Cleansing Agreement

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. - 1 John 1:9

In "Near and Dear" I talked about the static that sin causes in our communications with God that needs to be removed by forgiveness and cleansing. Then, with "Forgiv(en/ing)" I talked about the cleansing power of God's forgiveness and how we block it by not forgiving others. Today, we will finish that puzzle by talking about the "complete" route from sin to cleansing: open confession of our sins to God.

Now, we already know (see "Known as Needy") that God knows our requests before we bring them to Him, so He'll also know our confessions before we speak them, but it's our heart attitude not His knowledge base that needs work. See, to "confess" our sins doesn't mean we need to give God a long and accurate list of everything we've done wrong - again, this isn't about knowledge base. "Confess" comes from the Greek word homologeo, which really implies agreement. Agreement with who? God.

For God to cleanse us, we need to want cleansing. We need to understand that sin is harmful to us and contrary to God and must be removed. In other words, we need to move from a place of regarding sin to a place of reviling sin and wanting nothing to do with it. Confession is where we work out with God His perspective on sin and apply it to our own lives: "God you hate my tendency towards anger. I'm going to hate it too because I want to be in relationship with you, and stay as far away from it as possible."

Think about a human relationship. If a close friend or your significant other really hated something you did because it was contrary to everything they stood for, you have two choices: to stand with the action or to stand with the relationship.  You have to ask yourself which holds higher value for you. The same applies here. Sin is defiance towards God and God hates sin. You can choose one or the other - which will you side with?

Lord, I pray today that you'll show us how much sin pains you, grieves you, separates us, and angers you. Remind us of the work you did to free us from sin and to restore relationship. Teach us your perspective on sin and make it sink deep into us. Bring us to a place of confession, my God, to a place of agreement, and may we revel in the cleansing power it brings. Amen.