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We are sinners who need to confess our sins. When we do so, God is able and willing to forgive us. The question, then, is how we ought to confess. Jesus’ parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector who went to the Temple to pray provides an answer (Luke 18:9–14).

Luke explains the context of this parable in verse 9: “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable….” From this introduction we can deduce that the spirit of confession is the antithesis of self-righteousness and judgmentalism.

Verses 11–12 describe the prayer of the Pharisee: “The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’” According to verse 13, however, “the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

These two prayers present a study in contrasts. In terms of location, it seems that the Pharisee stood up where he could be seen by others, a practice which Jesus prohibited (Matt. 6:5). But the tax collector “stood at a distance,” away from the crowd, so that his prayer would not be hindered by a concern for what others thought of him, a practice which Jesus encouraged (Matt. 6:6). In terms of posture, Jesus emphasized the nonverbal behaviors that accompanied the tax collector’s prayer: “he would not even look up” and he “beat his breast.” In terms of content, the Pharisee’s prayer was ego-inflating. Basically, he prayed, “Look at me! I’m a fabulous human being, unlike that schmuck over there.” But the tax collector’s prayer was ego-deflating. “God, it’s true; I’m a schmuck. Please forgive me.”

Reflecting on these respective prayers, Jesus said, “I tell you that this man [the tax collector], rather than the other [the Pharisee] went home justified before God.” Why? Here’s the key lesson Jesus wants us to learn about confession: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). Or, as David sang, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).

From this, I think we can draw five conclusions about confession. It must be:

1. humble, because we are sinners who cannot be “confident of [our] own righteousness”;
2. private, lest we be tempted to impress others with our spirituality;
3. authentic—that is, about ourselves alone, lest we be tempted to compare our actions to those of others rather than the requirements of God’s moral law;
4. truthful, for we are sinners in desperate need of divine mercy;
5. and resulting in change, for God expects and empowers us to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8).

How does God forgive us?

Ephesians 1:7–8 gives the answer: “In him [i.e., Jesus Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

Redemption and forgiveness are powerful images. Redemption portrays a slave set free. On several occasions, Paul refers to us as “slaves to sin” whom God has liberated through Christ (e.g., Rom 6:6, 16, 17, 20; 7:14, 25). Forgiveness portrays a debt being canceled. We are debtors to sin and owe God more than we can pay, but God has canceled our debt. According to Paul, redemption and forgiveness come at a great cost go God, namely, the death of his Beloved Son. We have redemption and forgiveness “through his blood.”

Why did Christ have to die for our redemption and forgiveness? Why couldn’t God just declare us free? Why couldn’t he simply cancel our debt? John Stott points to the answer when he writes:

The problem of forgiveness is constituted by the inevitable collision between divine perfection and human rebellion, between God as he is and us as we are. The obstacle to forgiveness is neither our sin alone, nor our guilt alone, but also the divine reaction in love and wrath toward guilty sinners. For, although indeed “God is love,” yet we have to remember that his love is “holy love,” love which yearns over sinners while at the same time refusing to condone their sin. How, then, could God express his holy love—his love in forgiving sinners without compromising his holiness, and his holiness in judging sinners without frustrating his love?

Through the cross. Christ’s death is redemptive—it forgives our sins—because it satisfies God’s holiness (punishing sin) and expresses his love (providing salvation). As Romans 3:25–26 puts it: “God presented him [Jesus Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Christ.” Paul states the same truth using a simpler image in 2 Corinthian 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He did the same in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

So, when we talk about redemption and forgiveness, we should always do so by talking, in the same breath, about the cross. We have redemption and forgiveness “through his blood.” And when we pray, we should always pray “in Christ’s name,” asking God to see us through the eyes of his Beloved Son, “who loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 5:2).

The cross, then, solves the problem of forgiveness, and makes us confident that when we pray for grace through Christ, God will answer our request (Rom. 8:31–34).

God has the power to forgive our sins, but does he have the desire to do so?

I know that my question sounds strange. We simply assume that God will forgive us. With Heinrich Heine, who refused deathbed confession, we say, “God will forgive me. That’s his job.”

Actually, forgiveness is not God’s job. It is his choice. He is under no obligation to forgive habitual sinners any more than a governor is duty-bound to pardon convicted criminals. Forgiveness is a grace God freely gives. He does not have to do so, and we certainly have not deserved or earned it.

If forgiveness were God’s job, we would be ungrateful for it. No one thanks the garbage collector for picking up the trash, after all. He is just doing his job (Luke 17:7–10). And if forgiveness were God’s job, we would have little incentive to struggle against sin. We could dump our moral trash all over the street knowing full well that the Divine Garbage Collector would dutifully pick it up. Assuming forgiveness to be God’s duty, in sum, decreases our gratitude and increases our shamelessness.

