confess

By Elizabeth Prata

Jesus is our judge. He is the sole authority to Whom we will answer, and our sins are crimes we have committed against Him. (Acts 10:42; 2 Timothy 4:8)

The world hates this notion, and continually rebels against it. They say that we only answer to ourselves, or that Jesus doesn’t exist, in the vain hope that their lawlessness will go unpunished. Most people will acknowledge there is some sort of God, distant and perhaps disinterested. But Jesus is the name at which they cringe. That is because He convicts of sin and will judge it. Deep down, they know this. (Romans 1:18-20)

“There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy.” (James 4:12).

If you really think about all the language of the Bible, you realize just how much of it is “legal” language. This is because sin, also known as lawlessness, is a crime. (1 John 3:4). It is a crime against God. Like any crime, it must be judged.

Many people say that the Bible is a “love letter from God.” In a way, it is. Others say that Jesus is our Friend, our Comforter, our Father, and all these are true too. However, when I came to Jesus for salvation, I came with a deep knowing of how pervasive and ugly sin is. By contrast, I understand His holiness. I appeal to Him as my Judge. Though Jesus is all things that are Good, and I enjoy my relationship with Him as Father and Friend, I relate to Him also as my Judge.

Far from it being a cold, distant relationship, I enjoy the order of His courts, the regularity and perfection of His dispensing of Justice, past, present and future. I am the kind of person who has always lived for justice, order, and for moral good, and in Jesus I finally found my home in that and it comforts me like a security blanket.

When we tune our ear, the Christian use of legal language is pervasive, all of it from the Bible. I bet we say these things without really envisioning them being used actively in His court in a legal context, by God, Jesus, satan… But, let’s.

By the way, I deliberately chose verses mostly from the New Testament to show that there is one God, not two. The Bible does not show us an ‘OT God of wrath’ and a ‘NT Jesus of love.’ They are one and the same. He is wrathful in the first place because He hates sin. He is also a God of love because he loves the creation He made, including humans.

Accuser

“And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.” (Revelation 12:10)

Advocate

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’ ” (1 John 2:1)

Confess

“because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9)

Convicted

“I got convicted of that activity when I heard the preacher’s sermon.”

“It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1:14-15).

Court
There is a heavenly court, you know! It is much more perfect to be judged by God than by man.

“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.” (1 Corinthians 4:3)

Judge

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:” (2 Timothy 4:1)

Lawlessness

“I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.” (Romans 6:19).

Pardon
He pardons us of our crimes!

“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17)

Penalty

“and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:27)

Testimony

During the Tribulation, the Two Witnesses testify to and of Jesus constantly for three and a half years.

“And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them,’ (Revelation 11:7)

Verdict

“‘The decision is announced by messengers [‘Watchers’ in ESV], the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.'” (Daniel 4:17).

I sure would like to know who these mysterious Watchers are mentioned three times in Daniel 4:13, 17, 23 but nowhere else. They seem to be a class of angel, because they are holy, and angel, because they are messengers. The term is introduced by Nebuchadnezzar who describes how he saw “a watcher, a holy one come down (singular verb) from heaven.” They seem to me to be both Bailiff keeping watch over proceedings, and Jury Foreman announcing the verdict. But I don’t know for sure. The Bible is cloaked on the subject, only alluding to but not explaining these Watchers.

Witness
Paul is ordained as a witness for Jesus.

“for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15)

The Two Witnesses testify to the power and holiness of God. Rev 11:1-14. (Gérard Jollain, engraving 1670)

This article is intended to remind us of the fact that God is HOLY HOLY HOLY. Everything stems from that. Sin, its effects, its lawlessness, our pardon, His justice…is all about dealing with sin in the face of a Holy God. Oh, yes, Jesus will judge. Are you ready?

All a person needs to do is be penitent, that means, to be sorry for your sins. You must ask the Judge (who is Jesus) to pardon you. His death on the cross satisfied the justice required from God as the blood sacrifice to satisfy the penalty. God’s wrath is therefore satisfied in all people who come to Him through Jesus. You will be pardoned and washed clean of your crimes. The Judge will say “You are justified and free to go.”

