I remember watching the old Perry Mason television programs, starring Raymond Burr as the title character. I used to say to myself that if Perry Mason tried every case there would be no unsolved crimes. No matter how difficult the case was he was able to not only solve the case, but get the main suspect to confess. Only on television. What is interesting to note here is that while a confession is an admission of guilt, it is not a request for to be forgiven of your crime. Yet, within the realm of Christianity, there seems to be a unanimously held belief that God requires us to confess our sins in order to be forgiven of them. I happened across the website of a large and popular Christian denomination. Under a section titled, Sin and Salvation, I found the following:
[Denomination] believe it is through the action of God working in us that we become aware of our sinfulness and our need for God's mercy and forgiveness. Just as a parent is quick to welcome a wayward child who has repented of rebellion, God is willing to forgive our sins if we but confess them and ask for forgiveness in the name of Christ.
I have no problem with admitting that a sin you are guilty of committing is a sin. However, to ask God to forgive you is to believe that you are not forgiven in the first place. I wonder how many Christians would agree with the statement above from this denominations website. I also wonder how many of those same Christians would say that Jesus died to take away all their sins. My question to them would be, "Which one is it?" Jesus either took away all our sins or He didn't. And if He didn't then that means He either must die again to pay for whatever sins He missed the first time or we must find a sacrifice equal to or greater than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Both are wrong.
"When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" Hebrews 9:11-14
Jesus Christ obtained eternal redemption when He gave His life for us. Eternal means forever. That means that the sins you and I commit today and tomorrow were forgiven 2,000 years ago! Many Christians will say that Jesus only died for the sins we commit as an unbeliever or that He didn't die for our future sins. Well, unless you are over two thousand years old, all your sins you will ever commit were in the future when Jesus died. Furthermore, I can't speak for anybody else, but when I used to asked God to forgive my sins it didn't change my behavior one bit. All it did was make me feel better about my sin and supposed relationship with God until the next time I sinned. I was only fulfilling my religious duty as I believe every other Christian who does the same thing is doing. Think about it, without all the man-made rituals we perform to try and obtain more forgiveness how else would these institutions survive? Every time we ask God to do what He has already done we are calling Him a liar and our actions are not an expression of faith in what Jesus Christ has done for us. If sin separates us from God, and we have to keep asking Him to forgive us every time we sin, how are we going to be able to serve Him? You can't serve a God if you feel your sins are still coming between you and Him.
"When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." Hebrews 9: 19-22
I remember it as if it was yesterday. "Father forgive me, for I have sinned. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads me to sin." I used to say this prayer every night! The fact that I did so was proof that I hadn't stopped sinning nor was I avoiding sin. Plus, if God is helping me, and I am still sinning, what does that say about God? Not to mention the fact that by asking forgiveness from Him, I was admitting that I didn't believe I was forgiven. Even worse was the fact that I believed that there was something wrong with me and that I had try harder and harder to stop sinning. It is this never-ending cycle of sin and forgiveness that keeps many believers trapped in their sins unable to approach God for His mercy in their time of need. Ultimately, we must realize that these ritualistic prayers do not meet God's requirements of shed blood in order to get forgiveness. It is like we believe that God required the blood of bulls and goats as payment for our sins in the Old Testament, but now, through Christ's sacrifice, we only need to ask God to forgive us. There is no shed blood in our apology! Did Jesus die so we could apologize? Of course He didn't. He died because there is nothing we could ever offer to God that He would accept as payment for our sins.
"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." Galatians 5: 1-4
When Perry Mason breaks a defendant, that individual has been overwhelmed by the amount of evidence against them. Whether they confessed or not, they were going to be found guilty of the crime and punished for it. That is not any different than what we feel when we are asking God to forgive us. We feel that if we don't admit the sin, we will be found guilty anyway and sentenced to some sort of punishment. Well, the wages of sin is death. So, if we are supposed to die when we sin, but we don't, do we think it is because we confessed our sin or because Jesus died in our place? The answer is obvious. We make Jesus of no value to us when we deny His sacrifice. God's grace is that He withholds the punishment for our sins because He sees the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Anything we do to obtain more forgiveness is proof that we have fallen from grace and back under the yoke of slavery which is religious obedience. We are free in Christ. That doesn't mean that we are free to sin, but that we are free from the wages of sin, death, so we can approach God with confidence when we do sin. It is our ability to do this which allows us to discover why it was we weren't trusting God when we sinned. As my pastor put it, "Sin is best expressed as our attempts to find love, acceptance, meaning and purpose to life apart from a relationship with our God." We can't have a relationship with God if we still believe our sins are separating us from Him. It is okay to confess our sins to God as long as we also confess what God has done with our sins. And that is that they were taken away from the eyes of God for all eternity by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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