Tim Alford

LEADERSHIP 101

Leadership Disciplines #10 // Confession and Repentance

Like all good youth workers, I consider myself a coffee connoisseur (read, 'snob'). As such, my home coffee-making set-up features an electric grinder and a V60 pour-over, including a speciality kettle with a long, thin spout, enabling me to carefully control the rate and volume of my pour-over, thus extracting the very best flavour out of those freshly ground beans. Delicious.

Well, it did, until one sad day, the handle fell off my speciality kettle, rendering it unusable.

This admittedly falls squarely into the 'first world problems' category, but I initially felt like I'd lost an arm. (If you think this is overdramatic, then clearly, you've never tasted a pour-over). I, of course, intended to resolve this problem with great urgency. Still, then, y'know, life happened, and inconvenient obstacles, such as a job and children, got in the way, causing my kettle replacement needs to fall somewhat down the priority list.

In the meantime, I started using a (shock, horror) electric kettle to make my pour-overs. As the weeks went by, I got used to life without my speciality kettle until, slowly but inevitably, what once felt like losing an arm now just felt… normal.

It strikes me that what can be said of my speciality kettle can be said, somewhat more significantly, of many of the ancient spiritual practices in the Way of Jesus, which have guided Christians into Christlikeness for millennia. This is a tragic loss that has, for many, led to a shallow and fragile Christianity that is barely sustained by Sunday morning services and the occasional prayer when something goes wrong.

This brings us to this series on leadership disciplines. My hope in this series has been to remind us of and encourage us to return to the disciplines of the spiritual life that help us become increasingly awake to and aware of God's presence with us and his work in and through us.

At the top of the list of practices that were once central and common to Jesus' followers but have now been (to our great detriment) all but forgotten is confession and repentance...

Confession and Repentance

Repentance is an inseparable part of restoring right relationship with Jesus. Indeed, we can't come to Jesus without it, as per the apostle Peter's invitation:

"And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38 ESV)

The word repent (from the Greek' metanoeó') means much more than apologising; it means "changing one's mind or purpose." To repent, then, is to turn around, go in a different direction, and change. That's why Jesus said, "produce fruit in keeping with repentance" (Matthew 3:8); we can say sorry as much as we want, but unless that is reflected in a change of behaviour, it is not true repentance, as the prophet Isaiah articulates:

Turn to the LORD and pray to him now that he is near. Let the wicked leave their way of life and change their thinking. Let them turn to the LORD, our God; he is merciful and quick to forgive. (Isaiah 55:6-7 GNBUK, emphasis mine)

Repentance is to turn from one direction to another, as in turning from death to life.

Yet we cannot turn from sin until we have first confessed it.

Confession is to acknowledge or admit fault without reservation. Biblically speaking, we are to practice this in two ways. First, we confess to God, as the Psalmist indicates:

When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer's heat. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Psalms 32:3-5 CSB, emphasis mine)

Dallas Willard notes that 'unconfessed sin is a special kind of burden or obstruction in the psychological as well as the physical realities of the believer's life. The discipline of confession and absolution removes that burden.'

With this type of confession, we remain familiar. We are used to private confession, coming before the Lord to seek forgiveness. We understand, too, that this is not a one-and-done situation but a continual bringing of our fallenness before God.

Tyler Staton notes: 'Spiritual maturity means more confession, not less. Maturity is discovering the depths of my personal brand of fallenness and the depths to which God's grace has really penetrated, even without me knowing it.'

Confession before the Lord is a continually necessary element of this practice, but I'm afraid it is also the easy part! Because, as James instructs, we are also to confess our sins to one another:

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:16 ESV, emphasis mine)

This brings us back to our speciality kettle, that which once felt necessary but has been forgotten.

When was the last time you confessed your sins to another believer? Can you recall an occasion where confession was practised in community? If you're anything like me, those occasions will be few and far between, if at all. Yet this must not be because the Christian practice of confession is, as Willard notes, inherently communal: 'Confession is a discipline that functions within the fellowship. In it, we let trusted others know our deepest weaknesses and failures. This will nourish our faith in God's provision for our needs through his people, our sense of being loved, and our humility before brothers and sisters.'

Are we feeling uncomfortable yet? Me too! The idea of revealing our weaknesses and opening up to others about sinful behaviours, thoughts and motivations fills me with dread rather than delight! But here's the thing: that very emotional response reveals how far my understanding of what it means to be the church has migrated from what we were always intended to be. Richard Foster expresses this so well: "Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners."

Brilliant. The truth is that we are a community of sinners, continually being transformed by the work of grace. As we confess our sins to one another, our brokenness is laid bare, and the surface-level superficiality of attending church services in our 'Sunday best' is stripped away. Here's Willard again: 'Confession alone makes deep fellowship possible, and the lack of it explains much of the superficial quality so commonly found in our church associations. What, though, makes confession bearable? Fellowship. There is an essential interchange between these two disciplines.'

And herein lies one of the core reasons why individual confession alone is insufficient: it does nothing for the community of believers. But communal confession creates vulnerability, a prerequisite for an authentic relationship.

Moreover, our sin does not only affect us but also the church. Thus, when we confess in community, we move towards mending the relational wounds our sin has created and step toward proper restoration and healing.

Finally, we confess in community because when something is hidden, it cannot be changed. Only when we bring our sin into the light can we begin the journey of inner transformation. Brandon Cook argues, 'When we look at the ideas of confession and repentance in a biblical context, it's clear that, together, they constitute the first, indispensable step in the process of transformation.'

God can't meet who we pretend to be. Even when it is painful or embarrassing, reality is the only place in which transformation can begin and true freedom can be enjoyed.

The great Dietrich Bonhoeffer sums all this up, saying, 'A man who confesses his sin in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself confessing my sins, everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother, the sin has to be brought into the light.'

So what would it look like for you to find a few trusted confidants with whom you could lay bare the inner motivations of your heart, not only for your healing but so you can join with Jesus in declaring the complete absolution of the sin of others as they bring their authentic selves into the light before you?

And how might you create a community of young people who break through the cultural paradigm of Western individualism, which has led to a hyper-individualised spirituality, and learn to be the church in this most powerful and authentic way?

After all, the coffee tastes better with a speciality kettle...

Enjoy this article? Don't forget to share