a merely individual experience, and not simply as a contravention of human law, an attack on society, a wrong to my fellow-men, but in its relation to God. I am conscious of my weakness as contrasted with His strength, of my sin as opposition to His will. And I cry, in the acuteness of this personal contact of sinning soul with Divine Self, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned”.

2. The formal confessions of later times in the Bible always acknowledge the justice of God. “Thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve,” and “Thou art just in all that is come upon us”. So the worshippers can do nothing but throw themselves upon the marvellous mercy of God. “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses.” He is ready to blot out as a thick cloud their transgressions. He is a God that pardons iniquity. True, it is this persistent goodness of God—what Ezra twice calls His “manifold mercies”—that makes their wickedness so heinous. They had sinned against a light that had shone as the noon-day. But as that mercy was the deepest thing in the Divine nature, it could always be depended upon by those who turned to it in sincerity and truth. So they confess in hope. “For we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies;” and a passionate earnestness rings through the words with which this prayer concludes: “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God”.