Every full service of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion has a confession of sin. To understand why is it that the Prayer Book promotes this awareness of ourselves as sinners in need of forgiveness, we must first ask, does sinning make us sinners? Does doing bad things make us bad people? Or do we sin because we are sinners, because we are by nature inclined to sin?
The now conventional view is that sinning makes us sinners, and the awareness of guilt which we get by confessing sin motivates us to try harder to live a good life, so that we can be accepted by God as good people. But the trying harder does not often last long. The hope of acceptance by God is laced with anxiety, and the sense of guilt does not go away, though it may generate defensive pride, anger, and entitlement – I have tried hard, God owes me! The Prayer Book takes the now unconventional (though Biblical) view that we sin because we are sinners. We are inclined to sin by our nature.
Because if ‘there is no health in us’ (as the daily confession of sin says), just trying harder won’t help. We must look outside ourselves for rescue. That is, incidentally what ‘there is no health in us’ really means – that we cannot save ourselves (see this explanation from Sam Bray). We must throw ourselves on the mercy of God, claim the grace promised by Christ in the gospel, and find in his atoning death on our behalf the sole grounds of our full forgiveness and acceptance before God.
If we sin because we are sinners, then gratitude – not guilt – for a completely undeserved acceptance by God is the motivator for living a good life. What are we trying to accomplish through the confession of sin? We are not trying to guilt ourselves into doing better, nor yet to put God in our debt through the ritual. In confessing our sins, we throw ourselves on the mercy of God, claim the grace promised by Christ in the gospel, and find in his atoning death on our behalf the sole grounds of our full forgiveness and acceptance before God. Instead of generating pride, anger, and entitlement, it will produce people who are humble, honest, and hope-filled. We confess our sin, so that gratitude for forgiveness, not guilt for sin, may motivate us to live joyfully for the God who has forgiven us at such cost to himself.
The Revd Gavin G. Dunbar is President of the Prayer Book Society and Rector of St. John's, Savannah, GA. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, he studied classics at the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, Halifax; before studying theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto.