Confessions & Pardons

During our Sunday morning service today, we recited our confessions and pardons, which was as follows:

All Pray: Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Leader: Hear the good news: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God's love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

People: In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

All: Glory to God. Amen.

After reciting these statements, I began wondering how much good this reciting has done us. I began to wonder if these were mere words dribbling from our mouths without much meaning or was this more of a proclamation than a statement. To come to a conclusion of such wonderment, I would have to turn to the individuals who partook in this part of our service.

We are told in Romans 10:9,"That if you confess 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 our heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." What I personally have taken from this scripture is the conclusion that confessing is simply not enough.

This scripture uses the conjunction and. This conjunction, which simply means, together with or along, implies that the mere confession of sins and proclamation of faith is not enough. According to this passage in Romans, you must also believe in your heart Jesus is Lord.

To me, it makes sense that if you plan and plot or for that matter, do not fight the temptations of sin, then you are simply using Christianity as a crutch to make you feel good about yourself. In the end, you are living for yourselves rather than living for Christ.

If you truly have Christ in your heart, resisting the temptations of sin is not all that hard. Will you be perfect? Of course not, but when you have Jesus in your heart, deciphering morality from immorality becomes less of a problem. We may still fight sin and lose, but when we do find ourselves in times of weakness, we have an overwhelming sense of guilt. We know when we do wrong and we sincerely ask for forgiveness and try to avoid repeating the sin. It is when we do not even realize the depth of our sins that we really need to re-evaluate our faith.

God bless you,

Brian Moore