When we see forgiveness as God’s choice, however, our gratitude increases and our desire to sin decreases. Why? Because we no longer take grace for granted.

So, back to my original question: Does God desire to forgive us? Thankfully, the answer is an emphatic “Yes!” Consider the marvelous words of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” This verse outlines the condition, cause, and consequences of God’s forgiveness.

First, the condition: We must confess our sins. John writes, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). God cannot forgive our sins until we admit that we have them. His grace requires that we tell the truth about ourselves, as awful or ugly as that may be.

Second, the cause: Forgiveness is rooted in God’s character. God is “faithful and just.” He chooses not to turn his back on us when we have turned our backs on him (2 Tim. 2:13), which is faithfulness. And he treats us as though we were as righteous as Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to make our forgiveness possible (2 Cor. 5:21). That is his justice.

Third, the consequences: God erases our past and makes possible our future. When he forgives us, God treats us as if we had never sinned. But when he purifies us, he gives us the power we need to increasingly master sin both now and in the future. In the words of the famous hymn, when he forgives us, God “breaks the power of canceled sin” and “sets the prisoner free.”

God does not have to forgive us. He wants to. So, let us ask him for grace with gratitude, humility, and resolution to live godly lives from now on.

Reflecting on Adam and Eve’s original sin, Paul writes, “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Death refers to physical mortality and spiritual inability. Not only will we stop breathing one day, but without God’s power, we are presently incapable of becoming the people God wants us to be. We are dead in our “transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1). We are “slave[s] to the law of sin” (Rom. 7:25).

Is sin really so disabling and enslaving? We like to think of ourselves as “good enough” people—not perfect, but not totally bad. And we assume that we have sufficient power on our own to bridge the spiritual and moral distance between God and us. Unfortunately, we do not. In Romans 7:7–25, Paul explains why not.

He begins by reminding us that God’s commandments are, like God himself, perfectly good. Human beings often pass laws of questionable morality or social usefulness, but not God. Rather, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good” (verse 12). Consequently, if we compare ourselves to God’s commandments and find ourselves coming up short on obedience, the problem lies within us, not the law.

Paul then points out that the purpose of the law is to show us how desperate our situation is. “But in order that sin might be recognized as sin,” he writes, “[the law] produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful” (verse 13). The more we pay attention to God’s commandments, in other words, the more we discover how often we break them and how incapable we are of perfectly keeping them.

Our desperate situation becomes more obvious if we, like Paul, examine our own consciences. There we discover that we know what is right and that we nevertheless do not want to do it. “For what I want to do I do not do,” Paul writes, “but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good” (verses 15–16). Again, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (verse 18). And, “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (verse 21).

In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant wrote, “Out of the cooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.” He was right to a certain extent. By ourselves, we cannot raise our bodies from the death of sin or free our souls from its enslaving power. But God can. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul asked. “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” he answered (verses 24–25).

When we ask God’s forgiveness, we admit our weakness and sin’s power, but also God’s greater power. He alone can save us from our sins.

The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). It brings us to the core problem of the human condition—sin. What is sin? Why does it require God’s forgiveness? A look at Adam and Eve’s original sin (Gen. 3:1–24) answers both questions.

According to Genesis 1–2, God created Adam and Eve in his “image, “blessed them,” made them stewards over animals, and pronounced their existence “very good” (1:26–31). Unlike us, they lived in such simplicity and innocence that they were “both naked” but “felt no shame” (2:25). God provided food for them, placing them in a garden with a simple request to “work it and take care of it” (2:15). He gave them one prohibition: “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (2:17).

Genesis 3 opens ominously. A crafty snake approaches Adam and Eve and questions God’s commandment: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” (3:1). When they answer affirmatively, the snake denies the commandment’s truthfulness and questions God’s motivation for giving it in the first place: “You will not surely die,” he says. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:4–5).

Instead of rebuking the snake and obeying God, Adam and Eve “took some [of the fruit] and ate it” (3:6). Their action reveals the nature of sin. As the Westminster Larger Catechism defines it, “sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature” (Question 24). By failing to rebuke the snake, over whom they had dominion, Adam and Eve sinned by omission. By eating the forbidden fruit, they sinned by commission. Not doing what God commands is as sinful as doing what God prohibits. Adam and Eve sinned both ways.

