The Role of Confession of Sin in Corporate Worship

Over the previous a number of years, I’ve taught programs to seminarians and pastoral interns on the theology and apply of worship within the Reformed custom. A part of the syllabus requires college students to work together with worship companies posted on-line, evaluating the weather, coherence, and execution of the liturgy. Providers will not be prescreened, and we choose church buildings with numerous worship kinds across the PCA. 

The task requires college students to critically have interaction worship companies, cultivating a aware interplay with issues that steadily fly below the radar. After reviewing a major variety of companies, a number of constant liturgical themes have surfaced that deserve remark. Beforehand, I surveyed the role of the call to worship in PCA worship companies. This essay explores the prayer of confession by analyzing the historic roots of the prayer within the Reformed custom and reflecting on fashionable examples.

Historic Roots of the Prayer of Confession

Within the liturgies of John Calvin and John Knox, company worship started with a recitation of Psalm 124:8 adopted by a prayer of confession. After confession, the congregation engaged in a company act of reward and thanksgiving by singing a psalm. An analogous construction is present in Martin Bucer’s “Church Practices” (1539) and Thomas Cranmer’s “E-book of Frequent Prayer” (1552) for the companies of morning and night prayer. 

This liturgical kind, progressing from confession to thanksgiving, displays dynamics present in Scripture itself. Think about how Psalm 32—a psalm targeted upon repentance and forgiveness—concludes in verse 11: “Be glad within the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for pleasure, all you upright in coronary heart!” The command to rejoice follows the excellent news of our deliverance in Jesus Christ.¹ God’s grace induces gratitude expressed within the praises of God’s individuals.  

Past the liturgical kind captured in these orders of worship, you will need to replicate on the theological substance of those historic prayers of confession. Within the 1552 “E-book of Frequent Prayer,” Cranmer composed this traditional confession of sin: 

Almighty and most merciful Father,
now we have erred and strayed out of your methods, like misplaced sheep.
We have now adopted an excessive amount of the gadgets and wishes of our personal hearts.
We have now offended towards your holy legal guidelines.
We have now left undone these issues which we should have finished,
and now we have finished these issues which we ought to not have finished,
and there’s no well being in us.
However you, O Lord, have mercy upon us, depressing offenders.
Spare these, O God, who confess their faults.
Restore those that are repentant,
in response to your guarantees declared to mankind, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we might any longer dwell a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of your holy identify, Amen.

The confession of offenses towards God’s holy legal guidelines, consisting in sins of omission and fee, builds as much as a normal acknowledgement of the sinful corruption that continues to be inside regenerate believers via a liturgical adaptation of Psalm 38:3: “And there’s no well being in us.” This prayer of confession accords with Cranmer’s theology regarding unique sin as outlined in Article 8 of the “42 Articles” (1553) the place he explains that the an infection of nature (theologically often known as “concupiscence”) stays inside the baptized and is of itself sin. Given this, Cranmer focuses the prayer of confession on the fruit and the foundation of sin. 

In Calvin’s liturgy, the prayer of confession acknowledges that we’re “poor sinners, conceived and born in iniquity and corruption; vulnerable to do what’s evil, incapable of any good; and that in our depravity, we endlessly transgress [God’s] holy commandments.”²

For Calvin, concupiscence is a illness that infects sinful humanity, polluting each college of the physique and soul. When Adam disobeyed God’s Phrase, depravity contaminated each facet of his nature and unfold to all his descendants.³ In Calvin’s thought, “no matter is in man, from the understanding to the desire, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and filled with this concupiscence.”⁴ The illness corrupts pure, God-given human wishes by subjecting them to dysfunction and extra, making them evil.⁵ 

Although believers have been let out from bondage to sin in Jesus Christ, their liberty shouldn’t be such that the sinful flesh doesn’t proceed to harass them. There stays within the regenerate “a smoldering cinder of evil” that tickles and incites them to sin.⁶ This illness—a judgment towards sin, the reason for sin, and sin itself—stays within the believer till dying.⁷ Given this, Calvin teaches that repentance begins with renouncing our personal nature, acknowledging that we’re conceived and born in sin.⁸ 

“The Listing for the Public Worship of God” follows Reformed precedent in its content material.⁹ In three full paragraphs, the “Listing” instructs ministers to steer the congregation in a prayer that (1) acknowledges our sinfulness, (2) grieves our boring response to the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and (3) admits that we deserve God’s wrath. 

