Family Confession Checklist
Daily you should be groaning over your sins; and so daily you should be confessing. For he who sins daily should also confess daily.
– Augustine
No one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace; and no one can receive God’s grace without having first seriously recognized his sins.
– Calvin
Introduction
Our household is committed to a culture of robust and regular confession. This is because we believe sin is at the very heart of the problems in our lives and in the world, and it is only through sober acknowledgement of our sins, and a proper confession of them, that we can expect to really grow out of them. It is frighteningly easy to manage sin until it is domesticated, and then suffer the internal dominion of sin in ways which (over time) we lose the ability to identify and repent of (Heb 12:16-17).
But creating this culture in the home is not easy. We often hear our children say during confession, “I don’t know what to say.” Like everything else in life, confession takes practice. Here is a checklist we use to provide structure for the kids (and ourselves) as we confess our sins to one another.
One of our aims is to simply help the children confess well, as we all need to do. But a larger aim is to, through repetition, give them the intellectual (and emotion) infrastructure with which to build godly character and a thriving spiritual life. For a fuller rendition of these ideas see The Anatomy of Confession. For an on-the-go checklist see below.
1. Name the Sin (What Did You Do?)
Confession should not begin with an ambiguous “I’m sorry,” or a rush to “help me not to do it again.” What good will ambiguous devotion be to us or to our children? If we want to repent of specific sins we should confess specific sins.
2. Name the Offended Parties (Who Did You Sin Against?)
Because we are confessing sin, and not mistakes, God is involved. He is actually the most offended party (Psalm 51:4). It is good to acknowledge that our sin runs along two axes, not one. This helps to keep our thinking about sin vertical as well as horizontal, and vertical first.
3. Ask for Forgiveness (What Do You Need From God?)
If you ordered a toasted sandwich and were given half of one you would be pretty upset. Rightfully so. Actually asking for forgiveness is at least half the task in confession. It is surprising how easily this can be left out of confession.
4. Give Thanks for Grace (What Has God Provided?)
If we are going to confess sin frequently, as we should, we should also be reminded of the depths and riches of the grace of God. Try Ephesians 1:3-10, 2:1-10, and Titus 2:11-14 for some inspiration. Remember: we want to know the depths of our sin not because we are morbid people. We want to know it that we may better know the depths of God’s love. We can teach this to the children in confession.
5. Ask for Repentance (What’s Next?)
Perhaps the easiest component of all to be forgotten, or never considered as part of confession in the first place. We do well to intend to repent of our sins when we confess them. But do we realize repentance is a gift (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim 2:25)? It is as much a gift as forgiveness is. So we should learn to ask for it. Children often do this intuitively with their “help me not to do it again.” This is actually not a bad prayer. But we can help them thicken it up with the category of repentance. God is at work in us (Phil 1:6; Eph 2:10; Rom 8:29). So we should ask him to go to work in us on the sins we want to get out of us. We tell our kids: “Pursue that for which you prayed!” “Pursue what you prayed for!”