The first consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin was shame over their loss of innocence (3:7). Fear of God’s judgment quickly followed (3:10). Then, when God confronted them, they fell to blame-shifting (3:12–13). From this followed a rupture in peaceful relationships between humans and the rest of creation (3:15, 17–19), among humans themselves (3:16), and between humanity and God (3:23). Finally, as the prohibition had warned, separation from God and death were imposed as a judgment on humanity (3:19, 22–24).

These last two consequences especially explain why sin requires God’s forgiveness. When we alienate ourselves from God through disobedience, only he can choose whether to welcome us back into his presence. And when we experience the judgment of death, only God can bring us back to life.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Matt. 6:10). Notice the time markers: “today” and “daily.” Throughout his ministry, Jesus was concerned that his disciples learn to follow him and love God on a twenty-four hour basis.

Consider this random sample of statements from the Gospels:

• “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34).
• “No one knows about that day or hour [i.e., when Christ will return], not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt. 24:36).
• “If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him” (Luke 17:4).
• “On that day [i.e., when Christ will return] no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything” (Luke 17:31).
• “Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working’” (John 5:17).
• “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4).

What picture emerges from these statements? The future is uncertain to all but God. We should not worry about what we cannot know but rather trust the One who does. And we should act on the basis of what we do know, because that prepares us spiritually for any eventuality. We should live, in other words, one day at a time; it is the only way we can and is all God expects of us.

I don’t think Jesus intends us to live in a hand-to-mouth, subsistence-level fashion. There is nothing inherently wrong or unbiblical about putting away money in your 401(k) or saving up for your children’s education or engaging in long-range business and personal planning. What is wrong is the frenzied attempt to do these things as a bulwark against the future, as if God does not take care of his children.

Jesus said, “the pagans run after all these things [i.e., food, drink, clothing, etc.], and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6:33–34). According to Jesus, a personal relationship with God is the foundation for meeting our daily needs.

Consequently, we must seek God every day, through daily prayer investing ourselves in our relationship with him. And we must ask him to meet our needs daily, not as a substitute for future saving and planning, but as its foundation. While we do not know what the future holds, we know Who holds the future. Our heavenly Father is the steady Provider of our needs—whether present or future, and the only sure cure for any anxiety about what lies ahead.

God always answers our prayers. We have looked at “Yes,” “No,” and “Wait.” Now let’s look at “Grow up!”

In James 4:1–3, we read: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

This passage begins with two questions—one real, one rhetorical. The real question inquires about the source of human conflict. The rhetorical question identifies the source as “desires.” Then, subtly, the passage shifts focus from the horizontal to the vertical. The source of human conflict is also the source of our conflict with God. Sometimes, God denies our prayer requests because our “desires” reflect “wrong motives.”

The only way to resolve this conflict with God is to grow up. We must lay aside spiritual and moral adolescence and take up spiritual and moral adulthood instead. As we do so, we begin to pray with holy desires and spiritual motives, and God begins to answer our prayers with “Yes!”

How do we grow up through prayer? Paul provides a hint in Ephesians 4:22–24. He writes: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Paul outlines a three-step process for behavioral change here: (1) stop, (2) think, and (3) start. Verse 28 provides an example of this process at work: “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.” Stealing is the behavior to be stopped. Working is the behavior to be started. The new way of thinking that explains this behavioral change is a commitment to personal generosity.

We can incorporate this three-step process in our prayer lives. As we pray for specific requests, we should ask God to identify wrong motives. Our prayer should be, “See if there is any offensive way in me” (Ps. 139:24). Once we have identified them, we should ask God to speak to us and show us how to think properly about the issue. If we read the Bible and pray in tandem, God will bring to mind a relevant scriptural verse or passage. Finally, we should ask God to purify our desires and mature our motives. Our prayer should be that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:17).

Stop. Think. Start. It is a good process for behavioral change, as well as an excellent model for mature prayer.

One of my favorite biblical books is Revelation. And one of its most curious scenes takes place in 6:9–11. John writes: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.”

This passage is curious for three reasons: (1) It hints at some unhappiness of souls in heaven. Happy people do not ask, “How long, Sovereign Lord?” (2) It makes the souls sound bloodthirsty. “Avenge our blood” seems like an unchristian prayer. And (3) it indicates that martyrdom is part of God’s plan, that God has set “the number…who were to be killed.”

As curious as Revelation 6:9–11 may be, it tells us three truths that are useful to our praying:

First, our ultimate fulfillment lies in the future. According to the Bible, we die because of sin. “For the wages of sin is death,” Paul writes in Romans 6:23, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We will be ultimately fulfilled only when we are finally resurrected. The martyred souls in heaven longed to open that gift of eternal life and prayed accordingly. So should we.

