The Reality of Grace

In his book The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg says, "Confession is not primarily something God has us to do because he needs it...We need to confess in order to heal and change." He talks about how we often think of confession as being legalistic -- make a confession and have a sin erased -- transactional. Instead, confessional should be transformational.

It reminds me of a description of prayer from the class JtM and I taught on Yancey's Prayer book. Prayer should develop a relationship with God, and yet so often we use it because we see it as a transaction with God.

I was looking for something else this evening on Ye Ole Blog, and I found this quote sent to me in an email from JtM, back in 2006:

There is no union with God without transformation. Paradoxically, the person who has struggled with personal transformation and become psychologically stronger is the person who can be empty and receptive before God. This vulnerability is an act of strength, since we no longer need to hold tightly to a false self that protects us from our inner pain and fears. We are free at last.

Confession. Is there anything that makes us more vulnerable than confession? To admit before God that we are wrong is to become vulnerable before God (and ourselves). Confession empties us -- our hearts and hands and spirits -- so that we can be open before God and accept the freedom of forgiveness and grace.

Ortberg also says that confession is not just the idea of grace, but is the reality of grace. God doesn't ask us to do it our of his own self-interest, or out of a need to hear our admissions. Better than we know, he knows how it can be grace.

In a post by Songbird, she states:

And I sobbed, too, because this is what God wants from us, not rules and rituals and lines of exclusion. God wants the I'm sorry written on our hearts, sobbed and sung and wrung out of us,...