How to Confess Your Sin - Meditations on Nehemiah 1

"Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses." (Nehemiah 1:6-7, ESV)

If we are to pray well, we must be real about the circumstances of our lives. This means that sin needs to be confronted, owned, and confessed. Nehemiah did not simply plead with God based on a belief that God hears prayer. He did not lay trust in his own earnestness to gain results. He looked at the situation and was honest about what had caused it. This is hard for us to do. We don’t like airing our dirty laundry. But this we must do if our prayers are to be heard and our past healed.

There are four things in Nehemiah’s prayer that we should keep in mind when confessing sin:

1. Nehemiah took his time. He fasted and prayed before the Lord for many days (Nehemiah 1:4). He prayed day and night (1:6). Nehemiah did not allow himself to fall into the trap of easy confession. He allowed himself to feel the guilt and grief that sin had caused. We must be careful of being too quick with our confessions. A simple utterance of words does not bring forgiveness where the weight of sin is not felt and grieved. This does not mean that we should be depressed all the time. The morning of joy and freedom must follow the night of grief, but the ones who most appreciate the morning are those who have endured the long hours of night. The next three items help us to do what Nehemiah did here.

2. Nehemiah confessed the sins of the people of Israel. Although these sins are not enumerated here, the implication is that Nehemiah named specific sins. Again, the human temptation is to generalize and minimize. Nobody likes to give exact details of what they did when they sinned. It’s easier and safer (or so we assume) to confess anger than it is to confess the specific words spoken in a fit of rage and why that outburst was wrong.

3. Nehemiah admitted his own personal guilt: “Even I and my father’s house have sinned.” Since Adam, the tendency has been to shift the blame. It would have been easy for Nehemiah to excuse himself, to leave the guilt at the feet of his ancestors. They were the ones who had rebelled against the Lord and forsaken the covenant. It was their sin that brought exile and led to the destruction of Jerusalem. But Nehemiah put himself in the camp of those responsible. He recognized that he had failed to live perfectly, just has they had failed. He was willing to let the responsibility lay on his shoulders. We, too, must be willing to take personal responsibility for sin. Even if we have reason to point the finger at others, in prayer this practice is unwarranted. We cannot do anything about another person’s conscience. We can only be real about ourselves.

4. Nehemiah acknowledged that it was God against whom the sin had been committed: “we have sinned against you.” These words remind us of David’s confession. David had seduced another man’s wife, got her pregnant, and then had her husband murdered to cover up his sin. In his confession, he cried to the Lord: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). David was not denying the evil that he had committed against Uriah and Bathsheba. He was acknowledging that, ultimately, every sin is a sin against God. This is what Nehemiah confesses as well. The sins of Israel, and his own sins, though perpetrated against many individuals and even against themselves, were ultimately perpetrated against God. When we confess sin, we too must see our sin in an ultimate sense. We have offended God, we have violated his commandments, we are guilty before him.

 
God has given us great encouragement to be this real about our sin. Although we are all guilty, God has provided a guaranteed way of forgiveness in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:23-24). Jesus, although himself innocent, died on a cross in order to take on himself the penalty that our sin deserves (Galatians 3:13). Those who trust in him are made righteous, declared innocent of all guilt (Romans 4:24-25). To them, the unconquerable promise is made: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).