What
is Confession?
3/20/24
How
many sacraments are there? You may be
surprised to learn that the Book of Concord – the confessions of the Lutheran
Church - provides two different answers.
“Sacrament” is not a word that we find in the Bible. Instead, it is a term that the Church uses to
organize our thought about the content of Scripture. So how you define what a Sacrament is will
determine how many Sacraments there are.
If
you define a Sacrament as something that has been instituted by Christ, has the
promise of forgiveness, and uses a physical means, then there are two
Sacraments: Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. However, if you define a Sacrament as
something that has been instituted by Christ and has the promise of
forgiveness, then there are three Sacraments: Holy Baptism, the Sacrament of
the Altar, and Holy Absolution.
For
the most part, the two Sacrament definition has been dominant in the Lutheran
Church. It is probably not hard to
understand why. The physical means of
water, and bread and wine give Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar a
distinct and obvious character.
Yet
in spite of this, Holy Absolution is Christ’s gift that cannot be ignored. It is sometimes described as a return to
baptism. In the Small Catechism the
section “How Christians should be taught to confess” comes immediately after
the portion that deals with Baptism.
Holy
Absolution is the gift that the risen Lord has given to his Church. After our
Lord’s resurrection he appeared to the disciples in the locked room and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive
anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not
forgiven.”
We
are about to enter into Holy Week. We
hear in our reading of the Passion of Our Lord tonight that as Jesus hung on
the cross there was darkness over the land from the sixth hour to the ninth
hour. This was the sign of God’s end
time judgment. Christ, the sinless One, was numbered with the
transgressors. He took our sin and
received God’s judgment against it. He
was the object of God’s wrath in order to give us forgiveness.
But
on the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead. He appeared to the disciples in that locked
room. He demonstrated that he was alive
as he showed them his hands and his side.
And then he instituted Holy Absolution.
He commanded his disciples to forgive sins – to apply the forgiveness
that he had just won by his death and resurrection.
The
Small Catechism teaches us that confession has two parts. First, we confess our sins. We admit our sins before God. The Psalmist said, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my
iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.”
The Small Catechism goes on to say
that the second part is “that we receive absolution, that is forgiveness, from
the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that by it
our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.”
Notice that this an audible word.
It is a word of forgiveness spoken to us.
The pastor speaks this
forgiveness. However, it is not the
person of the pastor that matters here.
Instead, Christ has instituted his Office of the Holy Ministry to
administer his Means of Grace. He works
through his Church to place a man in this Office of the Ministry. And so when
the pastor speaks, he speaks for God.
It is Christ who is speaking.
That is why the pastor announces absolution by saying that he speaks “as
a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by his authority.”
Christ says through the pastor “I
forgive you all your sins.” Holy
Absolution can be described as the Gospel in its purest form. The Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ died on
the cross and rose from the dead in order to win forgiveness for us. Then in Holy Absolution we hear God speak to
us in the first person singular and say “I forgive you all your sins.” We hear God speak directly to us as he
forgives our sins. You can’t get any more
direct than that.
We are used to hearing Holy Absolution
at the beginning of the Divine Service each Sunday. Here Confession and Absolution takes place in
the corporate setting of worship.
However, that is actually not the setting that the Small Catechism
addresses. Instead it is speaking about
Confession in a private setting.
At the time of the Reformation,
private confession had become a source of many abuses in the life of the
Church. The priest was present in the
role of an examiner who was seeking to discover sins and determine whether they
were mortal. Christians were required to confess all sins. Confession was made, absolution was spoken,
and then the priest assigned a penance that had to be done.
The Lutheran Church returned
confession to being a Gospel gift. The pastor was there to hear confession, not
to examine and seek out sin. The
Christian was called upon to confess only those sins they knew. And penance was eliminated, because Holy
Absolution is a word of pure Gospel. Where Christ’s forgiveness has been
spoken, there is nothing more that needs to be done.
In answer to the question “What sins
should we confess?” the Small Catechism says, “Before God we should plead
guilty of all sins, even those we are not aware of, as we do in the Lord’s
Prayer; but before the pastor we should confess only those sins which we know
and feel in our hearts.”
Private confession provides blessings
that are notable and important. It gives
us the opportunity to confess sins that trouble us. Before God, sin is sin. However, the devil is able to use some sins
more than others in order to trouble us and cause us to doubt God’s
forgiveness. When we keep these sins inside, the guilt and anxiety they produce
can be very harmful. Private confession
provides the opportunity to rid ourselves of these sins – it gives us the
chance to “get them off our chest.”
And then, we get to hear God speak
forgiveness to us as an individual. God
says “I forgive you all your sins”, and he speak it to you alone. This is a powerful experience and a profound
way in which the Gospel is received.
People may feel hesitant to use
private confession for several reasons.
First there may be the concern about whether sins confessed will be
revealed to others. However, at his ordination,
and at very subsequent installation the pastor takes an oath that he will never
divulge the sins confessed to him. The
seal of confession is recognized even by our legal system. I was on the witness stand in a federal court
in Chicago and refused to answer a question because it involved information
shared with me in private confession.
The judge acknowledged this right, and told the questioner to move on to
a different subject.
People may also feel hesitant because
they worry about what the pastor will think of him or her. Here it is necessary to recognize that you
are not going to shock your pastor. Apart from murder, I cannot think of a sin
that I have not heard confessed. You are
not going to confess something the pastor hasn’t heard before.
More importantly, you need to realize
that no one spends more time thinking about sin than a pastor. It is his calling to consider how the Law is
applied to others in order to reveal sin and bring people to repentance. But this also means that that he is deeply
aware of how the Law reveals his own sins. He knows himself to be a sinner as he
listens to others confess their sin.
The pastor is not there to judge. Instead, he is there to apply the
Gospel. He has been placed by God in the
Office of the Holy Ministry to speak absolution to all who confess their
sin. His voice is Christ’s voice which
says “I forgive you all your sin.” We
receive absolution, that is forgiveness, from the pastor as from God himself,
not doubting but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God
in heaven.
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