Confessing sin can accomplish more than repairs; it can spark revival. The 1907 Korean revival began when one man confessed to stealing and two other men repented of a longstanding conflict and forgave each other. On the other hand, some apologies are not apologies at all: “I’m sorry if my comments offended you.” Instead of healing relationships, non-apologies tend to make things worse. Owning our part in a conflict, then, can result in enormous blessing, but doing it well is both an art and a science.
The Art of Apology
It was my fault we were running late. By the time I got into the driver’s seat, my wife and children had been waiting with the van running for five minutes. Instead of accepting responsibility, I tried to shift the blame with a passive-aggressive comment that others could learn to shut the lights off too instead of leaving it all to me! This made for a long car ride and an even longer evening. The tension was still there when we drove home later that night, and I knew I was solely to blame. What should we do when we are the cause of a conflict? We need to say the most difficult words in the English language – “I’m sorry” – and we need to say them well.
First, we confess the sin to God (1Jn 1:9). In sinning against His imagers, we have directly sinned against Him (Psa 51:4). Realizing we have mistreated someone who belongs to the Lord awakens us to the seriousness of our offense and helps us begin the journey of restoration in the fear of God.
Second, we confess to the human party we’ve wronged (Jas 5:16). For me, this included my wife and my children, since I had sinned against them all. Best practices include:
- Confessing urgently, even if you’re in mid-sacrifice (Mat 5:23-24).
- Confessing accurately – not “I messed up,” but “I sinned against you when I spoke those angry words” (see Mar 1:5; Luk 15:18). As Spurgeon advised, “Do not give fair names to foul sins.”
- Taking full responsibility. It’s tempting to make excuses (“I was tired”), shift the blame (“if you hadn’t worked late”), or use the passive voice (“things got out of hand”), but we need to put the “I” back in confession like David did: “Behold, I have sinned” (2Sa 24:17).1
- Expressing heartfelt sorrow: “I’m sorry.” It is often appropriate to convey awareness of how your sin has hurt someone. David models this when he tells God, “I have sinned greatly … I have done very foolishly … I have done wickedly” (2Sa 24:10,17).
Third, we forsake or renounce the sin. Pharaoh and Saul confessed vertically and horizontally (Exo 10:16; 1Sa 15:24-25) but had no intention of forsaking their sin. “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,” the Lord warns, “but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Pro 28:13). Forsaking our sin means we take active steps to prevent it from happening again. Yes, we will commit some sins repeatedly before gaining victory (Luk 17:3-4), but if we are truly repentant, we will declare war on them (2Co 7:10). Renouncing sin can also include making restitution. Zacchaeus showed his sincerity by pledging to repay anyone he had defrauded (Luk 19:8).
Finally, it’s time to ask for forgiveness. Remember, the humbling work of confessing and renouncing sin does not earn forgiveness. Forgiveness is a gift. Always. If we reach this final step feeling entitled to forgiveness, we need to start all over again. I don’t remember how I apologized to my family on the way home that night, but I’d like to think it sounded something like this:
“Wife and children, I sinned against you when I spoke those angry words. This evening could have been such a happy time, but I ruined it for you all. I’m sorry for what I’ve done, and I know that leaving things till the last minute is becoming a pattern in my life. I commit to working on this weakness. In the meantime, would you forgive me?”
And for the thousandth time, they did.
The Science of “I” Surgery
What if someone else is to blame? Our culture’s favorite Bible verse is Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” But this saying of Christ cannot mean we never confront others about their sin, for just four verses later Jesus envisions our performing eye surgery on each other, carefully removing a speck of sin from our brother’s eye (7:5). There is a place, then, not just for confessing our own sin, but for confronting someone else for theirs. However – and this is the main point of Jesus’ teaching in this paragraph – even here, we must own our part.
First, we should proceed with mercy (7:2). Whatever harshness we use on others will one day be used against us. So use gracious judgment (Mat 5:7).
Second, before attempting to perform eye surgery on another, we need to perform “I” surgery on ourselves (7:3-5). How easy it is to have 20/20 vision of someone else’s splinter and be blind to our own plank-sized sin (7:3). The point is not to abandon exposing a brother or sister’s wrongdoing; true love often requires these kinds of confrontations. Rather, it’s to do the painful work of sin-extraction on ourselves first (7:5).2
As is so often the case, the writer James echoes the Lord Jesus’ teaching when he asks, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?” (Jas 4:1). “It’s him!” we jump up, exposing the troublemaker. But James wants us to examine ourselves: “Oh God, in what ways is sin in my heart contributing to this conflict? Where is my pride, anger, and defensiveness on display?”3 Often, heightened sensitivity to a sin in others means the same sin is prominent in us. And we’ll be much better soul surgeons on our brothers and sisters if we too have gone under the knife.
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the ESV. All emphases are mine.
2 Charles L. Quarles, Matthew – Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary, ed. T. Desmond Alexander, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Andreas J. Köstenberger (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022), 200-201.
3 Robert L. Plummer, “James,” in ESV Expository Commentary, Volume 12: Hebrews-Revelation, ed. James M. Hamilton Jr., Jay Sklar, and Iain M. Duguid (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 271. Original emphasis.
