First and foremost in biblical confession is indeed the confession of personal sin. After the swarm of locust in Egypt, Pharaoh admitted, "I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you." (Exo. 10:16). You'll see it in Balaam (Num. 22:34), Achan (Josh. 7:20), Saul (1 Sam. 15:24), David (2 Sam. 12:13; Psa. 51:4) and many other Old Testament folks. In the New Testament, the Prodigal Son admits his sin to his father (Luke 15:21), Judas admits his sin of betraying Christ (Matt. 27:4), and, when faced with the obvious deity of Christ, Peter told Jesus, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8). It is indeed the point of Jesus's admonition to "first take the log out of your own eye" (Matt. 7:5).
There is another interesting form of confession in the Bible that seems to follow the personal confession quite closely. You can find it in a variety of places, but I'll just use a few examples. First, there is Isaiah who "saw the Lord" (Isa. 6). When confronted with His holiness, Isaiah has only one response: "Woe is me! For I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (Isa. 6:5). There is a personal confession of sin there, but it is followed by a corporate confession of sin as well. Isaiah notes first and foremost his own sin of "unclean lips", but right behind that he sees he is part of a group of people that suffers from the same malady. Daniel does the same kind of thing.
"O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from Your commandments and rules (Dan. 9:5).What a prayer opener! No tiptoeing through the issues. "God, you're great and we're evil." Read through Daniel 9. It's a fascinating prayer. Every mention of "us" seems to be in terms of "how evil we are". And Daniel clearly isn't saying "them." It's "us." "We" are to blame. "We" are the ones who have failed. He points out the rotten things that have happened to his people ... and assigns them to the "justice" category. It was right of God to have done all that. He holds a "we deserved every bit of it" kind of attitude. And when Daniel asks for God's mercy based on God's promises, he doesn't plead on behalf of the goodness of himself or his people or by claiming a promise. He pleads solely on the basis of God's glory.
One of the most impressive of this type of prayer to me is found in Nehemiah. In Neh. 9 they have a group prayer with all of Israel gathered in sackcloth. Read that prayer sometime. Every mention of God is "Oh, how wonderful You are" and every mention of themselves and their history is "Oh, how we've sinned."
I agree with Paul that we need to recognize personal sin. It is a command. Examine ourselves first. Going one step further, then, I think we would benefit from recognizing our sins as the people of God. It's just too easy to sit here and point out the evil of the world, the politicians, the media, the entertainment industry, and on and on. The truth is that we as individuals and we as God's own people stand guilty of sin ourselves, and pointing out the evil of the evil world does little good. On the other hand, "If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chron. 7:14). We really need the healing of "our land", the Church, and we really need to humble ourselves, pray, seek God's face, and turn from our wicked ways. That won't happen while we're busy pointing fingers elsewhere.
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