Confession, biblically, is coming before God the Judge and taking the stand as a witness against yourself. But you don’t do this alone. You have your Advocate, Jesus, standing alongside you throughout, testifying on your behalf — Grace, brother, grace.
There is a particular word in the English language that, if yelled loudly in a crowded room, will cause people to run and hide. This word, like the word “fire,” strikes terror in the hearts of ordinary folks because it conjures images of judgment, heavenly fire and personal humiliation.
This word is seldom heard, even among Christians, and it is almost never invoked by nonreligious people, even in jest.
The dread word of which I speak is “repent.”
Now before you click away to brighter online pastures, hang with me a little longer. What if I told you that repentance (in the biblical sense) is in fact the key that unlocks the door that leads to God’s unimaginable eternal blessings?
But beware, opening it takes courage and a willingness to face inconvenient truths about yourself. Refusal to enter has eternal consequences. In his book, Renovation of the Heart, Christian philosopher Dallas Willard cautioned:
“Outer darkness is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and man. The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find out how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life …”
Ultimately, if we insist on holding on to our inner darkness, outer darkness is sure to follow. That is why the scriptures so often call us to “repentance.”
In the Greek of the New Testament, this is the word “metanoeo,” which means “to think differently or afterward, i.e. reconsider.” Literally, we are called to a new mind on the matter of what makes us tick and how we are intended to fit into God’s universe as he created it.
Yes, there is light at the end of this tunnel.
Canadian scholar Jordan Peterson wrote: “the light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of the darkness that you are willing to forthrightly confront.” He added, “there is no upper limit to that.”
So, how exactly do I “forthrightly confront” my darkness? Picture repentance as a tunnel that is very dark at first but becomes lighter as you travel through it. The tunnel of repentance is quite low, requiring humbly crawling on your hands and knees. And it is narrow, restricted to one person at a time.
Pastor David Guzik wrote:
“Repentance must be present at the beginning of our walk with God, but it doesn’t end there. We are to keep on repenting, as God shows us more and more to get right with Him. Today, think of how repentance can be an ongoing work in your life.”
Repentance is as much an attitude as an action, calling for brokenness, surrender, transparency. The journey begins when we agree to live our lives dependent upon God, rather than independently from Him.
Such a believer maintains a “holy self-despair,” marked by reliance on God and a willingness to quickly “come clean” when necessary, as described in Isaiah 30:14-16:
“In repentance and rest you will be saved,
In quietness and trust is your strength.
But you were not willing,”
The real “gotcha” here is that it requires taking a good look in the mirror.
Evangelist Oswald Chambers wrote:
“When God wants to show you what human nature is like apart from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He only does it when His Spirit is at work), you know there is no criminal who is half so bad in actuality as you know yourself to be in possibility.”
How About You?
The light at the end of that “tunnel of repentance” is Jesus Christ Himself, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it” — as written in John 1:4-5.
He saw your “sin problem” before you did and He did something about it, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” — as written in John 1:29.
Now it’s your turn … what will YOU do about it?
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and Internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.