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The trifecta of sins plaguing humanity from ancient times to modern. Pride, the sin that caused the fall of our race. Pride says, “I know better than God,” and shows our true ignorance. Hypocrisy, the sin of the religious, “Woe to you pharisees,” and “Woe to us pharisees.” Impatience, the best performance enhancer of sin that has ever existed. Adam and Eve could have become more like God day by day in walking with him, but were impatient and desired it now. The Pharisees could have attained true religion, but found it more convenient to crucify the Christ. Together with us today: pride, hypocrisy and impatience. They attack us, challenging our faith. How do we fight this combination? Self-examination in humility, true confession to ourselves and others, and waiting on the Lord. Lent is painful, it calls us to these duties, growing our humility, honesty and patience.

The Spirit’s purpose is to point us to the work of Christ. Before knowing Christ, seeking to know God, the Spirit points us in the direction of the cross of Christ. After finding Christ, seeking to please God, the Spirit points us to our cross fashioned after Christ’s. The Spirit desires desperately that we connect with Christ and partner with his work. When we are deaf to the Spirit’s call, his call to serve, we tell him that we are no longer interested in the work of Christ. That rejection grieves him indeed – Lord please have mercy on us!

What a stark wake up call this public confession is! I for one am too often lulled into a false sense of security because I mostly love God and I love more people than I dislike. I’m a pretty good person and hold generally positive feelings towards most people – that makes me a good Christian right? Here we see the standard of Christ held up against our lives and we see how far we really are from the mark. May we make our standard of love Christ, loving people as ourselves with our whole heart, whole mind, and our whole strength. May we forgive others as we have been forgiven by God – and may his perfect love and grace continue to fill in the gaps.

Rallies across America and alter calls across Evangelica focus on our private struggles with sin. These sins we wrestle with are sins we have committed, wrongs done to others, to ourselves, to our sense of righteousness, to God. People go forward, “repent,” and walk out the door on with the same business. Part of the problem, identified in this prayer, is that we fail to confess our sins to one another. James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” What clearer call is there to sincere repentance that is shared in our community of faith?
But there is a greater wrong with our understanding of sin as shown in this litany. We believe that sin is something we do, something we commit. These sins of commission are only half of the problem. James 4:17 teaches us about the equally deadly sin of omission. Here James writes, “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.”
Let us pause today in repentance, personally and corporately. Confessing to our merciful God all that “we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed.” Let us be about God’s business of righteousness, omitting no act of grace that comes our way. Let us in humility seek God’s grace for our selves and our churches as we imperfectly follow the footsteps of Christ to the cross.