Understanding Confession: Saying the Same Word with God

I have been speaking to you on such subjects as repentance and faith. I'm going to come now to another word about which there is imperfect understanding. That's the word confess. What does it mean to confess? The word comes from two Greek roots, homo and logos. Homo means the same as in the word homogenize, but logos means word, and to confess literally is to say the same word.

When Peter told the Lord Jesus Christ, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, our Lord was quick to commend him and say, You didn't receive that from below but from above. We call that Peter's confession. He said the same word with God about Christ. Now in the same way exactly, when we confess sin, we say the same word. I mentioned already in this series that when I was much younger, I was troubled by a besetting sin of bad temper, but I never called it that. I rationalized it and I called it righteous indignation. It wasn't until I was prepared to say the same word that I faced it. That's confession.

I met an officer in our organization in the Philippines during the war. He was writing a letter to his wife. Knowing the circumstances, I said, I don't know how you do it. He said, Do what? I said, Write love letters to your wife once a week when you're shacking up the beach with a Filipina girl. He stood up, he says, I don't like your attitude. I said, My attitude? He said, Yes, your attitude. I'm ten thousand miles away from home and I have emotional needs and this girl knows that I have such needs and she knows that it's a temporary arrangement. I said to him, You're taking advantage of the destitution in this country after the occupation by the Japanese forces. He said, It's a beautiful friendship. I said, It's a bit of ugly adultery. Now by calling it a beautiful friendship, he was not confessing what it was. To confess means to say the same word, to say the right word about ourselves and likewise, of course, about the Lord Jesus Christ, about our Christian faith.

Now most of you were in the chapel this morning. You heard me quote that verse. The verse that I quoted was, If thou shalt confess with the lips of the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Or to put it into modern translation, If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That is confession. And yet as I was speaking last night on the failures of the Christian life, this is also confession. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Now confession, therefore, is saying what God tells us to say. Agreeing with God. Stating things with God. That's the root meaning of the verb to confess. You say, Now how does it apply to me? Well, first of all, I would like you to understand this clearly, that confession isn't a single act. It's a continued confessing. If you confess, it means to continue confessing.

For instance, supposing in Seattle, a lady came up to me and said, You been to Hawaii? I said, Yes. My husband's in Honolulu. I said, Well, it's a big place. But have you ever been to such and such a church? I said, Yes. Well, my husband goes there. I said, What's the name? She tells me. I said, I think I've met somebody of that name. Johnson? She says, Yes. Was it Hubert Johnson? She says, Yes. I said, I didn't know he was married, though. She said, Well, what do you mean? Did he say he was not married? I said, No, no, I don't mean that, but none of us took him for a married man. We thought he was a bachelor. I mean, he acted as if he was a bachelor. I mean, excuse me, I said, I'm putting my foot in this. Don't you think that lady would begin to feel very uneasy about her husband in Hawaii?

What do you think of a man, for instance, who, when he goes away, takes off his wedding ring? Now, the thing is this. If back home in your Sunday school or Bible class or church or Christian endeavor or Youth for Christ, you've been a confessing Christian, but you're not a confessing Christian here. What's wrong with you? Don't you want to stand up and be counted? That's confession. You say, Well, this is a Christian school. They take a lot for granted. That's the problem. They take a lot for granted, don't they? But to confess Christ means that you take your stand for Christ and continue to take your stand for Christ.

A girl asked me, Well, is it possible to sort of grow up in it? Oh, yes. I was only nine when I was converted, and I didn't have a dramatic conversion. But I had to learn to stand for Christ wherever I went. And I think you've got to learn the same lesson, that here, you're a Christian. Now the other side to it is this. When we look at the perfection of Christ and declare our faith in Him, confess Him, that's what it's called, we also see the shortcomings of our own lives, and we confess them. That's confession.

You say, Well, what do you mean by confession? Do you mean confession to everybody? I like to give this as a maxim. Let the circle of the sin be the circle of the confession. For instance, if you made a promise to God and nobody in the world knows about it except you and God, there's no reason why you should tell anyone except God. But for instance, if you offended your roommate, there's no good telling God about it only. Apologize to your roommate. But if you and your roommate have a little trouble, there's no good telling the whole school about it. Let the circle of the sin be the circle of the confession.

There are certain verses of Scripture that speak of confession as far as confession of sin is concerned. It says, He shall confess that he has sinned in that thing. When you confess, you confess specifically. Now Christians don't do that. Have you heard Christians standing in prayer meetings and saying, Lord, if I've fallen short in any way, please forgive me? Well, what have you said? Exactly nothing. Imagine going to the chief of police and saying, If I've committed a murder, arrest me. If I've robbed a bank, lock me up. If I've cheated on income tax, prosecute me. What do you think the chief of police would say? He'd say, Well, what have you done? You'd say, Well, if I've done anything wrong, do your duty. They'd lock you up, but not in jail. But if I've committed a crime, you see, when we confess, we must confess specifically.

