“We must begin the road to recovery by confessing our guilt.
Unlike our forefathers we do this with great infrequency. Evangelicalism has tended to present an appearance of moral one-upmanship rather than the tear-stained face of repentance.
We are so unskilled in confession that we must look around desperately to ask, Who can bear the weight of being the mouthpiece of confession for sins such as ours?
We are such neophytes in this matter. We stumble at repentance, and we do not know where to turn for help. Yet here again our forefathers can come to our aid.
The Confession and Catechisms drawn up by the Westminster Assembly between 1643 and 1648 are well known. Less well known is the fact that four years later the ministers of the Church of Scotland, having embraced these grand doctrinal statements, recognized their need not only to confess the doctrines of the faith but also the sins of their own lives as an essential starting point for ongoing repentance.
Those were critical days, but by no means wholly barren spiritually. There were many evidences of God’s preserving goodness and numerous ministries of outstanding godliness, grace, power, and fruitfulness. Those were days when Puritan giants could be met in the streets of London, Oxford, and many other places.
It was surely evidence of even greater stirrings of God when these Christian leaders corporately confessed their faults. What follows is part of their confession of their sins as Christian leaders.
May God use it to help us in self-examination:
Guidance in Confession
Ignorance of God, want [lack] of nearness with him, and taking up little of God in reading, meditating and speaking of him. Exceeding great selfishness in all that we do; acting from ourselves, for ourselves and to ourselves.
Not caring how faithful and negligent others were, so being it might contribute a testimony to our faithfulness and diligence, but being rather content, if not rejoicing, at their faults.
Least delight in those things wherein lieth our nearest communion with God; great inconstancy in our walk with God, and neglect of acknowledging him in all our ways. In going about duties, least careful about those things which are most remote from the eyes of men.
Seldom in secret prayer with God, except to fit for public performance; and even that much neglected, or gone about very superficially. Glad to find excuses for the neglect of our duties.
Neglecting the reading of Scripture in secret, for edifying ourselves as Christians… Not given to reflect upon our own ways, nor allowing conviction to have a thorough work upon us; deceiving ourselves by resting upon absence from and abhorrence of evils from the light of a natural conscience, and looking upon the same as an evidence of a real change of state and nature.
Not esteeming the cross of Christ and sufferings for his name honorable, but rather shifting sufferings from self-love. Not laying to heart the sad and heavy sufferings of the people of God abroad, and the not-thriving of the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the power of godliness among them.
Refined hypocrisy; desiring to appear what, indeed, we are not. Studying more to learn the language of God’s people than their exercise. Artificial confessing of sin, without repentance; professing to declare iniquity, and not resolving to be sorry for sin. Confession in secret much slighted, even of those things whereof we are convicted.
Readier to search out and censure faults in others than to see or deal with them in ourselves. Accounting of our estate and way according to the estimate that others have of us.
Estimation of men, as they agree or disagree from us. Fruitless conversing ordinarily with others, for the worse rather than for the better. Foolish jesting away of time with… useless discourse.
Slighting of fellowship with those by whom we might profit, desiring more to converse with those that might better us by their talents than with such as might edify us by their graces. Not studying opportunities of doing good to others.
Shifting of prayer and other duties when called thereto… loving our pleasures more than God. Not praying for men of a contrary judgment, but using reservedness and distance from them; being more ready to speak of them than to them, or to God for them.
Not preaching Christ in the simplicity of the gospel, nor ourselves the people’s servants, for Christ’s sake. Preaching of Christ, not that the people may know him, but that they may think we know much of him… Not preaching with bowels of compassion to them that are in hazard to perish.
Bitterness, instead of zeal, in speaking against malignants, sectarians and other scandalous persons… Too much eying our own credit and applause; and being pleased with it when we get it, and unsatisfied when it is wanting… Not making all the counsel of God known to his people. (In Horatius Bonar, Words to Winners of Souls (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995), pp. 25-34)
There is surely much more we need to confess.
Ought we not to make a beginning now? Does it not remain true that unless we repent, our churches will all likewise perish?”
–Sinclair Ferguson, The Grace of Repentance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 58-61.
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