{"id":31311,"date":"2022-09-10T15:25:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/the-apologetic-of-apology-why-confession-bears-witness-to-the-gospel\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:25:22","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:25:22","slug":"the-apologetic-of-apology-why-confession-bears-witness-to-the-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/the-apologetic-of-apology-why-confession-bears-witness-to-the-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apologetic of Apology: Why Confession Bears Witness to the Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"
Felix Koutchinski photo – Unsplash <\/p>\n

By Ryan Sanders<\/em><\/p>\n

A genuine apology can be a powerful apologetic. But that\u2019s not something you\u2019ll find in many apologetics courses. There\u2019s nothing about asking for forgiveness in Mere Christianity<\/em> or The Case For Christ<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Most works in the apologetics genre frame the conversation in legal terms. There are two sides, competing ideas, and the people representing those ideas must confront one another. The goal is to win the argument, so an apology can feel like going in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

Lately, however, our social media feeds were filled with a constant parade of Christian leaders making apologies.<\/p>\n

This week, leaders and institutions issued apologies for racial insensitivities. In recent weeks, several pastors have apologized for putting people at risk by hosting in-person worship services too soon during the coronavirus pandemic. And these are just a few of seemingly increasing occurrences.<\/p>\n

Are leaders right to take these steps? What do these apologies say to a watching world?<\/p>\n

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Could it be time to consider the apologetic power of an apology? Could it be that apologizing holds as much power for God\u2019s work as arguing does? There are at least four reasons this is true.<\/p>\n

1. An apology separates us from Jesus (but in a good way)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Several years ago, I was talking with a missionary sponsored by our church. I can\u2019t say where he works because it\u2019s a sensitive context, but suffice it to say most of his neighbors have little exposure to evangelical Christianity.<\/p>\n

He told me about the surprise of people there when they learned about his fidelity to his wife. \u201cYou\u2019re a Christian,\u201d they asked, \u201cand you don\u2019t sleep around?\u201d When he asked about the surprise, the answer was American TV shows.<\/p>\n

The logic was simple: 1) America produces salacious stories about sexually promiscuous people. 2) America is a Christian nation. Therefore, 3) Christians are promiscuous.<\/p>\n

What my missionary friend had to teach\u2014what all Christians have to embrace at some point\u2014is that there\u2019s a difference between God\u2019s vision for a world set right and His follower\u2019s administration of that vision.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re supposed to represent Jesus, but we\u2019ve done a pretty lousy job of it.<\/p>\n

When we can point to European crusaders or American reconstructionists and say, \u201cThat\u2019s not Jesus,\u201d it supports our message.<\/p>\n

Even better, when we can expose our own personal shortcomings and say, \u201cThat\u2019s not Jesus,\u201d it lends credibility.<\/p>\n

Jesus removed the stain of sin from our hearts; an apology can remove our stain from His reputation.<\/p>\n

2. Hypocrites don\u2019t apologize<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One of the most damaging stereotypes Christians face is that we\u2019re hypocritical. We judge others for their sinfulness while we ignore the sin in our own lives. Sadly, in many instances, we\u2019ve earned that stereotype.<\/p>\n

One often-quoted 2007 study by the Barna Group showed that 85% of non-Christian Americans aged 16-29 think Christianity is \u201chypocritical \u2014 saying one thing doing another.\u201d And 52% of Christians the same age agreed.<\/p>\n

But a hypocrite doesn\u2019t apologize\u2014at least not genuinely. A hypocrite might offer a politician\u2019s apology: \u201cIf I offended anyone, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d which is code for \u201cI don\u2019t see what I did as offensive but if you received it that way, I\u2019ll apologize on your behalf for being too sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genuine contrition is disarming and even admirable. Perhaps if Christians had a reputation for apologizing all the time instead of arguing all the time, we might shed the hypocrite label.<\/p>\n

3. An apology sets an example<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The journey of faith begins with repentance. The trailhead of any walk with Jesus is the expression of an apology to God.<\/p>\n

In fact, Charles Spurgeon once said that, \u201cRepentance is as much a mark of a Christian as faith is.\u201d This is the journey we want our non-Christian neighbors to walk.<\/p>\n

As ambassadors for King Jesus, we\u2019re calling our friends and neighbors to join us on the path of salvation, a path that begins with repentance.<\/p>\n

