Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): Making God's word plain. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents God's eternal truths with Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse and the Bible.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: People like to talk out their problems. The psychologists speak of this as a catharsis which gives the soul opportunity for cleansing. In fact, there can be found advertisements in the newspapers of our great cities in which men offer to listen to people talk for so much an hour. Ministers have had the experience of people coming to them and after talking for an hour, the minister not having chance to say a word, they close by saying, oh, you do not know how much you have helped me.

Guest (Male): With his friendly manner, vivid analogies and faithful exposition of the scriptures, Dr. Barnhouse makes the Bible relevant to modern man. His sermons are just as applicable today as when they were first preached decades ago. Confession is good for the soul is not just a familiar saying. It is a vital biblical principle as well. Our sin damages our fellowship with God, but he promises that if we confess our sins to him with an honest and contrite heart, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What are the marks of true confession according to God's word?

This week, we turn to 1 John chapter 1 and verse 9. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with his message, the marks of true confession.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the our father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We pray thee that in this hour thou shalt bring us close to thyself. Thou knowest our hearts. May we not hide anything from thee, but may we be willing to have thee turn us inside out in true confession. May we realize that coming to thee and acknowledging our sin and then by thy Holy Spirit forsaking it, this can lead to growth in life. so take the truth of this hour and bring it to our hearts. We ask in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus.

Amen. Our subject today is entitled the marks of true confession. One of the great doctrines of the word of God is the doctrine of confession. Because it has been abused by some churches, its truth has been overlooked by others. In some churches, it has been made a substitute for salvation. In others, it has been neglected as a means of Christian growth. There are those who are very conscious of confession without knowing its true significance. They speak of going to confession before they will be permitted to take communion. For these, confession is made by telling a member of the clergy what they have done wrong, but judged by the lives they live, they have no thought of changing their conduct.

On the other hand, those who are saved by the grace of God often display an indifference to the need to confess sins even to the point where grace, instead of promoting a holy life, almost becomes license for a sinful one. We believe that there is no spiritual merit in confessing our sins to any man. Since no man has power to forgive sins, but Jesus Christ himself. But we believe also that there is much merit for the true believer in confessing his sins to Jesus Christ, our Lord. If he is to know moment by moment fellowship with God, our heavenly father.

There is a great psychological basis for confession. Everyone would share his burden with somebody else. Almost every language carries the proverb or something like it. A burden shared is a burden halved. Thus, we see that confession is an natural thing. People must unburden themselves. But is confession a spiritual benefit to everyone? The Bible teaches that confession is for those who have been redeemed, whose sinful natures have been dealt with at the cross through the death of Christ. It is on the basis of forgiven sin that God can deal with sins. Now we must pause at this point in order to set forth the doctrine of salvation in relation to the doctrine of sanctification or to use more popular language.

We must show the necessity for being born again before one may live the life of the believer. According to the word of God, men are sinners. They are sinners by nature. They are sinners by choice. They are sinners by God's declaration. As a result of their sin, they are a total ruin. By sin, we mean coming short of the perfection of God. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It is not a question of what I have done that makes me a sinner. It is the fact that I have missed the standard which God has set and that standard is his glory.

And the ruin that men have become, even though they live lives of great morality and appear to be honorable and upright, the ruin is that they are estranged from God and on their way to a Christless eternity until they have come to the cross. So God tells us that all men have missed the mark. And the result of this missing of the mark has made it impossible for me to be acceptable to God. By nature, I contaminate everything I touch. There is no point in quibbling about the nature and degrees of sin. If our sinful nature has not been dealt with, all of our good works, so called, will be tainted by our sinful nature.

Whether one is a good moral person, a religious person or a criminal, each is infected by the sinful nature which he possesses. Man is completely and absolutely ruined by sin. And there is only one remedy, the new birth. Now this ruin does not ruin him for life in human society, but it ruins him for contact with God who is holy. But through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as savior, man can be born again. He's cleansed from his sin and receives new life in Christ Jesus. He is delivered from the power of sin. Christ becomes the new foundation upon which his life is built.

All men must step upon this foundation. For men are lost not because of their sins, but as Christ said, because they believe not on me. The question which we must ask is, are you born again? We are not to be interested in the number and details of men's sins, for all men must be born again. God in wondrous grace took care of the sin question once and for all. Judicially, the sin account has been settled through the death of Jesus Christ. His righteousness has been charged to our account. By faith in the finished work of the cross, we have forgiveness.