Second, God’s ultimate purpose is justice and peace. Sin, which causes death, is a pollution of the beautiful world God made. God created the world to be just and peaceful. Sin unmakes the world, leaving injustice and violence in its wake. Salvation remakes the world according to God’s original intention. The martyrs’ prayer—“avenge our blood”—sounds bloodthirsty, but it is simply a colorful way of crying out for salvation. When we pray, we should cry out too!

Third, our present difficulties have a place in God’s plan. Statistically speaking, more believers were martyred in the twentieth century than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. And yet, John hints, there is a purpose to this suffering. In Greek, martyr means “witness.” Martyrs are people who, by their lives or deaths, show others the depths of God’s love for his creation. And that God “is patient…not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

If God is patient with us in our sin, we ought to be patient with him as he slowly brings salvation to a world that desperately needs it. When we pray, God sometimes tells us to wait for his final answer. We should do so, for while we wait God accomplishes his ultimate purpose and brings about our ultimate fulfillment.

So, how long, Sovereign Lord? As long as you need!

God does not always answer our prayers affirmatively.  Sometimes he says, “No!” When he does, he has our best interests at heart. Even God’s negative is positive for us.

Paul’s life provides an example of this. We are accustomed to thinking of Paul as Christ’s ambassador par excellence, so we forget how controversial he was in his own day. A vocal minority of early church members doubted his message, distrusted the messenger, or both.

In Galatians, Paul defended his message. “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11–12, cf. Acts 9:1–19).

In 2 Corinthians 10–12, Paul defended his status as God’s messenger. The Corinthian church, which Paul had founded (Acts 18:1–17), had become enamored of certain self-promoting “super-apostles.” They looked good, spoke well, and lived high, unlike Paul, whom church traditions tells us was short, bald, and bandy-legged. By his own admission, Paul was a poor speaker (1 Cor. 2:1). And unlike the so-called “super-apostles,” Paul suffered a lot. The list of dangers he survived is impressive: beating, imprisonment, stoning, shipwreck, persecution, and dangers on the road, to name just a few (2 Cor. 11:23–29). Paul’s life was not easy.

But it was lived for God. In 2 Corinthians 12:1–10, Paul reluctantly offered a glimpse into his devotional life to rebut accusations that he was less spiritual than the “super-apostles.” Referring to himself in the third person, he wrote, “I know a man in Christ who…was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” Then, switching to first person, Paul wrote, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.” Quite possibly, this was some sort of chronic, debilitating illness.

And with this “thorn in the flesh,” we return to the topic of God answering our prayers negatively. Paul prayed to God for relief: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” But God said, “No!” each time, providing only this explanation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s negative turned out to be positive for Paul because God wanted to give Paul what he needed even more than physical relief—grace and power.

When God denies our requests, he is not being cruel. There is no deficiency of love on the supply side of prayer. But there is a hierarchy of values. The wellbeing of our bodies—which God made and is saving—is important, but not all-important. God is more interested in our character than our comfort. When God says, “No!” he has our best interests at heart. Let’s keep that in mind as we prayer.

God always answers our prayers, but not necessarily in the way we want him to. He has our best interests in mind. So, sometimes he says “Yes,” sometimes “No,” sometimes “Wait,” and sometimes—frankly—“Grow up!” Over the next four days, we will look at each of these answers. Today, let’s look at “Yes!”

James 5:13–18 says this about prayer:

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

Notice James’s “success” language: The sick will be healed, the sinful soul will be forgiven, and the rain will fall because of prayer. James seems to suggest that if we pray in a certain way, God will answer our requests. What are his specific recommendations?

First, we ought to pray at all times—whether we are troubled, happy, sick, or sinful. Too often, we come to God for selfish reasons. We want something. When we get it, we ignore him until the next crisis arises. We want a solution to a problem. God wants a relationship with a beloved son or daughter. Only through such a relationship does God promise to meet all our needs. As Jesus put it, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33).

Second, we ought to make use of the means God has already given us. James mentions the practice of elders anointing the sick with oil and of confession of sin to believers. Both practices contribute to our physical and spiritual health. Only a fool would toss aside a life vest thrown to him to save him from drowning. Do we ask our pastors to pray for us when we’re sick or ask fellow believers to help us resist temptation? If not, what does that make us?

Finally, we ought to pray as part of an overall strategy of spiritual growth. Notice James’s words: “the prayed offered in faith will make the sick person well,” and “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” A good life is not an automatic guarantee of answered prayer, but the psalmist did say, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread” (Ps. 37:25).