At another time, when my heart is more hard and stupid, and when his terror doth not make me afraid, then I can come before him, and ask mercy at his hand, and scarce be sensible of sin or grace, or that indeed I am before God. But above all, they are the rare times, when I can go to God as the Publican, sensible of his glorious majesty, sensible of my misery, and bear up, and affectionately cry, “God me merciful to me a sinner.”
But again, the Publican, by his confession, sheweth a piece of the highest wisdom that a mortal man can shew; because; by so doing, he engageth as well as imploreth the grace and mercy of God to save him. You see by the text he imploreth it; and now I will shew you that he engageth it, and makes himself a sharer in it.
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” And again, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness;” Prov. xxviii. 13; 1 John. i. 9.
First, In the promise of pardon, “he shall have mercy;” he shall have his sins forgiven. As also Solomon prays, that God will forgive them that know their own sores; and they are indeed such as are sensible of the plague of their own heart, 2 Chron. vi. 29, 30; 1 Kings viii. 37, 38. And the reason is, because the sinner is now driven to the farthest point, for confession is the farthest point, and the utmost bound unto which God has appointed the Publican to go, with reference to his work; as it is said of Saul to David, when he was about to give him Michal his daughter to wife, “I desire not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.”
So says God in this matter, I desire no sacrifices, nor legal righteousness to make thee acceptable to me: “Only acknowledge and confess thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against me,” 1 Sam. xviii. 25; Jer. iii. 12, 13. And though this by some may be thought to be a very easy way to come at, and partake of the mercy of God; yet let the sensible sinner try it, and he shall find it one of the hardest things in the world. And there are two things to which man is prone, that makes confession hard:
First, There is a great proneness in us to be partial, and not thorough and plain in our confessions. We are apt to make half confessions; to confess some, and hide some; or else to make feigned confessions, flattering both ourselves, and also God, while we make confession unto him; or else to confess sin, as our own fancies apprehend, and not as the word descries them. These things we are very prone to do; men can confess little sins, while they hide great ones. Men can feign themselves sorry for sin when they are not, or else in their confessions forget to judge of sin by the word. Hence it is said, They turned to God, “not with their whole hearts, but as it were feignedly.” “They spake not aright, saying, What have I done?” “They flatter him with their mouth, and lie unto him with their tongues,” and do their wickedness in the dark, and sin against him with a high hand, and then come to him and “cover the altar with their tears.” These things therefore demonstrate the difficulty of sincere confession of sin; and that to do it as it should, is no such easy thing.
To right confession of sin, several things must go: as,
1. There must be sound conviction for sin upon the spirit: for before a man shall be convinced of the nature, aggravation, and evil of sin, how shall he make godly confession of it? Now, to convince the soul of sin, the law must be set home upon the conscience by the Spirit of God: “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” And again, “I had not known lust, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet;” Rom. vii. 7. This law, now when it effectually ministereth conviction—of sin to the conscience, doth it by putting of life, and strength, and terror into sin. By its working on the conscience, it makes sin revive, “and the strength of sin is the law;” Rom. vii.; 1 Cor. xv. It also increaseth and multiplieth sin, both by the revelation of God’s anger against the soul, and also by mustering up and calling to view sins committed and forgotten time out of mind. Sin seen in the glass of the law is a terrible thing; no man can behold it and live. “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died;” when it came from God to my conscience, as managed by an almighty arm, then it slew me. And now is the time to confess sin, because now a soul knows what it is, and sees what it is, both in the nature and consequence of it.
2. To a right confession of sin, there must be sound knowledge of God, especially as to his justice, holiness, righteousness, and purity; wherefore the Publican here begins his confession by calling upon or by the acknowledgement of his Majesty: “God be merciful to me a sinner:” As if he should say, God, O God, O great God, O sin-revenging God, I have sinned against thee, I have broken thy law, I have opposed thy holiness, thy justice, thy law, and thy righteous will. O consuming fire (“for our God is a consuming fire”), I have justly provoked thee to wrath, and to take vengeance on me for my transgressions. But alas! how few that make confession of sin have right apprehension of God, unto whom confession of sin doth belong. Alas! it is easy for men to entertain such apprehensions of God as shall please their own humours, to bear up under the sense of sin, and that shall make their confession rather facile and fantastical, than solid and heartbreaking. The sight and knowledge of the great God is, to sinful man, the most dreadful thing in the world; which makes confession of sin so rare. Most men confess their sins behind God’s back, but few to his face; and you know there is ofttimes a vast difference in thus doing among men.
3. To the right confession of sin, there must be a deep conviction of the terribleness of the day of judgment. This John the Baptist inserts, where he insinuates, that the Pharisees’ want of (sense of, and) the true confession of sin; was because they had not been warned (or had not taken the alarm) to flee from the wrath to come. What dread, terror, or frightful apprehension can there be, where there is no sense of a day of judgment, and of our giving unto God an account for it? Matth. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.