Growth-Stopper: Failing to Confess Sins

"I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." (Psalm 32:5)

A key element in practicing resurrection, growing up as a follower of Jesus Christ, is not only to cultivate our lives so they are receptive to the growth only God provides, but also to pull the weeds--to take seriously whatever keeps us from growing. Here's one: failing to confess our sins and receive forgiveness.

Even non-Christians have heard that Jesus forgives, no matter what we've done, no matter how bad it is, and no matter for how long we've done it. And it's true. His love and faithfulness are everlasting. But clearly there is a difference between a gift offered to us and a gift received. Jesus always offers forgiveness, but we don't always receive it because to take it means we admit we need it. So, confessing our sins and repenting is not something we do to earn forgiveness; it is simply a description of what it means to reach out and receive it.

Yet, we don't need this gift just once. When we cross from death to life by leaving self-righteousness behind and embracing God's righteousness supplied for us in Christ, our identity is changed once for all. We become forgiven sinners, fully adopted children of God. And so we find security in God's family, even though there will be times when we do not live like the sons and daughters we are. That's when our Heavenly Father disciplines us out of love. And that's where we need to come clean with Him through confession.

No parent would think it's sufficient for their son or daughter to say, "You said you'd always love me. So, let me just say now that I'm sorry for whatever wrongs I might do for the rest of my life. I'm glad to know I'm already forgiven." Our sins must be dealt with particularly, as individually as possible. Just as overloading a washing machine with laundry keeps the clothes from really coming clean, so we must not give blanket statements regarding our sin: "Lord, whatever I did wrong this past week, please forgive me." Instead, we should be (using the washing metaphor) pinpointing the stains so God can spot-clean them. That means intentional confession.

David experienced this many times, and wrote about in Psalm 32. He first tried to ignore the problem: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer." (Psalm 32:3-4)

This kind of denial and avoidance is a definite growth-stopper, or at least a growth inhibitor. David does what we must do: he gives in and confesses. "I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found." (Psalm 32:5-6)

When we know we have sinned is the time to pray and confess. That's when we will seek and find God.

How about you? How do your prayers of confession look and sound? Generic or particular? An after-thought in prayer, or a first priority to keep the flow of Jesus' Life in you uninhibited?

Breaking the habits of our body and mind

Ephesians 2:3 says followers of Jesus used to be driven to live "in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind." Our desires are changed by the Holy Spirit when we give up on self-indulgence and self-righteousness and receive the gracious gift of Jesus' desires and life. So why do we still sin? Why is it still so hard to do what is right and avoid disobedience?

The essence of the problem comes down to re-training our bodies and our minds. Our sinful nature has done a real number on the way we think. We have learned to believe lies. We have been accustomed to not even monitoring the thoughts that fly through our heads throughout the day. We're too busy to meditate. We're too distracted to contemplate. We're too tired to work at identifying the lies we believe and replacing them with the truth of God's Word. We have developed some really bad habits in our thought-life. Yet that is foundational work in practicing resurrection, in living the new and different life that has been given to us. When Jesus talks about transforming us from the inside-out, it must include the re-training of our minds.

And our bodies have to be re-trained, too. The way we think gives momentum for how we will physically act. If I believe in my thoughts that it's okay to gossip, my body (primarily through my vocal cords, tongue, and lips) develops the habit of talking too much, too fast, and without considering the implications to others. Yet habits can be broken. The key is to fill our minds with the truth about gossip and the way our words can do damage, and then to practice some spiritual disciplines that will address how my body has grown accustomed to doing it. So then, the spiritual discipline of silence is a good place to start. This doesn't mean not talking to people ever again, but rather building in specific times of quiet and solitude in our schedules where we intentionally starve the urge to always have something to say about people and circumstances. It will feel strange. The breaking of routines and habits usually does.

Of course breaking the body and mind habit of gossip is just one example. There are also body and mind habits for greed, lust, hate, envy, and any other number of sins. In each case we need to identify the lies we believe that have under-girded those sins (often over the course of years), mentally reject them, and replace them with the powerful truth found in God's Word. Then we need to recognize how our bodies have developed physical habits that lead us back to those sins (even when we know the truth!) and practice spiritual disciplines that re-train our responses.

It's easy on paper, but hard in real life. It takes time, just as gaining proficiency in any new discipline does. Yet this is the pathway of discipleship in Jesus. Let's encourage each other along the way as we follow Jesus together!

Can I sin and still be saved?

A few weeks ago I preached on baptism--the why, the what and the how of this command of Jesus. I may not have been as clear as I would have liked about it, because I have had several conversations since then with a few people that have clued me in to some possible misunderstandings. Maybe I can follow-up here a bit...