Failure to repent before your own death means that you die having committed many crimes. Those must still be dealt with. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean your crimes go away. They are in fact still boomeranging around the Universe, tainting everything. On the day of Judgment, Jesus will stand you before Himself and you will answer for those crimes in His court. The penalty for them is eternity in hell (jail) with no hope of parole. All judgments are final. But all His mercies are eternal!

BBC History describes Oliver Cromwell as:

an English soldier and statesman who helped make England a republic and then ruled as lord protector from 1653 to 1658. After overthrowing Charles I and then successfully defending the republic from his son Charles II, Lord Protector Cromwell reorganised the national church, established Puritanism, readmitted Jews into Britain and presided over a certain degree of religious tolerance. Abroad, he ended the war with Portugal (1653) and Holland (1654) and allied with France against Spain, defeating the Spanish at the Battle of the Dunes (1658). Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 in London.

Such an august person would naturally sit for a portrait, and in the Puritan days, Flemish painter Peter Lely was the go-to court painter. Wikipedia says,

Lely was of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court. … His talent ensured that his career was not interrupted by Charles’s execution, and he served Oliver Cromwell, whom he painted …

In the days before photography and social media, controlling one’s personal image was easy to do, and common. Leaders commanded idealized portraits, paintings, or statues, as opposed to realistic depictions. As this blogger opined about idealized portraiture,

It goes back as long as portraiture itself, of course; early classical portraits of emperors and such tended to cycle through emphasis on either a rugged, realistic appearance (as would befit a warrior and statesman) or an angelic, unblemished appearance (as would befit a god). In the same way, later emperors (such as Constantine) saw value in associating themselves in the public eye with prior, well-regarded emperors.

In modern times, photographic airbrushing was common as well. See the official photograph of Mikhail Gorbachev, last Secretary General of the old Communist Party of the USSR (it was to Gorbachev that President Reagan urged, “Tear down this wall!”)

Where is Mr Gorbachev’s birthmark?

Oliver Cromwell was a not too attractive man whose ruddy complexion and wrinkles was studded with pimples and warts. Cromwell commissioned Peter Lely for the official portrait. Lely sketched Cromwell and then presented the proofs for perusal. There were no warts.

For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:20)

In one of those 100-years-later (mis)quotes, Horace Walpole allegedly captured Cromwell’s reaction,

“Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”—Anecdotes of Painting in England (1763) by Horace Walpole>

It seems that the quote is likely somewhat accurate, since the final portrait did indeed to have been controversially painted in realistic and not idealistic fashion. Whatever Cromwell actually said, it is generally accepted that this incident is where the phrase, “warts and all” comes from.

“I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:10)

We’re all vain to some degree. We all want to put forward ‘our best face’ as it were. Just think of Facebook. We all put out our best sayings and our most cordial attitudes but our warts still show.

He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love Me?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You’ (John 21:17). Peter did not conclude from Jesus’ knowledge of his heart that he knew all things; rather he concluded from the omniscience of Jesus that he knew his heart.
See, that’s the thing. There is no point in hiding our warts. Cromwell’s were on the outside but ours are on the inside. It makes no difference to Jesus, He sees all of them. Nothing is hidden from Christ. He knows all our sins, all our flaws, all our foibles, all our proclivities. Our Father loves His children anyway. That is really the miracle. Our Holy Savior loves His sinful children.

There is no point in hiding from Him. There is no point to airbrushing away our flaws. We really are like little children when we fail to go to the throne and confess our sins. It’s like we’re toddlers who scurry to the bed and pull the covers up to hide from mom, thinking if we can’t see mom, then mom can’t see us.

Source, CC

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:13)

Since He sees us as we are, and He has already forgiven us, it glorifies Him to approach Him and confess our sins. This is our part in participating in our sanctification, where He is conforming us to His likeness.

Live humbly before Jesus, with no pride or vanity. Live before Him warts and all. I believe we will find in the end, that the more we do this, the more beautiful our face will become, because it will be like His.

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