Grace Classics: Escape to Reality Greatest Hits, Volume 2 (7 page)

If you know me, you will know that
nothing winds me up faster than telling people they must do things like confess
to be forgiven. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, confessing your sins
does not compel God to forgive you. God does not forgive us on account of our
confession but in accordance with his grace.

Since I
bang this drum loudly and often, some have concluded that I am opposed to
confession. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I have said from the
beginning, confession is good for you. Or rather, confession can be good for
you—if it’s done properly.

In the
pursuit of self-righteousness, confession is a hideous thing. It is
introspective navel-gazing that promotes sin- and self-consciousness. Among
Catholics and Protestants alike, confession of sins is sometimes sold as the
price you must pay to receive the gift of forgiveness. To enjoy God’s grace and
fellowship we’re told to admit our crimes, no matter how small. To the natural
mind this seems like a good deal; you talk, you walk. But it is a prostitution
of a great and priceless love.

Let’s be
clear—either the love of God is unconditional or it’s not love. Unless you
receive his forgiveness as a free gift you won’t receive it at all.

There is
no doubt that the practice of confession has been abused, but as a friend of
mine likes to say, the correct response to abuse is not non-use but proper use.
So what is the proper use of confession and why should we do it? Let me suggest
two good reasons for confession:

1. Confession helps us to
receive grace

Grace is not for everyone, only
the needy. To receive God’s grace, we must first acknowledge our need for
grace. Paul said, “My God shall supply all your need…” (Philippians 4:19). If
you don’t recognize your need, you won’t receive his supply.

This
point is often lost among those of us who proclaim grace. We preach that “you
are as righteous, holy, and perfect as Jesus”—and we are right to do so. In
Christ you are all those things.

But what
if there is a disconnect between your identity and experience? You may say, “I
know I am righteous but I don’t
feel
righteous. I’m battling with
unrighteous thoughts.” You’ve got two choices: You can pretend that there’s no
problem or you can come to the throne of grace to receive grace in your hour of
need.

Let me
give you an example. A few years I was battling a certain temptation that just
wouldn’t go away. I had done nothing wrong, but I was vulnerable. I was heading
in a bad direction and felt powerless to stop.

So what
did I do? I confessed my need for grace. I prayed the best prayer a needy man
can pray: “God, help!” I cast my anxieties upon him and he helped me.

Within a
day the stronghold was broken and I was completely free. The temptation no
longer had any hold on me. That’s how grace works. God gives grace to the
humble—to those who are honest and open about their needs and weaknesses—and
his grace changes us.

In this
case I confessed my need and was set free by grace. But what if things had
gotten worse and I had fallen into sin? What then? Again, confession can help
but not for the reasons usually taught. Remember, confession doesn’t manipulate
God into forgiving us. So what good is confession when we sin?

2. Confession helps me to live
whole

One of the ways sin hurts us is
through guilt and condemnation. Guilt is a sign that something is wrong and
needs to be addressed; confession is a good way to address it.

When I
kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long… my strength
was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did
not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.”
(Psalm 32:3–5)

I hear from people all the time
who are torn up inside on account of some past sin. They may have some
understanding of God’s grace and they may even accept that they are forgiven,
yet they still battle with guilt. It’s as if there is this sin parasite inside
them, eating them alive. Like David, their bones are wasting away and their
strength is sapped.

If this
is you, drag that dark thing into the light. Talk to your heavenly Father about
it or find a trusted friend. Sin thrives in darkness and we are called to be
children of the light.

David
suffered because he kept silent. Here’s the equation: Sin + silence =
suffering. This is the maths of Adam that leads us to hide behind bushes of
blame and facades of self-righteousness. Now let me show you the new math of
Jesus: Sin + confession = healing. Here’s the relevant scripture:

Make
this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each
other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:16, MSG)

Sin is utterly destructive and we
mustn’t pretend otherwise. But just as sunshine kills germs, the light of God’s
grace breaks the power of sin and darkness.

As a
church leader, James understood this. He knew that one of the ways we receive
God’s grace is through our grace-giving brothers and sisters. James was not
trying to shackle you with an accountability partner; he was giving you wisdom
on how to live free.

Quit pretending and ‘fess up

Sin has power over us whenever we
try to resist it in our own strength. If you’re thinking, “I’m okay, I can
handle this, I can’t let anyone know I’m struggling,” then beware the slippery
slope! God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Want grace? Then
admit your need for it.

To
recap: Confessing our sins does not compel God to forgive us. (He already did.)
Neither does confession restore fellowship with an offended Father. (He
promised to never leave nor forsake us.) Confession, or freely acknowledging
our needs and total dependence on God, is our faith-filled response to God our
Helper. Confession helps us walk in the supernatural power of his grace.

A word after

I said earlier that it’s helpful
to draw dividing lines separating grace from mixture, but sometimes those lines
get confused. For instance, there is a perception that grace preachers are
preaching a law of “Thou shalt not confess!” As I explain in my book
The
Hyper-Grace Gospel
, this is a myth. We are not against confession; we are
for confession as the Bible defines it.

