Confession of Sin

Our theme in the present chapter is at once most humiliating and most sacred — Confession of Sin in Secret Prayer. May He who seeth and heareth in secret, the heavenly Confessor and Absolver, be very present with us in the enquiry.

Let me introduce it by a few words on the great work and duty of Self-Examination. This is not identical with Confession, but it is vitally connected with it. Ina former chapter, in a passing sentence, I suggested the rule that self-examination should be a special exercise of our secret evening worship. I repeat the suggestion, and I would express my assurance that the maintenance of that exercise, in reality and in deliberate earnestness, whatever be the hour at which we practise it, is an all-important thing in a strong, watchful, chastened Christian life. And I cannot but add my fear that it is a duty not a little neglected by many even earnest Christians.

The self-examination for which I plead need not necessarily be very systematic, very elaborate or methodical in form. Certainly a mere routine of self-examination, a perfunctory asking and answering, must be of all realities the most sorrowfully unreal. But I do plead for a self-examination careful, thoughtful, unhurried, unreserved, and done in the full daylight of no less a manual and 2 Cor. iv. 10. directory than the Word of God itself. This last point is all-important. No mere handbook of devotion but the holy Word must be in cur hands, and hearts, as we examine self. We must go to no inferior oracle to keep vivid in the soul an insight into the very nature of sin, into the unspeakable holiness of God, into His absolute claims and our blessed obligations as His purchased, conquered, and self-surrendered property, and then into the searching and most practical details of the intended manifestation of “the life of Jesus” in our daily life, im our common duties. Nothing short of THE BIBLE, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested — I mean now the Bible picture of the Christian’s life, inward and outward, as the Lord has enjoined it, and provided for t¢- — will keep really up to the true level our insight into and consciousness of whatever is really a “falling short,” or a “passing-over.” We must examine self as to motive in the full scriptural light of mercy and privilege, and as to practice in the full light of New ‘Testament precepts.

Such examination will not be morbidly introspective. It will be severe, but healthful. Carried on as by those who search the Scriptures, and who ask for the full convictions of the Spirit through conscience, it will be a thing of the sunlight and the fresh air. It will abase, but it will not debase, the man in Christ who thus “examines” and “proves” himself before the Lord. Alone with God and His Word, he will so examine himself as that God shall examine him.

Let me repeat it; if it is to be thus,

Fa2

1 Cor.
xi. 285
2 Cor.
xiii. 5.

if Hr is to do this indeed, we need to carry on our scrutiny by no lower a standard than His own written revelation. It isa deep law of the ways of grace that they who would enter into the full light and peace of the promises of Scripture must be humbly willing to be searched by nothing less than its principles and its rules.

But, meanwhile, self-examination is not quite the same thing as the secret and direct ConFEssIoN of the Christian to his Lord. Looking in is not the same thing as speaking out, whether in itself or in its results. So let us always regard a true and reverent self-examination as just the step to a true, simple, unreserved Confession of ourselves to Him who seeth in secret.

Here let me go back, by way of mere reference, to what was said in the previous chapter about Simplicity and Detail. The principle of simplicity in our secret prayers applies above all things to the work of Confession of Sin. In that work surely if it is to be rightly done at all, the most direct and uncoloured outspokenness must be our rule. Let me take as an example the scrutiny of mozve in our self-examination, and its issue in our humble Confession. Have we found, have we been shewn, something of the ramifications of the spirit and life of SELF in our works and words? Have we been led to make as it were a chemical analysis of the ingredients that have gone into the doing of some deed of religious duty, perhaps, or of common kindness, in the day past? Have we remembered some sidelong wish for observation and applause for our own sakes? Some self-complacent

Luke
XViii. 11.

1 Joh. ii. Xe comparison of self with others, some “God, I thank Thee,” in the Pharisee’stone, however soft the whisper? Something not of the spirit of love in the action whose exterior look and character was loving? Such an analysis, in the white light of the Word and of the Spirit, is a very solemn and painful process not seldom. Well, if it has been so, let us speak out its result in articulate simplicity before Jesus Christ the Righteous, who, while “He loves us though He sees us true,” does not at all love our iniquity however subtle and evanescent its manifestation may have been, and in whom all the while lay ready the divine secret for us by which that particular iniquity ced not have been. To say out to Him, and in our own hearing, plainly and definitely, what we have seen in His light, ought never to be easy, but it will be a sure and real means of grace.

“Whatsoever plague, whatsoever foes sickness there be,” let us speak out about it to Him, reverently, simply, candidly, without reserve. He is perfectly and eternally uncontaminable by our evil, and He is perfectly and eternally its Antagonist, and He, blessed be His Name, is perfectly and now the Bearer of its guilt for us and the Conqueror of its power in us.