Supposing, in a moment of weakness, Skip Matthews stole my typewriter. Five years later, he writes to me from Oxford, and he says, I have a confession to make. He says, I have a confession to make. Please pray that God may give me an increased respect for other people's property. I'd say, Well, what could I get out of that? Then I noticed that he's typed it on my typewriter. Oh, no. When you confess, you confess specifically. Don't beat around the bush. He said, But supposing I don't know what's wrong, then ask God. There is a verse, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me. But if the Lord shows you, just face it. For instance, did you give a wrong impression? Did you try to deceive? Don't argue and say, Well, what I said was technically correct. Never mind what you said being technically correct. Did you deceive? Then you're guilty of deceit. So you confess it as such.

Now, there's another verse about confession that you find in Scripture. He that covereth the sin shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. When you confess something to God or to one another, you have done with a thing. I heard of an Irishman who went to his parish priest. He said, Father, I've come to confess. He said, I want to confess that I stole two sacks of potatoes. The priest knew the gossip of the village. He said, Did you steal those from Mr. Kelly? He said, Yes, How did you know, Father? He said, I was talking to Mr. Kelly this morning. But he said he'd only lost one sack of potatoes. He said, That's right, Father. He said, I was going to steal the other one this evening. He said, I thought I'd come and confess them both at once. Well, you see, he wasn't having done with a thing.

And I have known of girls, for instance, to apologize for losing their temper, but then say to their friend, Well, if she ever treats me to God again, I'll take her off again. You see, where are you getting there? I can give you other illustrations of that. When you confess sin, you have done with it, by the grace of God. But you may say, Confess to whom? The Lord Jesus Christ gave us this verse, So if you're bringing your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift before the altar and go. First be reconciled with your brother, then come and offer your gift. What gift? Well, in the olden time, before the crucifixion, if a believer wanted to get right with God, he brought an offering, a lamb or a dove.

He laid his hand upon the head of the offering that says, he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing. That's the verse that I already quoted. But now today, of course, when we confess to God, our offering is Jesus Christ. We say, Lord, forgive me for Jesus' sake.

Now, the gist of the verse is then, if you come to the altar of God seeking forgiveness, but remember that your brother has something against you, leave your business before God and go. First be right with your brother, then come and offer your gift. Is it more important to be right with God or with man? I would say with God. With whom shall we put things right first, with God or with man? The Lord Jesus Christ says, with man. Why? Well, first of all, God knows whether or not you have sinned. Your brother may not know until you tell him. God knows whether or not you've truly repented. Your brother doesn't know until you show him. Therefore, the Lord says, if you have sinned against your brother, put it right with him first before you come to me.

You say, but supposing the shoe's on the other foot, supposing somebody has offended me. I remember a deacon of a Baptist church in Portland came to me and said, now, there's been trouble in this church, he said, and a certain person really slandered me. Now, he said, I agree with what you said. He said, if I injure someone, I believe I should confess and put it right. But he said, if somebody injures me, shouldn't I wait for him to come and confess and put it right? I said, no. Again, I'm quoting the Lord Jesus Christ. It says in Matthew 18:15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Who takes the initiative? The innocent party. Why? Well, you see, any trouble between Christians is a wound in the body of Christ. And you should do it for the sake of the Christian testimony. Go out of your way to be reconciled, even though the other person's the person that caused the injury. Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

That runs against human nature. Mrs. Jones comes to church, meets Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith says, did you hear what Mrs. Johnson said about you? No. She said, when you were living in Yakima, you did thus and so, and out comes a piece of gossip. What does Mrs. Jones say? Does she say, now, Mrs. Smith, keep this to yourself, and I'll go and see Mrs. Johnson privately and see if we can't settle this because it's utterly wrong? No, no. She says to Mrs. Smith, did she say that about me? Yes. Well, what do you expect from a pig but a grunt? Then she says, let me tell you something about Mrs. Johnson. When she was living in Walla Walla, now you have a feud. Does Mrs. Jones say, well, now, we must hush this up? Oh, no. She meets somebody else from the church and says, have you heard what Mrs. Johnson said about me? Well, why does she say that? It's like saying, I wouldn't do a thing like that. She would do a mean thing like that, but I would never do a thing like that, so let me tell you about it. And there you have a feud.

