Sunday, September 18, 2005
The Forgotten Practice
Catholic think it a sacrament and imbue it with great ceremony. Protestants do not find it sacramental, and have maybe forgotten it a little too much from my perspective. What am I talking about? -- Confession.
Eternal Perspective took a look yesterday and what the prophet Hosea had to say on the subject.
God's plan and desire for us is far more drastic and dramatic than we tend to think it is -- Jesus did not come to clean us up around the edges. This is no new model year spruce up we are talking about. Paul is not fooling around when he uses words like "new creation" and "transformation."
That transformation, that re-creation starts witht he acknowledgement of its necessity. That's all confession is an acknowledgement of our need for God's hand. EP ends his post this way.
Nothing less will do.
Eternal Perspective took a look yesterday and what the prophet Hosea had to say on the subject.
Perhaps subconsciously subscribing to Greek dualism, Christians tend to be more comfortable with confessing our sins that confessing our selves. We view the flesh as somehow alien or foreign, something that used to be who we are but no longer is: the responsibility for sin, we reason, is in the weakness of our fallen flesh and not in our selves. We can bend the knee and confess (Gr. homolegeo, to say the same thing, to agree with) that behaviors or deeds in which we have engaged are sinful and unacceptable to God.How often have we heard "God loves the sinner but hates the sin." True and not true the duality created by the statement is a false one. WE ARE SIN. Sin is a part of the fabric of our being.
But Hosea does not stop with deeds or even attitudes. He goes after us, after who we are.
God's plan and desire for us is far more drastic and dramatic than we tend to think it is -- Jesus did not come to clean us up around the edges. This is no new model year spruce up we are talking about. Paul is not fooling around when he uses words like "new creation" and "transformation."
That transformation, that re-creation starts witht he acknowledgement of its necessity. That's all confession is an acknowledgement of our need for God's hand. EP ends his post this way.
We need to be saved from - not merely our sins - but from our sinful selves. It is who you are, not merely what you do, that needs to be confessed.That's radical faith. That is what God calls us to -- not a partnership -- but a complete surrender. Throwing the doors fully open without negotiation, allowing Him to both demolish and construct.
Nothing less will do.
