Confession is GOOD!
RESTING IN GOD'S LOVE
Mark Warner
5 min read
King David famously prayed,
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
He regularly engaged in self-examination. What is self-examination? As Adele Calhoun wrote, “Self-examination is a process whereby the Holy Spirit opens our hearts to what is true about us.”
Now, I know that sounds like something you might want to avoid. But the practice of self-examination is not about morbid introspection or engaging in a neurotic shame-inducing inventory where you list all your faults and sins. It’s about cooperating with God in your own transformation. Self-examination, done regularly, done purposefully, is a way of opening yourself to God within the safety of his extravagant, unconditional love. Healthy self-examination always leads to deeper self-awareness and a desire for confession.
Confession is the natural outcome of healthy self-examination. It embraces Christ’s gift of forgiveness and restoration while setting us on a path to renewal and change. Confession really is good for the soul! We see this truth demonstrated in the life of David. King David was the second King of Israel. He was a great warrior who singlehandedly defeated the giant Goliath. As a general, he was prolific in battle, winning many victories. David was also a musician. He was a poet, a lover of God. He was humble, incredibly generous, magnanimous to his enemies, faithful to his friends. But with Bathsheba, King David revealed that he was also an adulterer, a liar and ultimately, a murderer.
If you haven’t heard the story, King David took advantage of his high position and forced himself on another man’s wife, a woman named Bathsheba. When she became pregnant from their adulterous affair, he tried to cover his tracks. When that didn’t work, he had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, murdered in battle and took her into the palace as his wife. For a year, he kept his sins hidden, showing no remorse, until the Lord confronted him through the prophet Nathan. But it wasn’t an open confrontation, an intervention. David’s heart was so hard, he was so self-deceived, that God sent Nathan to tell him a story instead. He said,
“There were two men in a certain town. One was rich, and one was poor. 2 The rich man owned many sheep and cattle. 3 The poor man owned nothing but a little lamb he had worked hard to buy. He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man’s own plate and drank from this cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter. 4 One day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man. But instead of killing a lamb from his own flocks for food, he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it and served it to his guest.” 5 [Hearing the story] David was furious. “As surely as the LORD lives,” he vowed, “any man who would do such a thing deserves to die! 6 He must repay four lambs to the poor man for the one he stole and for having no pity.” 7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are that man! The LORD, the God of Israel, says…9 ‘Why, then, have you despise the word of the LORD and done his horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah and stolen his wife (2 Samuel 12:1-7, 9)!”
Wow, “you are that man!” His sin exposed, David finally fell under conviction and confessed, “I have sinned against the LORD.” The introduction to Psalm 51 reads as follows:
For the choir director: A psalm [or song] of David, regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba (Psalm 51).
Can you imagine? David so broken, so sorry for what he’d done, they turn his confession into a choir number. It remains, today, one of the most beautiful examples of self-examination and repentance in the Bible. Why? Because David finally allowed the Holy Spirit to open his heart to the truth about himself. In that moment of self-revelation, he chose transparency without excuses.
David could have rationalized or excused his behavior. When he was confronted by the prophet Nathan, he could have said, “But I’m the King and besides, everyone is doing it. I have lots of friends who’ve had sex outside of marriage. What’s so bad about sex between two consenting adults? Don’t we have a right to happiness? We love each other.” David could have anesthetized his conscience. We do that all the time. We’re constantly putting chloroform on our consciences. We have ready lists of reasons why we don’t have to go along with what God wants us to do, why what we’ve done really isn’t wrong. “I never said I was perfect. After all, we all make mistakes.” Yet Jesus commands perfection. He said,
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).
We say, “But, I’m only human.” Yes, you’re only human but that doesn’t mean you’re free to sin. “But, I can’t help it.” Yes, you can help it. You just don’t want to change. “But, it just happened. There was nothing I could do about it.” No situation forces you to sin. You choose to sin, plain and simple. You weren’t walking innocently along the path when you fell into a hole. You chose the hole and you chose to fall. “But, I’ve got a right to be happy.” Debatable. Even the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee your right to happiness, only your freedom to pursue it. I’ll tell you what isn’t debatable, you don’t have a right to disobey God in your pursuit of happiness. You don’t have a right to lie or hurt other people or break your marriage vow in your pursuit of happiness. “But, I’m a nice person. I work hard. I’m a good mom, a good friend.” This isn’t a balancing act! Sin is sin and it’s not cancelled out by all the good things you do. A lie is still a lie even if you give to charity. “But, this thing I’m doing is so small in the grand scheme of things.” Your little sin, my little sin, caused Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to be nailed to a cross. Your little sin, and my little sin, are acts of profound ingratitude to God our Father who has only ever been good to us. When we repeatedly sin and rationalize away our behavior, we anesthetize our consciences. When we sin and don’t confess, we put our consciences to sleep, just like David did.
Years ago, I read a story of a man who was addicted to pornography. He said the first time he went into an adult bookstore, he couldn’t even pick up one of the magazines. He was trembling. He was so embarrassed. He was afraid someone might see him. He walked in, looked at some of the magazine covers, and immediately walked out. He was really shaken by the incident and felt horrible afterwards. The second time he went in, he was able to pick up a magazine and actually purchase it. But he was still shaking afterwards. He said by the tenth time he went into that adult bookstore, he was able to casually walk up, thumb through the magazines in public, chat with the clerk, and walk out. His conscience had been dulled, chloroformed, anesthetized. This is how we fall into besetting sins like lying, gossip, slander, theft, lust and so much more. To keep on doing the thing we know we ought not to do, we have to put our consciences to sleep!
Is there an area of your life where you’ve chloroformed your conscience? Have you put your conscience to sleep in the area of your own pride? Do you sometimes explode in anger? Is there some area of your life the Holy Spirit might right now speak to you and say, “Here is a place where you’ve put your conscience to sleep, where you heart is not open to the truth about yourself? Here is a place where you’re not taking responsibility for what you’re doing or what you’ve done?”
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