Introduction
When you hear the word “confession”, what do you think of? When I was growing up, I associated confession with someone sitting in a box and confessing their sins to a priest (like in the Roman Catholic church). I’m sure you probably have the same or similar thought when you hear the word “confession” or the phrase “confessing your sins”. Many people today think the practice of confessing sins is only for uptight religious people who take sin “too seriously.”
Recently, we implemented in our Sunday morning service a corporate prayer of confession. Either I, or one of the elders, will get up and acknowledge that we have sinned against the Lord this week. A passage of Scripture will be read, followed by a call to quietly meditate on the passage and the ways we have sinned against God. I then lead us in praying from that passage and confessing our sins to the Lord. I then close with giving us the assurance of pardon (from Scripture) which reminds us that in Christ we are forgiven of all our sins (past, present, future).
Maybe you recognize that privately confessing your sins is biblical and a good practice to do, but you may still find it strange to have a prayer dedicated to confessing our sins before the Lord in the Sunday morning service. You may think that confessing our sins is between us and God, and not something to be done at church.
With that in mind, I now want to give five reasons why we as church have a corporate prayer of confession during our Sunday morning service.
Five Reasons We Have a Corporate Prayer of Confession In Our Church Service
Reason #1: It’s Biblical
The Bible is filled with examples of and exhortations to confess our sins. James 5:16 tells us to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Some may argue that these verses only point to the individuals practice of confessing sin to God and not an exhortation to have a corporate prayer of confession. Technically this is true. However, Jesus commands us to pray that our debts may be forgiven (Matthew 6:12). This implies a corporate nature of confessing our sins in prayer.
The Scriptures not only point to a Christian privately confessing their sins before God, but also to publicly declaring as a congregation of forgiven sinners that we have sinned against our God and that we need to repent of those sins.
Reason #2: We All Sin
Let’s be honest: we all sin. All of us, week in and week out, sin against God. We are forgiven in Christ and are no longer under His condemnation (Romans 8:31). Yet, we still do what displeases and dishonors Him: we blow up in anger, we say something vulgar and unkind, we look at something we shouldn’t, we harbor bitterness in our hearts, we think of only ourselves instead of someone else. The list could go on and on.
Having a prayer in the Sunday morning service dedicated to confessing our sins allows us to humbly admit that we haven’t made it yet and that we are still in progress. Lots of people shy away from the church because they think that’s where “perfect people go”. By having a prayer dedicated to confessing our sins before the Lord, we admit that we are not perfect and are still in need of God’s grace.
When I get up and offer a prayer of confession to God on behalf of the congregation, I too am saying that I sinned against God this week in a multitude of ways. Even I, as the pastor, am guilty of transgressing God’s law and not honoring Him in the way I should. I need to confess that to the Lord, along with the rest of the congregation on Sunday mornings.
Reason #3: It Unburdens The Soul
We have can have the tendency of downplaying our sin and keeping it concealed in the dark. Overtime, that will greatly affect our relationship with God and will keep us burdened by our sin. The Psalmist described that when he didn’t confess his sin, it was like his bones were “wasting away” (Psalm 32:3).
In the corporate prayer of confession, no one is going to the mic and publicly confessing their sin. Yet, the pastor or another church leader, is leading the congregation in confessing to the Lord that we have sinned in a variety of ways. That practice, in part, unburdens the soul. You can get “that sin” off your chest during the service. And guess what? Everyone else is doing that as well!
Satan wants us to conceal and hide our sin. God wants us to agree with Him that we have sinned, which leads to us unburdening our souls. And what better place do this then on Sunday mornings with in the assembly of the saints!
Reason #4: It Teaches Us to Confess Sin
All the corporate prayers made on Sunday morning should be a model for us on how we should pray. Same thing goes for the prayer of confession.
Confessing our sins privately to God may seem like a daunting task (“where do I even begin?!”). By having a corporate prayer of confession, it models for all of us something that we can be doing daily: going before the Lord and confessing the ways we sinned against Him.
When I lead the prayer of confession, I will read a passage of Scripture (rotating between the Old and New Testament), and from that passage I will pray through different points in that passage, confessing the different ways that we sinned against God.
For example, I read Philippians 4:8 and called us to meditate on the ways that we sinned against God with our thoughts. I then led us in a prayer of confessing all the ways that we did not have God-honoring thoughts that week.
By modeling this, Christians can start to implement this in their own prayer lives. Maybe they are reading through John’s gospel and are confronted with a specific are of sin in their life. They can pray from that passage and confess that sin to God. God is pleased when we use His Word to confess our sin to Him.
Reason #5: It Reminds Us Of The Gospel
I always end the corporate prayer of confession with the assurance of pardon, which is from a passage of Scripture that clearly articulates that in the Gospel we are once and for all forgiven of all our sins. I don’t want us to merely confess our sins, but I want us to be reminded that God no longer holds our sins against us! All our sins have been thrown into the sea of forgetfulness (Micah 7:19).
We need to be come face to face with the reality that we have sinned against God, but what is just as important is that we need to be reminded of the glorious news that God in Christ has taken our sins and has in exchange given us His robes of righteousness.
Corporate prayer of confession coupled with the assurance of pardon does exactly this. We are reminded together that, though we sinned against a Holy God a thousand different ways this week, we no longer stand in condemnation before Him. What great news!
Conclusion
My hope is that as we have a corporate prayer of confession on Sunday mornings, we begin to corporately acknowledge our sin before God, our need for His grace, and remind each other of the assurance of pardon we have in Christ.
None of us is perfect (even the pastor!). We don’t have all our ducks in a row. We should admit this as a local church, all the while holding fast to the truth that we are forgiven in Christ. As Christians in the local church, we are to help one another to heaven, and having a corporate prayer of confession with the assurance of pardon helps us do that.