Confessing Sin

I'm working on a sermon to be shared in Dallas in a couple of Sundays. It has taken a new shape since I began. So these paragraphs are irrelevant. Still, they belong somewhere in the world and the Fat Man is just that place.

Yet if there is one thing some Christians have overextended, it’s confessing the sins of others and calling for them to repent. Forgive me if I make it sound like it’s something new because it’s not. It’s as old as the Book of Acts and the Council of Jerusalem. It’s even older than that.

Scripture reminds me that if I say I am without sin I am fooling myself. 1John 8-9 says “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” It never says what will come to pass if I confess somebody else’s sin. 

John 8 actually tells that story. It tells the story of the crowd of holy men bring the adulterous woman to Jesus he reminds them that they have no room to judge her, asking the one without sin to cast the first stone. That piece ends as the one without sin refuses to cast a stone. He calls her to repentance. Holy men call her to judgment and death, without calling her adulterous partner to any judgment at all. Jesus calls her to repentance and new life.

Am I talking about wedding cakes and pizzas, not really. Those are just the fruit of that sinful spirit (a spirit even I am not immune from based on this very sentence). Let us confess our own sins. Let us love as Christ loved us. When we do that I suspect the small stuff will begin to take care of itself.