We are made righteous and we have access to the father. The true believer has a peace with God which the world knows nothing about and thank God which the world can never take away. Without salvation, the root of man's sin is never reached. Dealing with sin piecemeal never gets to the root of the problem for it never presents salvation through the blood of Christ alone. There are what men call sacraments. There is ritual. There are various formulas to which people subscribe, but none of these reach the heart. There is not that peace with God which true salvation brings.

To confess without having been saved is but to chase boils from place to place on the spiritual frame without cleansing the poison from the bloodstream. Confession does not take care of man's sinful nature. Only the blood of Christ and the experience of true salvation can do that. Now we come to the biblical doctrine of confession. We read in 1 John 1 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness. There are certain words in this text to which we must give attention.

It says, if we confess our sins, the we obviously refers to a special group of people. They are the believers. The opening verses of the second chapter read, my little children, these things I write unto you that you sin not, but if any man sin, any born again believer sin, we, believers, have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. And thus we are identified as the born again ones, those who have Jesus Christ as their advocate and as their satisfactory sacrifice.

Again, in this same epistle, 1 John chapter 5 and verse 13, we read, these things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the son of God. And thus we, the we we are trying to discover, we are to be identified as those who are trusting in Christ for eternal life. The Bible was written that all might read, but it was not written to everybody. There are portions of the Bible that are for believers alone.

Just as we would not read another's mail, so it is necessary to discover which biblical mail is ours and which belongs to someone else. So this passage is for believers only. In the scripture, there is not one promise for the sinner. There is only God's offer of salvation and if you wish, there is the promise of hell. But there is no offer of consolation in time of need, of comfort in time of sorrow. All that we might understand this truth, the promises have become yea and amen to us, believers in Christ. Now we come back to this verse in 1 John 1 9, if we confess our sins, what does this term confession mean?

It does not mean to mumble a list of sins according to a form of ritual. Neither does it involve a recitation of one's past life in public. Sometimes at revival meetings, there are marathon confessions of sin. I believe that this is very definitely anti-biblical. What happens in such instances where a person may have told a sin to two persons? He now has an audience of 500 with the result that the injured party is endangered to a greater extent than before. There is no warrant in the Bible to confess private sin publicly. Even evangelicals sometimes fall into formalism.

We go to a revival meeting. Under the sway of mass psychology, we begin dredging up the past. We gush it forth with masterful pride. The greater the sin, the greater our apparent spirituality. The meeting ends. We go back to our daily tasks. We begin again to sin again. What has happened? Well, in a verbal exercise touched with emotion, we made a profession of confession. Our lips have not testified to our lives. True confession must affect daily conduct. When once we behold God's holiness, when once we recognize our sinfulness, then with Isaiah we shall cry, 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.

True confession involves much more than a recitation of one's past or a portion of one's past. True confession involves a new attitude, the taking of sides with God against oneself. True confession will alter conduct for the better. In military terms, it is unconditional surrender. We must come to God on his terms. We must determine to live for him. We must decide to hate sin. Now these are the elements of true confession. Now what is the purpose of confession as taught in the Bible? It is the means which God has ordained in order that fellowship may be maintained between ourselves and God.

God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And when we commit sin, our fellowship with God is broken. Confession is the means whereby we may keep short accounts with God. When we do wrong, we are to confess it immediately to the father. We are not to allow our sins to pile up. We're to keep the books balanced. This is the only way to peace. This is the only means to fellowship. This is the condition for blessing. If we confess our sins, now we're to be very definite about the sins we have committed.

As we confess them to God, we're to face them. We're to be definite about them. We're not to hide them. In the days when Israel turned away from the Lord, the prophet Hosea cried out, return, oh Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and turn to the Lord and say to him, take away all iniquity and receive us graciously. And likewise, we must come with words to God. We must name the sin that we have committed. We must admit that we willfully sinned against him of our own accord.