Biblical
confession is essential for receiving grace (see Romans 10:9–13, Philippians
4:19). However, ritualistic confession done in the hope of earning God’s gifts,
is dangerous. How do you tell the difference? Biblical confession will always
leave you focused on Jesus and his goodness, while ritualistic confession will
leave you focused on yourself and your shortcomings. The former is always
Son-conscious, while the latter is sin-conscious.

Proverbs
28:13 says, “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who
confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” Confessing sins doesn’t compel God
to forgive you, but it certainly helps you to find or receive the grace he has given
us through his Son. This is a truth to be believed before it is felt. As I say
in
The Hyper-Grace Gospel
:

When you
sin it takes no faith to beat yourself up and agree with the Accuser who calls
you a sinner. It takes faith to look at the cross and say, “Thank you, Jesus,
for carrying all my sin.” It takes faith to praise your Father for his
superabounding grace that is greater than your transgression. And it takes
faith to agree with the Holy Spirit who says, despite what you did, you are
still righteous, acceptable, and pleasing to God.

Yet another school shooting has
resulted in the loss of innocent lives and now questions are being asked:
“Where was God? Why didn’t God stop this? Why didn’t God protect the lives of
those twenty children and six staff members?”

For a
grieving parent, these are normal questions. When you have suffered the
greatest loss any human can suffer it is perfectly understandable to scream,
Why?
Death is awful. It is an enemy. I hate it and God hates it too.

I
hesitate to write because many are using this latest tragedy as an opportunity
to grandstand and advance their particular causes. “We need fewer guns. We need
more prayer. We need to turn back to God and stop abortions.”

Causes
have their place but in a week when families are burying their children, this
is not the time. But the questions aren’t going away. Loud men with agendas are
shouting at us. “God is judging America! We need to repent! We need to
legislate the kingdom of God into existence!”

How
should we respond to these loud men?

I
usually respond to foolishness by ignoring it. But this morning someone “new to
the grace teaching” wrote to me and asked for my thoughts. Here they are:

1. Is God judging America?

No. Anyone who tells you otherwise
is unacquainted with the gospel. The sins of America, along with the sins of
every other nation, were judged at the cross. If Christ’s death was a
sufficient sacrifice—and it was (see Hebrews 10:12)—then God cannot judge
America for her sins. It would be unjust for God to judge the same sin twice.

When an
earthquake flattened my hometown in 2011, some said God was judging
Christchurch for its sins. By that logic God should have wiped America off the
face of the map because the sins of a city are few in comparison to the sins of
a superpower. I’ll say now what I said then: The cross—not earthquakes or
massacres—is God’s remedy for sin.

The sins
of America were forgiven or done away with long before the Mayflower Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Rock. Sin certainly has destructive consequences, as we have
just seen in Connecticut, but divine judgment is not one of them. Jesus is the
Prince of Peace.

2. Whose fault was it?

Not God’s. “The highest heavens belong
to the Lord, but the earth he has given to man” (Psalm 115:16).

God gave
us this planet and we are responsible for much of what happens. Who first
sinned and opened the door to death? It wasn’t God. It was one of us (Roman
5:12).

Some are
now saying that we let Satan into our schools when we took the prayer out.
Actually, Satan’s been messing with us a lot longer than that. His evil
influence goes all the way back to the Garden. But Satan could not have
influenced us if we had not listened to his lies.

The
blame game isn’t helpful, but if you must point the finger, blame Adam whose
decision to reject God brought death to us all, or blame his offspring who
built a civilization on violence. But don’t blame God. That’s like blaming the
sun for the darkness.

3. What did we do to deserve
this?

Nothing. When bad things happen we
tend to wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?” This is the voice of religious
reason. It’s Job sitting in the ashes examining his navel for unconfessed sin.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve been good, yet I’ve lost everything so maybe I wasn’t.”

We are
natural scorekeepers. When good things happen we tell ourselves it’s because
we’ve been good. So when bad things happen we must’ve been bad. Some call it
karma but like all manmade religion it is fruit off the wrong tree.

Two thousand
years ago a tower collapsed killing eighteen people. This tragedy led Jesus to
pose a question to the religious-minded folk of his day, “Do you think that
those who died were more sinful than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell
you, no!” (Luke 13:4–5).

Sometimes
people die because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had those
children and teachers at Sandy Hook done anything deserving of death? Of course
not. There may be no lesson here. No “avoid this next time.” All we can take
from this, said Jesus, is that death comes to us all. So repent, and come to
him for new life (Luke 13:5).

4. Why didn’t God stop this
from happening?

In a manner of speaking, he
couldn’t—not without violating us. I know this will come as something of a
shock, but God doesn’t always get what he wants. He is not willing that any
perish, yet people perish. God could intervene but he restrains himself on
account of love.

