Why Should I Confess My Sins to a
Man?
It is GOD who
forgives sins, and once forgiven, He ceases to remember them.
Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy
transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."
It is God
only who forgives sins.
Jeremiah 31:34, "...for I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
Ezechiel 18:22, "I will
not remember all his iniquities that he has done."
Romans 3:26, "GOD in
His patience remitting former sins..."
Hebrews 8:12, "Because I will be
merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no
more."
GOD forgave sins through a human
nature.
Matthew 9:2-7,
"...And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, "Take courage son;
your sins are forgiven you...For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven
you, or to say, Arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has
power on earth to forgive sins", then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up
your pallet and go to your house.""
GOD uses His priests as His instruments of reconciliation. The New
Covenant priesthood is prefigured or 'typed' in many places in the Old
Testament. Here are several examples from the Old Testament of reconciliation
and atonement being performed by a priest:
Leviticus 4:20,
"...Thus the priest shall make atonement for them,
and they will be forgiven."
Leviticus 4:26,
"Thus the priest shall make atonement for the
prince's sin, and it will be forgiven."
Leviticus 4:32, "Thus the
priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven."
Leviticus 4:35, "Thus the
priest shall make atonement for the man's sin, and it will be
forgiven."
Leviticus 5:5-6, "...then
whoever is guilty in any of these cases shall confess the sin he has incurred,
and as his sin offering for his sin he has committed he shall bring to the Lord
a female animal from the flock, a ewe lamb or a she-goat. The priest shall then make atonement for his sin."
See also Leviticus 5:10,13,16,18, 12:8, 14:18-20,31,
15:15,30, 19:22.
Leviticus 6:7, "And the
priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord; and it shall be forgiven
him for any thing of all that he has done in trespassing therein."
Leviticus 7:7, "Because the sin offering and the guilt
offering are alike, both having the same ritual, the
guilt offering likewise belongs to the priest who makes atonement with
it."
Leviticus 16:32, "This atonement is to be made by the priest who has been anointed
and ordained to the priesthood in succession to his
father."
Leviticus 19:20-22, "If a man lies carnally with a woman
. . . they shall not be put to death . . . but he shall bring a guilt offering
for himself to the Lord, to the door of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt
offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him
. . . before the Lord for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven
him."
Numbers 6:11, "The priest shall offer up
the one as a sin offering and the other as a holocaust, thus making atonement
for him for the sin he has committed by reason of the dead person."
Numbers 15:25, "And the
priest shall make an atonement for all the congregation of the children of
Israel, and it shall be forgiven them..."
Numbers 15:28, "And the
priest shall make atonement before the Lord for him who sinned inadvertently;
when atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven."
The prophets in the Old Testament spoke in
GOD's Name, in the first person. Here are examples...
Deuteronomy
18:18-19, "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen,
and will put My words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I commanded
him. If any man will not listen to My words which he speaks in My name, I Myself
will make him answer for it."
Ezekiel 3:4, "And He said to me: Son of
man, go to the house of Israel, and you shall speak
My words to them."
The priest has
been given the ministry of reconciliation. He mediates GOD's forgiveness to the
sinner. The priest is merely an instrument of GOD. As an analogy, think of GOD
as the Supreme Healer, the Master Surgeon. He will remove the cancer of sin from
the soul, while using one of His priests as the scalpel.
This GOD given ministry
is shown very plainly in Holy Scripture:
Matthew 16:19, when Jesus gave
the power and authority to Peter, "And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven."
Matthew 18:18, Jesus gave this power to all of the Apostles,
"Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth
shall be loosed also in heaven."
John 20:21-23, "He therefore said to
them again, 'Peace be to you! As
the Father has sent Me, I also send you'. When He had said this, He breathed upon them, and said
to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained'."
Matthew 10:40, "He who
receives you receives Me; and he
who receives Me, receives Him who sent Me."
Luke 22:29-30, "And I appoint
to you a kingdom, even as
My Father has appointed to Me, so that you
may eat and drink at my table in My kingdom; and
you shall sit upon thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
2Corinthians 5:17-20, "Therefore,
if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold,
the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to
himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their
trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of
reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, GOD
making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God."
Clearly, the Apostles were given the authority to
remit sins, or to bind them, in the person of Christ. How are they to accomplish
this if they do not know what sins to remit or to bind? The sinner is required
to confess his sins as shown.
1John 1:8-10, " If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word
is not in us."
The Apostles obviously
would not live forever, and sin will always be with us, so they passed the
authority on to others.
2Corinthians 2:10, "Whom you pardon anything, I also pardon.
Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I have done for your
sakes, IN THE PERSON OF CHRIST."
The priest says in the
confessional, "I absolve
you of your sins." The priest is acting in Personna
Christi, in the person of Christ. Since the priest is
acting in the person of Christ, then it is Christ to whom you confess your sins.
It is Christ alone who remits them. Jesus Christ uses the priest as His voice
and His hands.
As mentioned earlier, the prophets of the Old Testament
spoke in GOD's name. They spoke IN THE PERSON OF
GOD. The priests of the New Covenant speak
IN THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
GOD
never changes.
Matthew 9:5-8, "For which is easier to say, "Your sins are
forgiven you, or to say arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of
Man has power to forgive sins" - then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up
your pallet and go to your house". And he arose, and went away to his house. But
when the crowds saw it, they were struck with fear, AND GLORIFIED GOD WHO HAD GIVEN SUCH POWER TO MEN."
The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old
Testament is revealed in the New.
Christ, the
High Priest of the New Covenant, ordained the apostles to continue His priestly
mission. James 5:14-16, (14) "Is any among you sick?
Let him bring in the presbyters (priests) of the church, and let them pray over
him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; (15)and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the
Lord will raise him up; and if he be in sins, they will be forgiven him. (16) Confess, therefore, your sins to one another, and pray
for one another, that you may be saved. For the unceasing prayer of a just man
is of great avail."
St. James taught us that we must go to the
"presbyters", and not to just anyone, to receive the "anointing", and the
remission of sins. First, he told us to go to the presbyters, or priests, in
verse 14. Verse 16
continues with the word "therefore", so that word is a conjunction that connects
verse 16 back to verses 14
and 15. It is the priests to whom St. James told us
to confess our sins.
Why do we go to confession? What is the real reason?
We go
to meet Christ...
©
Compiled by Bob Stanley, November 12,
1999
Updated September 10, 2004
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