Particularly, the opening paragraph instructs ministers to attribute our nice sinfulness to 2 issues: (1) unique sin, which is the seed of all different sins; and (2) our precise sins, which contain breaking the holy, simply, and good commandments of God by doing what’s forbidden and never doing that which is enjoined. These directions harmonize the liturgical practices of the “Listing” with the theology of the Westminster meeting by acknowledging the sinful corruption that continues to be inside us and by confessing specific sins notably (“Westminster Confession of Religion” 6.2-6; 13.2; 15.5-6).

Regardless of these historic precedents, the Westminster divines didn’t open the service with a prayer of confession or incorporate such a prayer as a separate liturgical ingredient within the “Listing.” Reasonably, the “Listing” features a prolonged information for confession at the start of the pastoral intercession. This novel strategy to the confession of sin within the Reformed custom removes the confession from the liturgical kind related to Calvin and Knox. This omission is a substantive weak point within the “Listing” in that the congregation is denied the chance to plumb the depths of their sin with the intention to soar into the heights of thanksgiving via the liturgical kind captured in Scripture. 

Trendy Prayers of Confession

Trendy worship guides, corresponding to these of Robert Rayburn¹⁰ and Tim Keller,¹¹ embody a prayer of confession within the liturgy as a separate ingredient situated close to the entrance of the service. Many PCA church buildings comply with swimsuit. That is an enchancment on the “Listing” which crams the confession into the pastoral intercession and dislocates it from the liturgical type of confession and thanksgiving. Nevertheless, the theological substance of most fashionable prayers falls far in need of the substance discovered within the “Listing” or the Reformed custom. Many prayers exhibit a much less profound acquaintance with sin by not reflecting on the Legislation of God (or Jesus’ abstract of it) and the way of our violation (sins of omission and fee). 

Nevertheless, the chief deficiency noticed in fashionable prayer is a failure to include reflection on our sinful corruption. Many PCA church buildings use confessions from fashionable editions of the “E-book of Frequent Prayer” that replace the historic variations. Nevertheless, you will need to be aware that even when solid in conventional language, these fashionable editions scrub Cranmer’s educating on concupiscence from the liturgy.¹²

Whereas seemingly innocuous, this liturgical edit in fashionable prayer books demurs from Cranmer in deference to Roman Catholic notions of concupiscence. This departure is critical as a result of concupiscence was a transparent dividing line between Protestants and Roman Catholics throughout the Reformation as a result of doctrine’s relationship to justification by religion. PCA ministers must work together with liturgical assets with historic care and theological discernment.

In WCF 6.6, the Westminster divines clearly train that “each sin—each unique and precise—is a transgression of the righteous legislation of God and opposite to it.” In different phrases, the corruption of nature that continues to be inside the regenerate shouldn’t be impartial, or just an inclination. Each “this corruption of nature and all its expressions are in truth actually sin” (WCF 6.5). 

That famous, the overwhelming majority of liturgies reviewed fail to incorporate a prayer of confession that addresses each unique and precise sin. The final absence of the theme reveals a failure amongst PCA church buildings to combine liturgical practices with confessional requirements. This omission, maybe pushed by liturgical and confessional ignorance, shouldn’t be innocuous. Over time, it may be dangerous. 

The omission downplays sin which, in flip, diminishes the grace of the gospel and distorts the method of sanctification. At worst, the omission displays the incursion of Roman Catholic notions of concupiscence (a germ that solely turns into sin upon consent of the desire) amongst Reformed church buildings which creates a backdoor for non-forensic accounts of justification. Regardless of the case, we might do properly to convey our liturgical practices into conformity with our confessional requirements to keep away from such errors. 

Conclusion

Prayers of confession supply a wealthy liturgical second for congregations to replicate on the foundation and fruit of their sinful depravity and to rejoice and provides thanks for the tender mercies of our God in Jesus Christ. Let’s not stifle that religious train by cramming the prayer of confession into the pastoral intercession. Extra importantly, let’s not curb confession with prayers that don’t replicate Scripture, our confessional requirements, or theological custom. 

Human depravity deserves strong liturgical consideration as a result of the theological account of our sinful predicament has a direct bearing on our apprehension of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ.