Forgiveness, confession — which comes first?

Now that we’re in the season of Lent I’ve been thinking about forgiveness and confession and which comes first.

Recently, I read something on social media: a mom had discovered that her son had stolen a family heirloom years ago when he was addicted to drugs and desperate for money.

She had gone to the place where she kept it and it wasn’t there. She looked everywhere, and then she had a sinking feeling that her son had taken it. She said it made her physically ill as it sunk in.

She said she was overwhelmed with grief that her son had been desperate enough to do this thing.

“And then I was filled with forgiveness,” she said. “I wanted to hold him and tell him I loved him. That stealing the heirloom was a terrible thing to do, but that he’s my son and more valuable to me than a thing.”

Then she asked, “Am I crazy?”

On social media, some people told her yes, she was crazy, that she should confront her son and make him pay her back. Some said she should press charges against him, that he belongs in jail.

One person said, “If that was my kid I’d never let him back in my house,” and another said she shouldn’t forgive him until he confesses.

That one caught my attention. That’s the one I’ve been thinking about.

The apostle Paul wrote that followers of Jesus are to forgive one another “readily and freely, just as God in Christ also forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32 Amplified Bible).

In the story of the prodigal son, the son who broke his father’s heart by demanding his inheritance and then squandered it, when the son hit rock bottom and returned home to his father, Jesus said that even before the son could confess, filled with compassion the father ran to him and embraced him (Luke 15:20-24).

On the Cross, as Jesus was dying he called out to God on behalf of the ones who were killing him, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34).

So, does forgiveness come first?

In the book, “40 Days of Grace,” Paul Tripp says, “Confession is a grace.”

“Here’s how confession works,” he writes. “You cannot confess what you haven’t grieved, you can’t grieve what you do not see, and you cannot repent of what you have not confessed.

“So one of the most important operations of God’s grace is to give us eyes to see our sin and hearts that are willing to confess it,” Tripp writes.

“If your eyes are open and you see yourself with accuracy, and if your heart is humbly willing to admit to what your eyes see, you know that glorious, rescuing, forgiving and transforming grace has visited you…So cry out today for eyes to see…cry for the grace to be willing to stop, look, listen, receive, grieve, confess and turn.”

Neither confessing our sins nor offering forgiveness to others who sin against us comes naturally.

But it can and does come supernaturally.

Tripp says, “Confession is a grace,” and the Bible says forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven you. How has he forgiven us?

He has forgiven us first. He loved us first.

Confession is a grace. Forgiveness and the willingness to forgive is a grace. To love others is a grace. All is grace.

The very foundation of our lives in Christ is grace.

Nancy Kennedy can be reached at 352-564-2927 or by email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.