We must not try to blame someone else. Do not say, well, there were two of us and we strayed into lust, or there were three of us and we strayed into drunkenness, or our entire social set went into sin arm in arm. Your part in any of these things was by your own choice. You took your eyes from the Lord. You stopped reading his word which is a lamp for your feet and a light for your path. You grieved the Holy Spirit until he became silent and his voice no longer rebuked and warned you. And in naming the sin that you've committed, don't try to call it by some lesser name or speak in fuzzy generalizations.

No matter what the details were, mention those details to God. Do not be satisfied with a general confession. Be specific. A general confession is good to say in unison in public meetings, but when you're alone with God, it is not enough to say, I have erred and strayed from thy way like a lost sheep. I have left undone those things which I ought to have done and I have done those things which I ought not to have done and there is no health in me. Well, that's good for a start, but you must come down to cases.

Lord, I began by flirting and ended by committing adultery. Or Lord, I began to borrow money from the cash drawer until payday, but I got in over my head and I finally stole it. I am a thief. Or I wanted to be prominent in the conversation, so I told malicious lies about an innocent person. I am guilty of slander. Or I hadn't studied for the examination, so I cheated by looking over my neighbor's shoulder and copying from his paper. Or I wanted to put on a good front before my social set, so I went into debt for a mink coat and a high-priced car.

Now when you do this and confess in this manner, God will bless you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. He does this because of his faithfulness and his justice for the sake of Christ. Christ died for us. He is at the father's right hand making intercession for us. The father sees the pledge of the blood. He hears the pleading of his son and he cannot turn us away. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness. Great blessing comes from a clear understanding of this doctrine. Sin may enter my life, but my eternal welfare will not be shaken.

However, because of the privileges of fellowship, I hastened to confess the sin so that I shall not be robbed of these privileges. For the believer who understands the doctrine of confession, there is an abiding joy. There is always access to the father through the work of the son. Through his intercession, there's an assurance of salvation and forgiveness. Nothing can be laid to our charge. We are free from the law of sin and death. Questions may arise in the mind of the believer with regard to two passages of scripture. First, what is meant by confessing your faults one to another?

It is our belief here that public sin is in question. This passage is not on divine healing. Rather, it teaches the method of church discipline. In the context, a man is ill because of sin publicly committed. He may confess the sin before the church and ask for prayer. Many faithful people in the Bible suffered maladies and yet were not healed. The primary Old Testament example of a saint who suffered undeservedly was Job. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul had a physical handicap near blindness from which the Lord refused to deliver him. And yet no man in scripture was more wonderfully used than Paul.

We firmly believe that God brings illness upon those who are openly and flagrantly heedless of his will. And when such confess their sin, then there may be forgiveness and physical restoration. The second passage that might cause difficulty is that in 1 John 5 which mentions the sin unto death. John is warning born again believers that they risk severe chastisement by God if they dare presume on his grace in order to indulge in sin. God's chastisement may vary in degree of severity, culminating in physical death. It is as though God said, if you persist in disobeying me, my child, I shall remove you from service and take you home.

This is the sin unto death. It is not sin unto the second death, but physical death. Finally, we must ever live in fellowship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be willing to confess sins as they occur in our lives. Let us keep short accounts with God. Let us day by day direct our conduct on his terms so that in his sight we shall be well pleasing. If you today are conscious that you have strayed from the paths of righteousness and desire to be restored to fellowship with your heavenly father, you may be sure that he desires your fellowship.

God has missed you even more than you have missed him, for God is love. He loves you and longs to draw you to himself. Get alone with him. Tell him in detail all that you've done and do not spare yourself and you'll know the joy of his forgiveness. His peace will once more fill your heart and he will lead you daily in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. These are the results of true confession.

Guest (Male): God's promise to his children. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You are listening to Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. Today's message, the marks of true confession. Most Christians find it challenging to be bold in sharing their faith in Jesus with others. Dr. Barnhouse considers the topic of confession and faith, posing critical questions about the nature of belief and the result of openly confessing one's faith. Confession and faith is a positive and practical resource for evangelism and it's our gift to you when you call 1 800 488 1888 or when you visit alliancenet.org.

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And once again, if you would like to receive our free gift offer, Dr. Barnhouse's booklet, Confession and Faith, call 1 800 488 1888. Join Dr. Barnhouse next week as he points out the blood of Jesus has cleansed us from our sin once and for all. But as we falter with sin in our lives, we also need continual spiritual cleansing by his blood. That's next week on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.