Why wouldn\u2019t we show them the way? Why wouldn\u2019t we be eager to model apology and repentance as a way of life in hopes that those who don\u2019t yet know our gracious God might take a step behind us?<\/p>\n

4. Authenticity makes the gospel attractive<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As I argue in my book Unbelievable<\/em>, we\u2019ve entered a cultural era wherein \u201ccontemporary audiences trust authenticity over airtight arguments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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See also  Is It \u2018Ministry Failure\u2019 To See a Counselor?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This is why people love Bren\u00e9 Brown, the \u201cshame researcher\u201d with her own Netflix special. She gets it. She\u2019s not afraid to be herself and to call us to the same courage.<\/p>\n

Bren\u00e9 is a backlash to the airbrushed, edited, staged-selfie pressure of our FOMO (fear of missing out) way of life. People trust her because she entrusts herself to them. That kind of authenticity comes with apologies. It has to.<\/p>\n

In Unbelievable<\/em>, I write:<\/p>\n

\u201cOverwhelmed with complexity and deluged with disparate information, we distrust categorical, absolute statements. So we hedge. As Jedediah Purdy illuminated in his insightful book For Common Things<\/em>, our culture is afraid to get behind any leader or cause because of the possibility, even the likelihood, that we’ll get burned. So we look for signs of genuineness. In contemporary discourse, conceding points lends strength to an argument, not weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Christians, our mission is to reveal Jesus at His weakest; at the moment He died for us all on a Roman cross.<\/p>\n

What if that mission is best achieved when his followers reveal their own weakness? How many of us would be willing to accept that mission?<\/p>\n

Confess our sins<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There\u2019s a scene in Donald Miller\u2019s controversial 2003 book Blue Like Jazz<\/em> in which he retells his experience with a Christian student group on the campus of staunchly secular Reed College in Portland.<\/p>\n

Because Christians at Reed faced exclusion and ridicule due to their faith, when it came time for the school\u2019s annual campus-wide bacchanal called Renn Fayre (think Mardi Gras for Portlandian college students) the Christians decided to take a new approach to their mission.<\/p>\n

They constructed a wooden confessional on the campus lawn and invited their classmates to confess their sins.<\/p>\n

But when any partier had the courage to step into the confession booth, he got a surprise. Instead of asking him to name his sins, the Christian named his own.<\/p>\n

Miller apologized to strangers for lashing out in anger, for ignoring the poor and oppressed, for mixing politics and religion, for misrepresenting Jesus.<\/p>\n

He apologized on behalf of his fellow Christians whom he\u2019d never met but who were part of his tribe.<\/p>\n

Miller wrote, \u201cFor so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn\u2019t a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his first confession that night, to a young man named Jake, Miller felt unburdened but also unsure.<\/p>\n

Would confessing to all the sins of Christendom only convince Jake that he had been right to avoid it? Was confession good for the saved soul but not the lost?<\/p>\n

I believe Jake\u2019s response foreshadows the response of many in our culture if they could hear our contrition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the deal with the cross?\u201d he asked. The pair talked a while about Jesus, His sacrificial death, and the difficulty of obeying His commission. When Jake stepped out of the confession booth, he looked back at Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is cool what you guys are doing,\u201d he repeated. \u201cI am going to tell my friends about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

We should acknowledge that whenever there\u2019s need for confession, there has been some wrong to cause it. Confession isn\u2019t magic pixie dust that makes our sins disappear in a poof, nor the wounds we cause by those sins.<\/p>\n

But confession has the power to give credibility to the credulous, the power to disarm disbelievers. In that way, an apology is an important tool of apologetics.<\/p>\n

RYAN SANDERS (@theryansanders)<\/strong> is a pastor at Irving Bible Church in Irving, Texas, writes regularly at TheRyanSanders.com, and serves on the editorial board for the <\/em>Dallas Morning News<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Felix Koutchinski photo – Unsplash By Ryan Sanders A genuine apology can be a powerful apologetic. But that\u2019s not something you\u2019ll find in many apologetics courses. There\u2019s nothing about asking for forgiveness in Mere Christianity or The Case For Christ. Most works in the apologetics genre frame the conversation in legal terms. There are two … Continue reading “The Apologetic of Apology: Why Confession Bears Witness to the Gospel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}