“O my God, I am ashamed and blush to life my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads... what shall we say after this?... shall we break your commandments again?... Behold, we are before you in our guilt.” – Ezra 9:6, 10, 14-15
Ruth Haley Barton writes, “Our culture promotes a profound sense of denial about the presence of sin in our lives and the ways our sins and negative patterns wound others.” Perhaps that is why I am struck by Ezra’s genuine grief and open confession. When was the last time you told someone you felt ashamed about something? The tone of this part of the book seems far more personal than anything we have read thus far.
There are three general kinds of confession: personal (between God and us), interpersonal (with a trusted friend or the person we have offended), and corporate (as a community or congregation). We see all three kinds here in Ezra 9-10: the personal confession of all who had taken foreign wives (10:14), interpersonal confession of Shecaniah to Ezra (10:2), and confession as an assembled congregation (9:10, 10:1, 10:9).
For some reason, interpersonal confession seems hardest to do. It’s much easier to confess in private or in the anonymity of a large group, but much harder to look someone in the eye and admit your wrong. For one thing, most of us have seen few examples of this done well: it is rare to grow up with parents who model confession to each other or their kids, for others to personally apologize for their wrongs, for friends to be vulnerably and deeply committed to accountability. If anything, sheltering in place has given me plenty of chances to model confession to my kids: “I’m sorry I hurt you with my tone of voice.” “I’m sorry I turned my frustration about your brother onto you.” “I want you to know I said sorry to your Daddy after we fought.”
For another thing, interpersonal confession can reveal whether or not we are really confessing at all. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution... Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.” Whenever I feel the urge to brush off confessing my sin to someone, I at least try to examine that impulse. Am I really sorry, or am I just trying to make myself feel better and move on?
“Confession,” writes Barton, “is good for the soul… because it opens us to the experience of being forgiven and the freedom that comes on the other side.” Confession leads not to shame but to release, because we have this promise: “If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
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