Has there been one hard, judging, censorious, supercilious thought of others during the day? One indulgence of needless, loveless, critical expression about them? One allowance of mere prejudice against them? One remembered act of any kind, inward or outward, which has broken the laws of holy Charity? Has 1,Cor there been any difference, or dissension, with friend or brother, in which we have loved self, and its claims and rights, perhaps under colour of a zeal for God? Has there been a swelling heat of pride? Has there been the wretched flutter of vanity? Has there been the sure complement and other side of vanity, the diseased ache of jealousy, or of envy, as another’s name, perhaps a name not personally favourite with ourselves, has been warmly praised in our ears, it may be for excellence and example in things where we secretly know we have been weak and inconsistent?

Have we indulged in a foolish levity, very different from the pure and natural happiness and contagious cheerfulness meant to be habitual in the Christian? Haye we been self-indulgent in act or habit, lowering the tone of watchfulness and self-denial? Have we carelessly given trouble where we might have saved it, or taken it, in some little thing which would then have quietly shewn our Master’s presence in us, at least to our own souls P

Have we trifled with truth, perhaps to embellish a story, or turn a compliment, or save a little trouble?

Have we been ashamed of the name of Jesus Christ, and more anxious to stand well with society as rational, sensible, liberal, than to be simply true to Him in some principle, or practice, which may label us as proper subjects for a little harmless criticism? Have we failed to keep up through the day the faithful bondservant’s secret understanding with his Lord and Possessor, that He in all things — be-Heb. 1v. TO;

xii. 243 x. 17, 18 ginning with the “springs of thought and will” — is to rule, and we to serve?

The detections are sad and sore, none the less because each detected thing ‘need not have been,” had we abode in Him. But let us tell the whole truth out, definitely, however briefly, before our Master and Confessor. Confess it all, articulately, to the eternal High Priest, in the Holiest, at the mercy-seat. Remember the blood of sprinkling; rest on the

“Covenant of remission and oblivion.

But all the more for this, extenuate nothing; let the essence of the confession be a total renunciation and repudiation of the thing confessed. Tell Him, recollecting that it is He, tell Him all that you see. And so tell Him as asking all the while, with the humiliation and the rest of contrite faith, — the faith which receives in asking, — for present absolution, and for present and gracious deliverance.

The thought of Detail was before us in the previous chapter. I would apply it largely to our present subject, earnestly advising (as indeed I have been doing already, in effect,) the resolute avoidance of mere generalities in secret confession. Yet I would do so with one reserve. Has the Christian to make confession of imaginations of evil invading the unwatching soul? In that particular case, I solemnly believe, the utmost and most jealous brevity ought to be the rule, for his own sake. The evil is seen, is known. The Lord’s abhorrence of it is certain. The Lord’s grace to pardon is certain also; and so too is His power to Cleanse, to cleanse ow, by His indwelling Spirit, by His own indwelling ‘Presence through the blessed Spirit, the innermost thoughts of the heart as we give them up to Him. Embrace those certainties. Cast down the evil at His feet, beneath His feet, and at once turn away.

In the Confession by one sinful human being to another of what we call moral evil, hardly in one case out of ten thousand can much detail do other than harm to both minds; such, at least, is my conviction. One of the deepest objections to an organized and systematic confessional system, of wich Scripture says absolutely nothiag and really primitive antiquity just as little, is that it tends by its very nature towards an unwholesome treatment of details in such things. We scarcely need the deplorable rules of a Liguori to bear witness to this. Under the fallacious assumption that spiritual diseases regularly require a human physician because physical diseases usually do so, and under the consequent supposed necessity of a minute diagnosis by the supposed physician, it is terribly easy to aggravate by the intended remedy. Experience shews that in certain states of temptation an eager readiness for detailed Confession may be an actually bad symptom. Now within certain limits this fact bears upon Confessions jn secret even to the Lord, or professedly to Him. ‘True, we cannot do Him harm, as we could only too easily do toa sinful human confidant, ordained or not. But we may greatly hurt ourselves. Let us confess to Him everything with simplicity, not everything with minuteness. Only let us remember, as regards all Confessions, that without renunciation and self-surrender, and, where that comes into

Dan. ix.
2c.
the case, reparation, Confession is a
name, is nothing.

One word, in closing, on a duty of Confession all too easily forgotten. Let our secret Confession, like that of a Daniel of old, often take in the sins of others as well as our own. ‘The Christian in secret must not forget his connexion. Let the sins of his society be borne on his contrite heart, the sins of friends and brethren, the sins of Country, of Church.

Blessed, yes truly and really blessed, may be the moments spent by the wakeful believer in the auricular Confessional of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a place for deep and painful insights into self. But it is a place also for deep insights, in the “confidence of self-despair,” into the power of “the peace of God, which passeth understanding”; while it ‘keepeth Phil. iv. our hearts and our thoughts, in Christ” Jesus.”

«Search me, O God; my actions try, And let my life appear As seen to Thine all-searching eye; To mine my ways make clear.

“¢ Search, till Thy fiery glance has cast Its holy light through all, And I by grace am brought at last Before Thy feet to fall.

“Thus prostrate I shall learn of Thee,
What now I feebly prove,
That God alone in Christ can be
Unutterable love.”