9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
How can we bring what we learned at Solemn Assembly into our everyday lives? Dr. Paul Tripp gives us thoughtful insights into a lifestyle of confession and forgiveness in our marriages. I would suggest that these insights apply to all our interactions with other people.
The following is excerpted from What Did You Expect? – Redeeming the Realities of Marriage by Dr. Paul David Tripp (pp. 80 – 83):
“[W]hat does it look like when we take the grace of confession seriously, to get the elephant out of the room and make honest admission of wrong the regular habit of a marriage? Well, here are the daily habits of a confession lifestyle.”
2. “We will be humble when exposed. Humility when we are approached by the other means willingness to consider. It means quieting that background noise of our inner defense system. It means remembering that we have not yet arrived, that we are still sinners in need of daily grace, and that at this moment we are being loved by our Redeemer. Humility means the willingness to look in the mirror of God’s Word and being glad that whatever we see there is already been covered by the blood of Jesus.”
3. “We will not excuse. It is such a typical impulse for us all: someone points out a wrong and we are immediately filled with an alternative view that places us in a very different light. Refusal to excuse means resisting the urge to build arguments for our righteousness. It means refusing to turn the tables on the other, making sure that he or she knows that we are not the only sinner in the room.”
4. “We will be quick to admit wrongs. … We refuse to pout. We refuse to live in the silence of hurt, anger, and vengeance. When we have done wrong, we will be quick to approach the other and lovingly help him see what he has said and done. We will make our approach in the spirit of forgiveness and hope. We will refuse to let the ‘sun go down our anger’ (Eph. 4:26).”
5. “We will listen and examine. Each of us has to work to quiet our emotions and the self-righteous tendencies of our hearts. When approached, we all need to require ourselves to hear clearly and to think carefully. This means working to understand and consider. It means taking the light that is handed to us by the words of the other and shining it on ourselves, being willing to see things about ourselves that we have never seen before. Change is not only about admitting wrong; it is about progressively growing in self-knowledge. It is about developing a greater and greater grasp of the themes of strength and weakness in our marriage. It is about being ready, willing, and waiting to learn new things about ourselves and our marriage that will lead to lasting growth and change.”
6. “We will greet confession with encouragement. Few things crush a confession lifestyle more quickly than judgment. It is a tendency in every sinner to want the person who has hurt us to hurt in the way we have been hurt… Nothing encourages the courage of confession more than grace. If God were only a judge, nobody would confess anything to him. It is his goodness that leads us to repentance. His love draws us. His grace encourages us. His patience gives us hope… When we greet the confession with the same grace that we have been given by the Lord, we give the other hope to confess all the more.”
7. “We will be patient, persevering, and gentle in the face of wrong. The fact of the matter is that change is most often a process and seldom an event… Change is pushed upon us by a persevering Redeemer, who will not walk away from the work he has begun in both husband and wife. He will put the need of change before us in the most inopportune moments. He will not submit to our schedule or agenda for our day. He has not promised that change will be enjoyable each time or a comfortable process over the long haul. He has promised to stay near us, giving us everything we need, and he has guaranteed that we will be more than we ever thought we could be… He calls us to be patient. He calls us to be willing to wait. He calls us to continue when continuing is hard, and as we are continuing, to look for any way we can to incarnate his transforming love.”
8. “We will not return to the past. Sadly, many marriages are held hostage by the past. Every current discussion of wrong gets kidnapped by the failures and hurts of the past… The conversations don’t move toward resolution; each conversation is just a reminder of how bad things are and of how long they have been that way… So we establish a pattern of short accounts where a daily cycle of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation settles issues, alleviating any need to address them again. And we will resist, in moments of hurt and anger, resurrecting what has already been resolved.”
9. “We will put our hope in Christ. Confession is all about hope. First, confession unavoidably leads us to give up hoping in ourselves. It calls us to abandon our trust in our own wisdom, righteousness, and strength. It welcomes us to admit how weak, selfish, needy, fickle, and rebellious we actually are. It faces us with the reality that we are still people in deep and daily need of rescue… So, we lay down the hope we had in ourselves, and we take up a new, brighter hope. This hope is at the cross of Jesus Christ… He became the perfect sacrificial lamb, taking our sins on himself, satisfying the Father’s wrath and purchasing our forgiveness… We can live in the liberating light of humility and honesty, a needy and tender sinner living with a needy and tender sinner, no longer defensive and no longer afraid, together growing nearer to one another as we grow to be more like him.”
What Did You Expect? - Paul Tripp Ministries
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