Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
This is the second in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.
Every act of confession in Christian liturgy is doing (at minimum) three things at once:
it tells the truth about us,
reveals the mercy of Christ,
and delivers that mercy now.
This isn’t a spiritual exercise.
It isn’t therapeutic disclosure.
It isn’t a rehearsal of shame.
Confession is what happens when God speaks truthfully, and his people stop pretending otherwise.
Confession is not humiliation. It is reality re-entering the room.
Confession begins where Scripture always begins when God draws near. With exposure rather than improvement. With honesty rather than effort. When Adam hears the sound of the Lord walking in the garden, he doesn’t feel inspired; he hides (Gen. 3:8). When Israel stands before the Lord at Sinai, the mountain shakes and the people tremble (Exod. 20:18). When St. Peter encounters Christ’s holiness in the miraculous catch of fish, he doesn’t boast; he collapses: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8).
The pattern of God’s presence gives us the truth rather than flattery.
The early Church noticed this immediately. In the second century, St. Irenaeus wrote that humanity’s great sickness was not ignorance alone, but flight from the truth about ourselves. To stand before God, he taught, is already the beginning of healing. Confession, then, is not humiliation. It is reality re-entering the room.
That reality is what Scripture calls sin. Not merely bad habits or poor choices, but a rupture. A bending inward. A turning away from God and neighbor. The Hebrew word most often used, ḥaṭṭā’th, means to miss the mark. The Greek hamartía carries the same sense. Something has gone wrong at the center. We are not where we were made to be.
Confession doesn’t create this reality; it names it.
This is why the liturgy places confession where it does. After the Name has been spoken. After God has drawn near. The Church doesn’t confess to summon mercy; she confesses because mercy has already come close enough to be honest before.
To confess is simply to agree with God about what is already true.
St. Augustine understood this well. Preaching on the Psalms, he told his hearers that confession is simply standing in the truth before God. Not exaggerating sin, not minimizing it, but letting God’s verdict stand. God is a physician. Show him the wound. The point isn’t exposure for its own sake, but healing that cannot begin until the wound is named.
And that naming isn’t introspection. Confession in Scripture isn’t silent self-analysis but spoken truth. “I acknowledged my sin to You,” David says, “and You forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 32:5). St. John is even more direct: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves… If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us” (1 John 1:8–9).
To confess is simply to agree with God about what is already true.
The word itself matters. The Greek homologeō means “to say the same thing.” Confession isn’t inventing an accusation against yourself; it’s echoing God’s verdict. You’re not arguing your case. You’re stepping into the Light and letting the Light speak.
But confession is never the end of the sentence.
In Scripture, confession always moves toward release. When Nathan confronts David, the king confesses: “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan answers immediately: “The Lord has put away your sin” (2 Sam. 12:13). When Isaiah cries, “Woe is me,” the coal from the altar touches his lips and his guilt is taken away (Isa. 6:7). When the prodigal son begins his confession, the father interrupts it with embrace, clothing, and feast (Luke 15:20–24).
Preaching in the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom made this same point bluntly: God doesn’t demand confession because he delights in accusation, but because he delights in absolution. Confess, not to be punished, but to be healed. The speed of forgiveness in Scripture is intentional. God is never reluctant to forgive. He is reluctant only to let us cling to lies.
This is why confession in the liturgy is never detached from absolution. Christ doesn’t merely invite honesty; he authorizes forgiveness. On the evening of his resurrection, he breathes on his disciples and gives them words to speak: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them” (John 20:23). This isn’t encouragement. It’s authority. The Church doesn’t announce forgiveness in general. She delivers it in particular.
God is never reluctant to forgive. He is reluctant only to let us cling to lies.
The word spoken there matters as well. The Greek aphíēmi means to send away, to release, to let go. What is confessed isn’t stored up. It’s removed. Lifted. Loosed. Buried with Christ and left behind.
This is why the absolution is spoken aloud. Because forgiveness isn’t a feeling to be discovered but a gift to be heard. Martin Luther insisted on this point relentlessly. The conscience, he said, cannot be argued into peace. It must be addressed. God places forgiveness outside of us, in spoken words, so that faith has something solid to cling to when the heart still trembles.
The Church learned this over time. Public confession in the early centuries gave way to more regularized forms, not to soften sin, but to ensure that forgiveness was never withheld or delayed. By the time of the Reformation, the concern wasn’t that confession existed, but that absolution had been obscured. Luther’s solution was not to remove confession, but to restore its center: Christ’s living voice forgiving sinners now.
And the Church doesn’t confess as isolated individuals. We speak together. “We have sinned.” Not because guilt is collective, but because mercy is. No one stands above another here. No one hides behind another either. We stand shoulder to shoulder, equally exposed, equally forgiven.
Only then does the Church dare to pray, “Lord, have mercy.”
The Kyrie (the short, ancient prayer, “Lord Have Mercy”) isn’t desperation. It’s confidence. It’s the cry of those who know where mercy is found. Blind men cry it by the roadside. Lepers cry it from a distance. The Church cries it knowing the answer has already been promised. The plea rises, and grace answers.
Confession, then, isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway. It clears away the lies we tell ourselves so that the Truth can be given to us. It empties hands that have been clutching excuses so they can receive what Christ freely gives.
This is why confession endures across the centuries. It tells the truth about us without destroying us. It reveals the mercy of Christ without softening the wound. And it gives that mercy now, not as an idea, but as a spoken release that reaches the ear, steadies the conscience, and sends the sinner forward free.
Confession isn’t the Church wallowing in guilt.
It’s the Church standing where forgiveness is spoken.
And where forgiveness is spoken,
Christ Himself is already there.
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