Consider:
The greatest massacre in history happened when Adam ate the forbidden fruit.
Adam’s act condemned the human race to death and God did nothing to stop it. It
wasn’t God’s will for Adam to eat, yet Adam ate. And it wasn’t God’s will for
Adam Lanza to go to that school in Connecticut , yet Adam went.

Free
will is a powerful thing. With it we can choose life or death and Almighty God
won’t stop us. In giving us the freedom to choose knowing that he would have to
go to the cross to redeem our choices, God was saying that he would rather die
than live without us.

5. Has God left the building?

No. The question, “Where was God?”
implies that God is not here. Perhaps he skipped town when we stopped prayer in
schools or when the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade. “We’re sinners and God
doesn’t want anything to do with us.” Such thinking usually leads to a long
list of
things we must do
to fix the problem.

What a
deception! God did not leave us; we left him. God didn’t reject Adam; Adam
rejected God. “Adam, where are you?” (Genesis 3:9).

The
story of our species is one of unrequited love. God made us for love but we
spurned him. Since then he has waited for the prodigal to come to his senses
and return home.

6. How should we respond?

With love and grace. This tragedy
in Connecticut did not happen because God stopped loving us or caring for us.
Neither did it happen because our religious performance is not what it could
be. It happened because a certain young man made an awful choice and did a
terrible thing.

What
should we do in response? We should weep with those who weep and mourn with
those who mourn. We should ache and hurt and cry because we live in a world
where children sometimes die from bullets, poverty, and disease. We should pray
for the families of Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino, Olivia
Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, Madeleine Hsu,
Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Nancy Lanza, Jesse Lewis, Ana
Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne Marie Murphy, Emilie
Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle
Richman, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Soto, Benjamin Wheeler, and
Allison Wyatt. We could pray that in this dark night they might somehow know
the comfort of God.

And when
the time of mourning has passed we should get up and carry on with the task
Jesus has given us—that of proclaiming the good news of his kingdom. We should
provide a broken world with a prophetic picture of the age to come—the age
where justice reigns and heaven and earth are one. Darkness only persists
because the light does not shine, so shine.

The
answer to violence is not to stick the Ten Commandments back in the courthouses
or build higher walls around communities. For the children of God, these are
inferior choices. What this sick and dying world needs most is a revelation of
God
with us.

God is
not opposed to us. He loves us warts and all. While we were sinners he died for
us and now he lives for us. What America and every other nation needs is a
revelation of God’s limitless love. They need to see Jesus.

A word after

Some days I get up and find my
whole day is mapped out for me by E2R readers. In December 2012, I received the
following message from a lady called Pat:

I would
be curious to hear your thoughts on the recent school tragedy in Connecticut. Specifically,
where was God? The popular response to the question is that we have asked him
to leave our institutional systems like government, education, and so on. That
doesn’t sit well with me, but I’m still new to the grace teaching, and would
like to hear your thoughts.

I’m not usually able to respond to
requests—there are so many of them—but something about this question stirred me
to write. So if you liked the article above, you can thank Pat.

After it
came out a mother of school-age children asked me this follow-up question: “If
God can’t stop violent acts from happening, why bother praying for protection?”
To clarify, God certainly can stop things from happening. My point was that he
didn’t stop the Connecticut School shooting from happening. How do I know?
Because it happened.

The mom
who asked this question then shared the following story:

When my
daughter was in the 9th grade a boy was found in her school with a gun. He had
a list on him and my child’s name was on that list. Every day since then I’ve
prayed for the Lord to protect my kids and their schools from shootings. I’m
not saying that my prayers alone stopped this (maybe they did, I don’t know)
but all I know is that someone wanted to kill my child and they were stopped.

And thank God they were! But what
lesson do we take from this?

If you
are worried about your kids have the freedom to cast your cares upon the Lord.
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). But
don’t fall for the lie that your prayers are the only thing protecting your
children or that God won’t intervene unless you pray. Job felt this way and his
fears made him a superstitious man. Every time his kids went partying he felt
like he had to offer sacrifices in case they’d sinned (Job 1:5). This is a fearful
and faithless way to live.

Fear for
our children can be a form of bondage. At some point we need to come to a place
of restful trust in the Lord. We have to choose to believe that he cares for
our kids even more than we do. It’s not easy. The world is a dangerous place
and our children are small. We have to strive to enter his rest and one way to
do that is to stand on his many wonderful promises to us (e.g., Isaiah 49:25,
54:13, Proverbs 12:7).

If I
felt that my kids weren’t safe
unless
I prayed for their protection, I’d
never stop praying. I wouldn’t have a life. But I choose to believe God’s word.
Now when one of them goes out I’m likely to pray, “Thank you, Father that you
are watching over my kids even when I’m not. Thank you that you protect them
even when I can’t. Thank you that you care even when I forget to pray.”

I don’t
beg God to do what he’s promised to do. Instead I remind myself of his word and
thank him for it. Job’s fear made him superstitious but God’s word can set you
free. It’s a totally different way to live.