Welcome to answers from an apostolic faith.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
Welcome back, my beloved, to the second part of our series about repentance and confession and why they are so crucial in the life of the Christian believer. In our previous video, we took the time to understand the Orthodox understanding of repentance and how it brings about a change of direction or orientation in the life of the believer. And now we tackle the subject of confession and we'll attempt to dig deeper to understand why the Lord has given to His Church this mystery as one of the means to salvation.
Let us first begin with the word confession, otherwise known in the Greek language as ομολογία (omología). Now this word omología is comprised of two words: όμοιος (ómios), meaning the same, and λόγια (lógia), meaning a word or an account. And what this translates into is that confession is rooted in this deep understanding that we ought to have the same words, thoughts, and convictions as Christ. When He declares, we declare; what He preached, we preach. And this then leads us further to understand that my confession, my declaration of the truth, the same word can take on two types of confession: a confession of faith and a confession of what sin is.
We have said that confession has two types: confession of faith and a confession of sin. The first is an affirmative stance on declaring, in the same words, the faith of the Church. And this is clearly identified in the liturgical life of the Church. For instance, our Creed is a great example of the confession of our faith: Truly we believe in one God! We use the same words set up by the Church to declare our beliefs. Again, we see this at the end of the liturgy where the priest and the deacon, before the distribution of the mysteries, pray what is called the confession. The priest says: Amen, Amen, Amen, I believe, I believe, I believe, and confess to the last breath that this is the life-giving flesh... And then again the deacon replies by saying: Amen, Amen, Amen, I believe, I believe, I believe that this is true, Amen! It is these types of affirmative confessions of faith that the Lord speaks off to his disciples about in Luke chapter 12. We read, in verse 8:
'' 8 Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God.'' (Luke 12:8)
Furthermore, if we take a look at what St. Paul says in the book of Romans, chapter 10, he makes it clear and he says this, verse 9:
'' 9 ...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10)
Here we clearly see that we have two great scriptural references of how an affirmative statement of one’s faith is very much a confession in that it speaks of God in the same words as were handed down to us by Christ.
Now the second type of confession is that confession of sin. To understand this, let's take a step back and remove ourselves from the role of the sinner who'll expose his or her personal sin in confession. In doing so, let's ask the following question: Do we have the same definition of sins as Christ and His Church? When we see a person bending the truth for personal gain, do we use the same word, omología, as Christ: do we call it a lie? When we see a person taking something that is not his without consent, do we use the same word, omología, as Christ: do we call that theft? Confession of sin, therefore, is calling it as it is. It's when I can truly confess my sin without excuse, justification or embellishment and call it what it is: I have lied; I have stolen; I have lusted; I have gossiped.
We must be careful because the devil tempts all of us to use different words when speaking of our actions, thoughts or even our lives. Rather than calling sins what they truly are, he temps us to use different words. He masks lust and calls it love; disguises greed and calls it ambition; he covers pride and arrogance and he calls it assertiveness. However, we, as Christians, must be bold enough to proclaim the truth and call out sin for what it truly is.
Confession, therefore, as we have seen and explained it, is the revelation of what dwells in a person's heart in both the matters of faith and sin. And the benchmark we use, as Orthodox Christians, to pronounce both our faith and our sins, this omología, these same words, is the Church. All this can be summed up beautifully by quoting the 5th Litany of the 9th Hour Prayer of the Coptic Orthodox Church:
''O You who accepted unto Him the confession of the thief on the cross, accept us unto you, O Good One, we who deserve the sentence of death because of our sins. We all confess our sins with him, acknowledging Your divinity, and cry out with him, saying, “Remember us, O Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom.'' '' (Agpeya, 5 th
Litany of the Ninth Hour Prayer)
We confess and we acknowledge. Now that we have seen these two parts (these two videos) and discussed repentance and confession as they are seen in the Orthodox Church, we will conclude our series in the next video by speaking to why we confess to a priest and how we ought to confess. The Lord guide you and keep you, my beloved!
Until next time...
Remember to know your faith, live your faith, and teach your faith. And to God be the glory now and forever unto the ages of all ages. Amen.