On Confessing Your Sins at Church

I come from a church tradition where we confess our sins and hear a declaration of our pardon every week in the worship service.

How do we understand corporate repentance and pardon declared in the worship service?

Two things must be said.

1. Our repentance is never perfect, and it isn’t the quality of our repentance that saves us.

2. Our repentance needs to be heartfelt and sincere, as opposed to formulaic, automatic or even hypocritical.

These two truths sometimes feel contradictory to us.  In fact, some folks want to say the first so strongly, they won’t allow the second.  Others are so pietistic in affirming the second that they forget the first.

So how does the minister assure people their sins are forgiven after confession at church?  Three truths or phrases should be present in some way:

1. On the basis of God’s Word and Christ’s sacrifice described there,

2. As you sincerely or honestly confess

3. God forgives you your sins.

This is not to say that number 2 is equally as important as number 1, of course.  True repentance isn’t the part we contribute to our salvation, it is a gift God gives us.

Those who emphasize that the quality of our repentance doesn’t save us will tend to want to ignore number 2 above.  They overly objectify our salvation and don’t leave enough room for the real experience of a broken and contrite heart.  Those who emphasize that our repentance must be heartfelt will tend to ignore number 1.  They overly subjectify our salvation, making it dependent on how fervently we feel sorry, rather than the on the truth in God’s Word.

This is a part of our worship service that stays pretty much the same each week.  This can be good for catechizing our children into the truth, but also carries with it the danger of becoming rote and automatic in our thoughts and hearts.  Confessing our sins together in church is not meant as a replacement, so we don’t have to confess our sins personally.  Rather, it is supposed to be a model of how to confess our sins personally, just as the sermon should be a model of how we read our Bibles on our own.

So, pray for a tender heart, truly sorry for your sins.  And pray for reliance on God’s mercy found at the cross for pardon for your sins.