One of the joys of ministry at St. John’s is the opportunity I have to teach, especially students in our 7th & 8th grade class in our school. I was teaching the other day on the topic of confession, forgiveness and repentance.
I told a story about my directionally-challenged sister-in-law. She lives in a southwest suburb of Chicago. She was visiting our home in NW Indiana and had left to return home. About 45 minutes into her trip home she saw a sign that revealed a fatal error: “Welcome to Michigan!” Without much difficulty she had arrived at the interstate, but made a wrong turn and didn’t notice her error until she was obviously in the wrong place.
Let’s get a few basic definitions on the table:
Confession: Accepting responsibility for our actions and how they have caused harm.
Forgiveness: Releasing another from the guilt of those sinful actions.
Repentance: Actions which restore the relationship with another.
The point of the lesson, other than introducing each of these individual concepts to my students, was to recognize how necessary each of these are; you simply cannot have one without the other.
Confession without forgiveness and repentance traps a person in their guilt and sin. Forgiveness without confession or repentance is a hollow and relatively meaningless act. True repentance is not possible without confession and forgiveness.
God’s grace, however, is at the center of this inter-dependent triad. Confession is only possible because we recognize God’s forgiveness and the joy of life as God’s child which comes as a result. God’s grace not only provides forgiveness, it motivates our confession and inspires our repentance.
My sister-in-law DID arrive home … safely … although it took a bit longer than she had anticipated. However, confession, forgiveness and repentance were all required.
- She had to recognize her error (confession).
- She could not be trapped by it (forgiveness).
- She had to turn around at the next opportunity (repentance).
Leave out any one of these steps and she ends up in Detroit!
Whether it be in our relationship with God or others, we can fail to recognize our sin and be trapped by it, ending up far from our destination (eternal life with God and God’s people).
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