Now, the scripture says, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. It says, if he listens to you, you've gained your brother. The late Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse once came to Pasadena to preach and, not Pasadena, but Hollywood, and took a poke at me from the pulpit. And he said, well, Mr. Barnhouse, you took a poke at me from the pulpit. Not about a matter of character, it was a matter of doctrine. He was quite misinformed. I heard about it six times, then I thought, well, I'd better get in touch with this man. When I phoned his hotel, he had gone, so I wrote him a letter.

Now, I'd like to suggest in passing, if ever you've anything to settle with someone, try not to write a letter. Go and see the person face to face. It's much better. Write a letter only if you can't do it any other way. And write it and study it back and forth to make sure that there's no tone conveyed by it that you don't mean to convey. Well, I wrote Dr. Barnhouse a nice, sweet Irish letter. I told him he was utterly off the beam saying this about me, that if he'd taken the trouble to read my book, Full Surrender, he'd have found that I'd taught the very opposite. And I ended my letter in an Irish way by saying, I don't expect a big shot like you to apologize to a small fry like me, but would you allow me to say you've been misquoted or misinformed?

He wrote back a most gracious letter of apology. He said indeed he had made this criticism, but that the following night a lady came to him and said, you said that Edwin Orr taught thus and so. Here's his book in which he says the opposite. He said, let me see that. He said, I've always learned to take what a man writes, puts in print over his name as being more authentic than what people say about him by hearsay. So he said, I apologize from the pulpit the second evening for having criticized you. He said, of course you didn't hear about that. His letter was so gracious that I got convicted. I wrote and apologized to him for not expecting him to apologize to me. It was really rather snooty of me to write the way I did.

Now the scripture says, if he listens to you, you've gained your brother. If I hadn't done that, he and I would have continued at a distance. I would have criticized him and said, well, I don't think much of that man's ministry and so forth. But instead of that, we were reconciled. My wife and I met Dr. Barnhouse and his wife, and he said, if you come to Pennsylvania, especially during the summer, if you'd like to have our country place, there's a farm out there, you could have it any time you like. I said, thank you. We never took advantage of that, but it was a nice gesture. When I went to India, he sent me a check for $500 to help pay expenses. Anyone that sends me a check for $500, I take my friend. But isn't it better to gain your brother again by reconciliation?

It says if he won't listen to you, take one or two witnesses with you. Whom should you take? Your wife and your mother-in-law? That might not be fair to him. He might think you're ganging up on him. If ever I have anything to fix with a friend, I try to take some of his friends and be reconciled on that basis. Bend over backwards to go out of my way. And if he won't listen to your witnesses, tell it to the church. That doesn't mean your denomination. The word church there is the word ecclesia, it means the gathering. For instance, if you both happen to be a member of a quartet, why let it go outside the quartet? Why not say, look, fellas, we're at loggerheads, can't you help settle this? If, on the other hand, you're classmates, why let it go beyond the class? If you belong to the same Christian endeavor, if you're a member of the same choir or congregation or minister's fraternal, don't let it go beyond that.

But it says if he won't listen to the gathering, treat him like a heathen and a tax collector. An Irishman in Toronto said to me, that means you give him one, two, three, four chances to do the right thing, and if he won't do it, then you can really take him to town. I said, no, no. Treat him like a heathen. It's not a nasty word, that. It means, like, for instance, suppose you meet a Japanese Buddhist, and he says, good morning. Do you say, I speak only to free Methodists? No, no. You say, good morning to Buddhists, too. He's your neighbor. So you treat him like a neighbor, but not like a brother. If some professing Christian treats you badly and won't put things right, don't say to him, let's have a little prayer meeting about Billy Graham's crusade or for spiritual emphasis week. You haven't confidence in him anymore. But treat him kindly like a neighbor. It says, pay all of them their dues, as far as tax collectors are concerned. So you treat him like a tax collector. You don't try to get your own back on him.

Now, these are the rules of private confession. When you go to someone, you confess your fault, not his fault. Don't say, I'm sorry I lost my temper, but if you hadn't been so downright mean. For that, you don't confess his fault. You confess your fault.

Now, one other verse that I'm quoting about confession, and this, again, is confession of sin, is, it says, confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed. When Methodism was the most powerful evangelistic force in the world, its secret strength lay in its class meeting. And in the class meeting, people shared things. For instance, they'd give a testimony how God had been good to them during the week, or perhaps one would speak up and say, please pray for me, I've been going through a lot of temptation. And that kind of confession is also taught in Scripture. Therefore, confess, the Greek word is tasamatias, which is your shortcomings, your sins.

It's translated false, but, therefore, confess your shortcomings one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed. You say, well, couldn't that lead to a lot of scandal? It doesn't say confess the details of your sins, or your sinful acts, or anything like that.

