Word of Encouragement (08/23/2023)

So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the LORD and fasted on that day and said there, "We have sinned against the LORD." And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah. (1 Sam. 7:6)

We are reflecting on the deficiencies of the Israelites’ confession at Mizpah, particularly its lack of specificity. Why should our confession be specific rather than general?

To answer this question, we must consider what the goal of confession is. We can have a self-centered goal. We may want to confess our sins to get them off our chest because a guilty feeling is a heavy burden to bear. We may want to confess our sins so we can have the assurance of forgiveness, so we don’t have to worry about them anymore. While we cannot deny that we have such motives, we know that they are not quite right. If we sinned against someone, it was probably due to our self-centeredness, among other things; we hurt him with our self-centered actions or words. If so, is it right that we should be so self-centered in confessing our sins to him? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the person we offended and his well-being?

If you are the offended party, what would you want from the one who sinned against you? I would like him to value our relationship enough to do whatever needs to be done to restore the strained relationship to what it should be. This will require more than mere words of apology, however sincere they sound; he should be willing to make amends and stop engaging in his offensive behavior. But I cannot discount the importance of his apology/confession. I’d like him to demonstrate that he knows exactly what it was that he did wrong and is sorry for it. We can see why this is so important for the proper restoration of the strained relationship. How can we be assured that he will not do the same thing again and again if he doesn’t know what his sin was and why it was wrong?

If we need to be specific with our confession of sin, it is because the proper goal of confession is reconciliation and restoration of relationships. We should keep this in mind even when we are the offended party. When others apologize to us, our goal should not be to punish them and make them suffer for what they did. For God has freely forgiven us in Jesus Christ. We cannot accept this free grace of God and refuse to forgive others as God has forgiven us. We, too, should value the relationship enough to work toward reconciliation and restoration. As they do their part of confessing their sins and repenting of them, we should also grant them forgiveness and another chance (actually, seventy-seven times in a day, Matt. 18:22).

It goes without saying that we should be as specific as possible in our confession to God. Yes, as an all-knowing God, He knows everything we have done. In commanding us to confess our sins to Him, He is not asking for information He does not have. He wants us to acknowledge what He already knows so that we can be in agreement with God regarding the ways we have sinned against Him. Our confession of sin is one way by which our hearts are to be conformed to His heart. God uses this means also to set us free from the burden and guilt of our sins. And it is this gospel truth, which gives us the courage we need to confess our sins to those, against whom we have sinned.

Do you have any sins to confess before God? Before others? May the Lord give you the courage to confess them in all honesty and specificity!