Confession and The Prodigal Son

For me one of the most meaningful parts of our worship service at Grace is the time we spend in confession at the beginning of the service.  Second only to the Lord’s Supper, it is when I feel deeply “connected” with God.  I did not grow up in a “liturgical” church, and corporate confession was not practiced.  However, over time, I have discovered my need for such intentional confession of my sins and am developing a deeper understanding of its purpose.  

When we confess our sins, we affirm our sinful nature —who we are in our bodies of flesh—and our total reliance on God’s grace for our spiritual health and salvation—who we are in Christ.  Confession does not diminish our joy; rather, it fuels it.  With a deeper awareness of our brokenness, the more breathtaking God’s love becomes, and the more deeply we enter into that true rest that our Lord and Savior has already won for us on Calvary.  Praise and gratitude flow from confession.

I love how at Grace we are intentional with how we address and prepare for corporate confession by explaining its purpose before we say together a confession modeled after Thomas Cranmer’s well crafted prayer.  When I have the honor to serve as an officiant, I will typically end that “explanation” by saying something like, “Before we corporately confess our sins, let’s take a moment—privately—to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin, and let’s acknowledge these to the Lord and thank him for the forgiveness already provided.”  I will then pause to allow for a moment of private reflection and confession.  I have always struggled, however, to know how long to pause?  If I were to pause long enough for me to reflect on all my sins, then we would be at Church all day—and then some.

This struggle with not knowing how long to pause was resolved when I was reminded of the parable of the prodigal son,  Remember, the prodigal son, after spending some time in a pig sty, came to the realization that he would be better off as a servant in his father’s house than in his present condition.  So he practiced what he would say to his father and traveled back to his father’s house to confess to his father how he had wronged him.  What happened next?  The father saw him in the distance and ran to the prodigal son while he “was still a long way off.”  Our Heavenly Father, too, meets us where we are.  Next, in his father’s presence, the prodigal son begins to recite his rehearsed confession, but his father interrupts him before he can finish and immediately calls for his servants to begin preparations for a feast.  The point being—confession is not for God, but it is for us.  God already knows our sins, all of them, and he does not need for us to recount each and every one of them to forgive us of those sins.  That has already been accomplished on the Cross.  His grace and mercy are abundant and overflowing.  It is our act in confessing our sins, compelled by the Holy Spirit working within us, that enables us to more fully enjoy the feast that our Father has prepared for us.  Grace.  Amazing Grace.

Carter