Now, for example, supposing I felt led to say to a group like this—this is hypothetical—I want to confess that I've been careless about making income tax returns. That might have a salutary effect upon others here who also have been careless. But if I said to you, my trouble is my own cleverness. I've got such a clever scheme of cheating them that they couldn't possibly catch me on. Let me tell you how it works. As soon as I tell you how it works, I have provided you with a temptation instead of a confession. Can you pray for me? Well, it means you might be tempted to do the same thing now that you've learned how to do it. See the point?

Now, as far as confession is concerned, that's why I've found that sometimes people can be unwise in confessing some things in public that should be better said in private, or in secret, especially regarding sex. We all have glands. We're human beings. If we put an announcement in the Seattle papers that Seattle Pacific College was going to have a series of prayer meetings to confess our failures, to pray for missionaries in the foreign field, it wouldn't cause a ripple. But if there was a report in the Seattle papers that a great outbreak of confession of sex sin had broken out at Seattle Pacific College, and there were public meetings in the First Free Methodist Church, the place would be packed to the ceiling because there's a sordid interest in sex.

Therefore, you remember that you confess, therefore confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another that you may be healed. You confess in order to get prayer, in order to be delivered. The Greek word's the word for delivered. You just say enough to get people to pray for you. Therefore, it's a very healthy thing to have a prayer group in college, and share your testimonies, one with the other, and your shortcomings, and say, pray for me, I've been very depressed this week, or pray for me, I was tempted to cheat in an examination, or something like that. You can say such things, and that's taught in Scripture.

But the verse that I quoted at the beginning, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, that's probably the strongest verse on confession. Let me put it in the negative. If we do not confess our sins, he will withhold the forgiveness. I tried to explain in one of the other meetings, this is for fellowship, not for salvation. It's written to believers, those who are continuing to be believers. You confess to God, and he forgives. And it says, he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Now, this is my last informal meeting with you. Tomorrow will be the chapel service, and I've got a very simple thing I want to do. In a moment, we're going to shut off the tape. I've tried to be the spokesman for the Lord to you, to tell you what God wants to say to you this week. I'm going to ask if you would be prepared to tell us what you have said to God this week. Some of you may say, well, I've been restored from backsliding. This morning I made a decision. Tell us. Somebody else might say, well, I've been neglecting my prayer life, but now I have victory again.

I'm going to read a verse of Scripture to you. I want you to try and follow it with me. I'm reading from the 116th Psalm. Can you say these words? I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and supplications, because he's inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I will call upon him as long as I live. Can you say that? The sorrows of death compassed me, the pains of hell got hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow. Have you had troubles and sorrows? Then I called upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous, yes, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low and he helped me. Return to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord as long as I live. Can you say that? I believed, therefore, have I spoken. One reason why you haven't spoken is because you haven't really believed. Now you believe, why don't you speak?

What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. What does that mean? How would you expand that verse? By the way, in this psalm it occurs twice. Verse 14, I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. Verse 18, I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people.

I have a Japanese friend here. English is not her mother tongue, although she speaks it quite well. I'm going to ask her, what would you say this meant? I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. So far as you understand English, what do you think that means? A vow is a promise. I'll read it then. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all his people. It means something. All the people can hear what I say. If I tell the lie, they can say I told a lie. Yes. You put yourself on the spot. Yes, thank you.

Why did I ask such an obvious question? Does this mean that you go home to your bedroom and say, well, I'm going to be a better Christian? No. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. Why is that given to us? Well, I'll tell you why. The Lord Jesus Christ is our intercessor in heaven. When we pray, we pray in his name. He presents it to the Father. But the Holy Spirit is the intercessor on earth. He teaches us how to pray. Therefore, if we pray in the Spirit, we are sure of having our prayers presented in heaven.

Now, where is the Holy Spirit? Where does he live? Over in the Olympics? No. Could anyone tell me, where does the Holy Spirit dwell? He dwells in the heart of the Christian. Therefore, as far as the student body of Seattle Pacific College is concerned, speaking representatively, he's here, isn't he? Now, if you go to your bedroom and say, Lord, I must be a better Christian. I promise you, I'll make your promise. You've got one single arrow going to heaven. But if you stood up in a company like this and said, God spoke to me this week about the mission field. By his grace, I'm going to give my life to his service. Lots of people will say amen with you. That means that a whole shoal of arrows are sent up in intercession to the throne of grace. To my mind, that's a secret of intercession. That's why you pay your vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

Now, remember, we're not asking for anything private, anything better not said. But I asked you, has God spoken to you this week? If he has, have you spoken to God this week? Are you willing to tell us what you've said?