Under this head may be included one or two cases of confession of sin to Christ. When Peter cries, ' Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord' (Lk 5*), and when the sinful woman in the house of the Pharisee silently makes confession to Jesus as she washes His feet with her tears (Lk 7"- ^), it is too much to saj' of these confessions, in Pliny's language {Ep. x. 96) with regard to the hymn-singing of "the early Christians, that they were offered ' to Christ as to God.' But they were certainly made to one who was felt to be raised above the life of sinful humanity, and to be the representative on earth of the purity and grace of the heavenly Father.*
2. Confession of sin to »iia»!.— According to the teaching of Christ and the Gospels, confession of sin should be made not only to God but to man, and, in particular, to any one whom we have wronged. In Mt 5^- " confession to a justly offended brother is directly enjoined ; and more than that, it is implied that the very gifts laid on God's altar are shorn of their value if such con- fession has not first been made. In Lk 17^ again, our own forgiveness of an offender is made to de- pend on his coming and confessing, 'I repent.' But apart from this confession to the person wronged, a wider and more public confession of sin meets us in the Gospels. The necessity of such confession is implied, for instance, in our Lord's denunciations of hypocrisy — in His con- demnation of the life of false pretence (Mt 23'^) ; of the cup and platter outwardly clean, while in- wardly full of extortion and excess (v.**) ; of the whited sepulchres fair to look at, though festering with rottenness within {v.^). It is implied simi- larly in His frequent commendation of simplicity and single-mindedness, and honest tnith in the sight both of God and man (cf. Mt 6~- ^ V'' 8«
' It is a point worth noticing, in the comparative study of the Gospels, that St. Luke, who is pre-eminently the Evangelist of salvation for the sinful, supplies us with the great bulk of the Gospel evidence that the Divine forgiveness is conditioned by
CONFESSION (OF SIN)
CONSCIOUSNESS
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It seems to be recognized in the Gospels that acknowledgment of sin to man as well as to God has a cleansing power upon the soul. There may, of course, be a confession that is spiritually fruit- less, to which men are urged not by the godly sorrow of true repentance, but by the goads of sheer remorse and despair. Of this nature was the confes.sion of Judas to the chief priests and elders (Mt 27*, cf. v.'). On the other hand, the confession of the penitent thief to all who heard him (Lk 23'") was the beginning of that swift work of grace which was accomplished in his heart through the influence of Jesus. It illustrates George Eliot's words, ' The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies is for ever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity ' {Boinola, p. 87).
3. Christ's personal attitude to the confession of sin. — That our Lord never made confession to man, and never felt the need of doing so, is sufh- ciently shown by His challenge, ' Which of you convicteth me of sin ? ' ( Jn S'% But did He make confession of sin to God ? The fact that John's baptism was ' the baptism of repentance ' (Mk I'' II), and that the people 'were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins' (Mt 3"), together with the further fact that Jesus Himself came to the Jordan to be bajitized (Mt 3'', Mk 1', Lk 3->), might be so interpreted. But against such an interpretation must be set the attitude of John both when Jesus first came to him (Mt 3") and afterwards (Jn 1-'), the language of Jesus to tlie Baptist (Mt 3'5), the descent of the Spirit (v.'«), and the voice from heaven (v."). The baptism of John, we must remember, had more than one aspect : it was not only the baptism of repent- ance, but the baptism of preparation for the ap- proaching kingdom of heaven (Mt 3=) and of consecration to its service (Lk 3'"'"). It is not as an act of confession, but as one of self-consecra- tion (including, it may be, an element of sympa- thetic self-humiliation, cf. Ph 2^), that the baptism of Jesus is to be regarded. He liad no sins to con- fess, but He knew that John was the prophet divinely commissioned to inaugurate the kingdom of righteousness (cf. Mt 2P-), and to inaugurate it by the rite of baptism (Mt 21-' ||). And'by sub- mitting Himself to John's baptism He was openly dedicating Himself to the work of that kingdom, and taking up His task of fulfilling all righteous- ness (Mt y^). (See Sanday in Hastings' DB ii. 611 ; Lambert, Saeraments in NT, p. 62 f. ; Expos. Times, xi. [1900] 354).
But, above all, it is to be noted that while Jesus taught His disciples to pray for the forgiveness of sins, we never find Him humbling Himself before God on account of sin, and asking to be forgiven. And the complete silence of the Gospels upon this point acquires a fuller significance when we ob- serve that there is not the slightest evidence that He ever engaged in common prayer with the Apostles. When Jesus prayed to the Father, He seems always to have prayed alone (Mt 14-^ 26^'' II, Lk 9i« 111 ; cf. Jn 17, where He prays in the pre- sence of the disciples, but not witli them). The reason probably was that while the attitude of a sinful suppliant and the element of confession, whether uttered or unexpressed, are indispensable to the acceptableness of ordinary liuman prayer, these could find no place in the prayers of Jesus. (See Dale, Christian Doctrine, p. 1(15 f. ; Forrest, Christ of History and of Experience, pp. 22 ll'., 385 f., Expos. Times, xi. [1900] 352 ff.).