I think everyone understands that this is a command of Jesus: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20) Furthermore, I made the point that baptism is a sign and symbol of salvation, not a regenerative act. That is, a person is fully saved even before they are baptized, and simply getting baptized won't save anyone. This is a different understanding than some traditions, but one that I think flows from Romans 10:9-10..."If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." I believe the moment a heart turns away from self-righteousness and receives God's righteousness provided by grace through Christ, that person is saved. Like the thief on the cross, who never had a chance to be baptized, but was told he would be in paradise with Jesus. Grace through faith is sufficient.

For some, then, it raised the question, "Can I still get to heaven if I am not baptized?" What I wanted to say clearly in my message was, "Yes, because baptism can't save anyone." I likened baptism to a heart monitor. Just as the monitor can't produce a heartbeat--it simply reveals what is (or is not) the inner, unseen reality of the patient's heart--so baptism is simply a sign of the inner reality of a changed heart and new life given by the Holy Spirit. If you have the beating heart of true faith in Christ, then baptism is a sign to show that. If you don't, no amount of water can create that.

I also wanted to stress that asking, "Can I still get to heaven and not be baptized?" is really the wrong question. Since baptism is one of many commands given by Jesus, it's like asking, "Can I sin and still be saved?" Of course every Christian still does sin. But we are to be fully engaged in fighting our sinful nature, not finding contentment in it. Sometimes we fight temptation and still give in. So we find ourselves utilizing 1 John 1:8-10 regularly, even daily: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us."

So, can a Christian sin and still be saved? Yes. But, if you make it your plan to sin...if (in the case of baptism) you know you should do something and plan on consistently bypassing that command because it's inconvenient or embarrassing...then you are positioning your heart away from God's grace...and away from love and gratitude and an attitude of serving Christ. You are not taking off the old self and putting on the new.

You don't instantly lose your salvation when you sin in this, or other ways. But you are hurting and damaging the new life you've been given. Physically, you can live in unhealthy ways and not die...for a while. Eventually, if you continue down that path, it will catch up with you. That's why the Bible gives warnings that, though we are saved by grace and given a new life, that life must be nurtured. We must "continue in it" and not throw it away. You can't "lose" your salvation, but you can (by consistently ignoring and disobeying Jesus' commands of life) choose to not continue in it. You can choose to not hold on to it any longer and leave it behind:

• "Continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel." (Colossians 1:23)
• "For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off." (Romans 11:21-23)
• "Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son." (2 John 1:9)
• "Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith." (1 Timothy 1:18-19)
• "Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth." (2 Timothy 2:16-17)

And please don't ask, "How far can I go in not continuing before I lose my salvation?" That's like asking, "How close can I get to a rattlesnake before it will strike at me? 24 inches? 18 inches? 12 inches?" Some questions are not good to pursue. Can I be saved and not get baptized? Yes. Is that nurturing the salvation you have been given? No. You want to nurture and continue in and hold on to the new life you've been given by grace.

All I can do is encourage you to the obedience of faith--not the obedience of guilt or pride or fear. Get baptized as a sign that you have received and find your identity with Jesus--his death and his resurrection to a new life. If you haven't yet been baptized, do this as an expression of your love for Jesus!

Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly...

I was reading Psalm 15 this morning. It's a wonderfully descriptive lyric about the kind of good and righteous person who can sojourn and dwell with and be in relationship with the holy God. And it struck me as impossible. That's a good thing because for too long I have read the Scriptures FIRST as a moral and ethical example that I should try to follow. But all the efforts to attain righteousness by ourselves (self-righteousness) are doomed to fail. Psalm 14 says "There is none who does good...they have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:1, 3) So when David (the author of both Psalm 14 and 15) then begins to list the qualities found in the one who "does what is right" (Psalm 15:2), it's not that he has amnesia, or is in a better, more optimistic mood. No, we are to see Jesus in this Psalm.

We need to read, "Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart," (Psalm 15:1-2) and realize that only Jesus ever lived that way. "Who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor" (Psalm 15: 3) ought to remind us of how Jesus overcome the temptations of retaliatory slander when he was slandered and lied about and mocked. "Nor takes up a reproach against his friend" (Psalm 15:3) should point us to the deep love and forgiveness Jesus expressed to his disciples after his resurrection, knowing they had abandoned him when he needed them most. "In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord" (Psalm 15:4) should cause us to reflect on how Jesus courageously called out the hateful, prideful sin of the religious leaders while drawing attention to, and honoring, the widow who gave her last few pennies in an otherwise unnoticed act of loving worship. "Who swears to his own hurt and does not change" (Psalm 15:4) clearly ought to make us aware of Jesus' resolute determination to go to the cross to pay  for the world's sin--and how his epic prayer struggle in the garden of Gethsemane revealed how he suffered for his vow, but saw it through for our benefit.

If I try to take each of these statements as simply an example to live up to and follow, I will always fail. But if I am in Christ by grace through faith, then the very One who has already lived Psalm 15 perfectly, lives in me. That means Jesus can live Psalm 15 in and through me. I ask him to do it, and then do all I can to work with him, never forgetting that it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.