On the Absence of Confession

It is one thing to say, as a Christian, that "I'm not confessional". A surface understanding of such a statement would have most of us take it to mean that the person does not hold strictly to one of the historic confessions, Heidelberg, Westminster, London Baptist, Savoy, New Hampshire, etc, but it is another thing all together to say that Christians need not confess their sins. Though the discussion of that type of confessionalism involves a great deal more, it is not what I ran into on the truthtalklive blog yesterday. No, over the past couple days I have been engaged in a discussion under the heading of, "How Do You Reach Your Jewish Friends for Christ?". My involvement began when I heard the host on Tuesday November 27, 2007 use the pejorative term, "replacement theology" and immediately following, the guest mention the atrocities (and they certain were that) welded by the hands of those who held to that theology in the past.

If you have spent any time reading this blog you would probably have noted that I am a covenant theologian who used to be a disepnsationalist. Now, the guest last Tuesday, a believer who is Jewish, does not refer to himself as a dispensationalist but the conversation that ensued on the blog under the same title as the radio show does have a participant who calls himself a "Classic Dispensationalist", after the tradition of Darby and Chafer.

The most shocking of the tenets to which he holds, born out of his system of Dispensationalism--which I 'm sure he would confess--was that, Christians don't need to ask forgiveness for their sins because that forgiveness has already been bought. You can look at the blog yourself to read the interaction. The Classic Dispensationalist referred everyone to two websites that represent his view, WithChrist.org and realanswers.net.

One thread of the discussion in particular involved 1 John 1:9, and in the link above, realanswers offers an explanation which you can read for yourself.

The last thing I want to do is call the salvation of these individuals into question, but I do believe that the system called Classic Dispensationalism has very little in the way of scriptural accuracy to offer the Church. I hope that you will take a look at their work on 1 John 1:9 and contrast it with the orthodox view below

Here is a reasonable exegesis of 1 John 1:9 offered by John Gill.

"Ver. 9. If we confess our sins,.... Not to one other; for though it is our duty to confess our faults to our fellow creatures and fellow Christians which are committed against them, yet are under no obligation to confess such as are more immediately against God, and which lie between him and ourselves; or at least it is sufficient to confess and acknowledge in general what sinful creatures we are, without entering into particulars; for confession of sin is to be made to God, against whom it is committed, and who only can pardon: and a man that truly confesses his sin is one that the Spirit of God has convinced of it, and has shown him its exceeding sinfulness, and filled him with a godly sorrow for it, and given him repentance unto salvation, that needeth not to be repented of; and who, under such a sight and sense of sin, and concern for it, comes and acknowledges it before the Lord, humbly imploring, for Christ's sake, his pardoning grace and mercy; and such obtain it: he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins: forgiveness of sin here intends not the act of forgiveness, as in God, proceeding upon the bloodshed and sacrifice of Christ, which is done at once, and includes all sin, past, present, and to come; but an application of pardoning grace to a poor sensible sinner, humbled under a sense of sin, and confessing it before the Lord; and confession of sin is not the cause or condition of pardon, nor of the manifestation of it, but is descriptive of the person, and points him out, to whom God will and does make known his forgiving love; for to whomsoever he grants repentance, he gives the remission of sin; in doing of which he is faithful to his word of promise; such as in Pr 28:13; "and just"; in being "true", as the Arabic version adds, to his word; and showing a proper regard to the blood and sacrifice of his Son; for his blood being shed, and hereby satisfaction made to the law and justice of God, it is a righteous thing in him to justify from sin, and forgive the sinner for whom Christ has shed his blood, and not impute it to him, or punish him for it; though the word here used may answer to the Hebrew word qydu, which sometimes carries in it the notion and idea of mercy and beneficence; hence mercy to the poor is sometimes expressed by righteousness; and the righteous acts of God intend his mercies and benefits unto men; see Da[n] 4:27; and so forgiveness of sin springs from the tender mercies of our God, and is both an act of justice and of mercy; of justice, with respect to the blood of Christ, and of pure grace and mercy to the pardoned sinner: the following clause, and to cleanse us, from all unrighteousness, is but the same thing expressed in different words; for all unrighteousness is sin, and to cleanse from sin is to remove the guilt of it, by an application of the blood of Christ for pardon. The antecedent to the relative "he" in the text, is either God, who is light, and with whom the saints have fellowship; or his Son Jesus Christ, who is the nearest antecedent, and who, being truly God, has a power to forgive sin."

Now I want to offer a few practical observations of my own.

If believers have no need of confession or "asking forgiveness", then in what way--if any--is God displeased with our sins as believers? If God has forgiven us by the cross of all the sins we will ever commit as Christians in such a way that no application of forgiveness is necessary when we sin, then the sins we commit as believers can not be displeasing to God at all, because He has already set His displeasure for those sins on Christ in the past, therefore God NEVER chastens His children because that chastening has already been accomplished in Christ.

As for Old testament believers, when God saved them, would the Classic Dispensationalist say the same thing about their life of sanctification, that they too had no need to ask forgiveness when they sinned as believers? If so, then why would Christ have told His disciples--being Old Testament saints--that they needed to ask their Father in heaven to forgive them?

Classic Dispensationalism confuses the aspects of personal atonement: regeneration, justification, and adoption. Regeneration has to do with being reborn and being made spiritually alive; justification has to do with being made right in light of God's Law, and adoption has to do with being brought close to the inheritance.

Classic Dispensationalists also tend to confuse our redemption accomplished and redemption applied. When God regenerates us he applies the righteousness of Christ to us by faith, but confession is the means of the application of Christ's work to us by faith, daily--in sanctification.