Confession Ends In Absolution
Psalm 51
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 51 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. 6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. 9 Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. 15 O Yahweh, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Again this year we have ashes painted on our foreheads in the sign of a cross. We could use them as they have been used since Old Testament times, as a self-imposed mark of public humiliation, as an outward sign of inner repentance. We could use them as a mark of sin and death, that these bodies will return to the dust from which our human race was first taken. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We could use ashes as a confession of the sin that still plagues us every single day, and of our God-given faith in Christ who died for our sins – past, present and future. Ashes are a good outward symbol of confession, and confession is a God-pleasing activity.
But, ashes or no ashes, the fact is, we already wear the marks of death in our bodies: in every crease and wrinkle on our skin, in the glasses that correct our imperfect eyes, in the gray hair or the bald head, in all our frailties and infirmities, in our bent-over backs and our weak limbs. And though our dying bodies will return to the dust because of our sin, they will not remain in the dust, because we have been washed clean of the stain of sin and of the permanency of death. To choose not to use ashes on this day is fine, as long as we wear them on the inside, as long as we believe, not only that we are sinners, but that God forgives us sinners and has washed us clean in the waters of Holy Baptism. We believe in God’s absolution; we believe in God’s gift of forgiveness.
Psalm 51, embraces both aspects of Ash Wednesday – Confession and Absolution. It is a Psalm of Confession – not just a confession of sin, but also a confession of God’s goodness in forgiving sin. And those two aspects of confession have been summarized beautifully for us, not just in Psalm 51, but also in the Small Catechism:
“What is confession? Confession has two parts. First, that we confess our sins, and second, that we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.”
First, that we confess our sins. You can’t miss King David’s confession in Psalm 51. It permeates the Psalm, from beginning to end. “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” (v. 3) What transgressions and sins is he referencing? The title of the Psalm gives us a hint: “When Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” David wrote this Psalm right after the Bathsheba nightmare. You know the story: adultery, lies, deception, murder, cover-up. Those are real transgressions. Those are real sins against real people.
But it goes deeper than that. When Nathan, the prophet, confronted David, he said, “Why have you despised the word of Yahweh, to do what is evil in his sight?” (2 Sam 12:9) And so David confesses in this Psalm, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”
As horrible as David’s sins were against other people, his real sin, his major offense was idolatry, sin against God. His major offense – his only real offense – was that he made his desires his god. What David wanted – and that, of course was Bathsheba! – that would be his, no matter who got in his way, no matter who would suffer because of it, no matter what God had to say about it.
But it goes even deeper than that. It’s not just in these outward acts that David admits his sin. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (v. 5) David confesses his “original sin,” that inborn corruption of our very nature. Actual sins are only symptoms – fruit, if you will – of this inborn corruption.
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Your sins and my sins may be different than David’s, but they aren’t fewer and they aren’t any less offensive to God or any less deadly. The sin in which David’s mother conceived him is the same sin in which your mother conceived you. Your sins, my sins – they’re real transgressions, real sins against real people, and especially, real sins against God.
Indeed, David confesses all this to God, but he doesn’t do it just to get it off his chest. He doesn’t confess because he is being forced to confess. He doesn’t confess in order to coax God into feeling sorry for him, and he doesn’t confess in order to make a plea-bargain with God or to offer God something in return for his forgiveness. David confesses because he knows this one thing: “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (vv. 16-17) David confessed his sin because he believed that God would be merciful, that God would not despise or hate him or turn away from a broken and contrite heart. David confessed his sin because he believed in God’s gift of forgiveness.
Hear him give the reason for his pleas for mercy: “Have mercy on me, O God”, – Why? Because he deserved it? Certainly not, “but according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” David seeks mercy, he seeks cleansing, he seeks washing, he seeks the blotting out of transgression, he seeks the forgiveness of sins. And he does so in God’s own attributes, in who God has revealed Himself to be. David seeks mercy from God precisely because God is merciful. He seeks forgiveness because He knows and believes that God is, first and foremost, a forgiving God.
But God is not up in heaven forgiving sins secretly. God forgives sins through means, though His humble servants. God authorized Nathan – serving basically as David’s pastor – to go to David, to accuse David in God’s name, and to forgive David’s sin in God’s name. Before Nathan, David’s confession was very simple, “I have sinned against Yahweh.” And Nathan’s absolution was equally simple and immediate: “Yahweh has put away your sin.” (2 Sam 12:13) And there it was. David’s sin was taken away; it was absolved, it was forgiven by God through Pastor Nathan.
And that is the second and more important part of “Confession.” Confession consists of two parts. “Second, that we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.”
God does not call us to confession in order to humiliate us; He does so in order to absolve us. And that is exactly where He does it: through Absolution, Gospel, Baptism, Supper. And He does it for the sake of the merits of Christ Jesus who bore the sins of the world and earned God’s gift of forgiveness for us. Because He died for sin, sins are forgiven in the absolution. Christ bought and paid for all sin of all people for all time on the cross: that is the atonement. Forgiveness is accomplished on the cross; it is delivered only in the means of grace, God’s delivery systems.
See what a treasure He has given us in the absolution! This is where He takes us back to our Baptism where He washed us clean and blotted out all our transgressions. This is where Christ Himself comes to you through his called and ordained servant and deals with you throughout your Christian life. Through your pastor, Christ himself speaks and accuses you of sin, so that you may confess, and so that he may forgive you your sins.
This is the really humbling part of the office of the holy ministry. I, the pastor, am nobody special, and my words help no one. But God has chosen to speak through such a nobody as myself and other faithful pastors. Pastors, as our liturgy proclaims, are in the church “in the stead and by the command” of Christ Himself. And their task is simply and only to give Jesus away in all the ways that our Lord wants us to have Him. We hear God’s voice in the pastor’s preaching. We hear God condemning our sin, and we hear God announcing and delivering His forgiveness to us in the pastor’s absolution.
That is true in the public or corporate confession and absolution. It is also true in private confession and absolution where folks can come to me as individuals to confess, in private, the individual sins that trouble them, and to hear their own name as I absolve them by name, for particular sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as the Lord Christ has commanded me to do.
The goal of repentance, the goal of confession – the goal of Ash Wednesday – is not death, but Christ’s life; not sorrow in sin but, joy in Christ’s forgiveness of sins which is yours in His life, death, and resurrection for you.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
