Adult Bible Study March 30, 2008

Lesson Text: 2 Chronicles 3:15, 18-19; 25-27, 29, 31-33
By Ken Hawkley
E-mail: louise050@comcast.net

This lesson helps us examine the link between relationship and covenant. In the lesson text, one of the things that comes out in bold print is the pubic confession of wrong as part of the relationship repair.

A Catholic friend told me his experience of the distinctive practice of confessing aloud particular sins to another person. He confirmed that to speak the sin aloud gives it substance. He also reminded me that when Adam named the creatures, it gave them identity and also helped him claim God’s dominion and power over them. Naming our sins can do the same. It can give us the power not to commit them again. Asking forgiveness gives the other power to remove the sin as a roadblock to relationship.

Confessing and naming our sins is still only part of the process. One preacher described us as people willing to lay our sins on the altar, confess them, ask forgiveness, and then pick them back up and keep them with us instead of leaving them behind.

Every so often we read about Japanese politicians and prominent business leaders apologizing in public for wrongs they have committed. It seems that they do not include excuses; they simply admit wrong and ask forgiveness. For a non-Christian nation these seem to be very Christian behaviors.

When leaders in Canada and the United States are caught doing wrong, they often use “plausible deniability,” or use scapegoats, or sometimes try to distract attention through outright lies or misdirection. Any public confession is more likely to be vague and filled with excuses or ways to minimize the offense.

What we long for is to have a strong relationship with one another and with God. What if we were able simply to confess our sin and ask forgiveness—of each other and of God? No excuses. No mitigating circumstances. No expectation of forgiveness. Just the anticipation that accepting our responsibility brings us one step closer and that the promised forgiveness through Christ will feel like running into the arms of a long-lost loved one.