For millennia, the people of God have embraced confession of sin as a consistent aspect of engaging with God in corporate gatherings. In both the Old and New Testaments, and throughout the majority of church history, confession remained a continual practice within the common rhythms of worship and ecclesial life. However, in recent decades among evangelicalism, confession has been a neglected and dormant concept within worship practice and theological discourse.
This paper seeks to address the sizable chasm in evangelical worship and scholarship concerning the practice of confession in the context of gathered worship. Hence, this paper proposes a renewed vision of liturgical confession—understood as a trifold sequence of the call to confession, the confession of sin, and assurance of pardon—to encourage the church to again incorporate confession into common worship practice; and likewise, to prompt the academy to uncover biblical, theological, and historical research concerning confession to help the church embrace its manifold benefits.
To contend for the relevancy and legitimacy of liturgical confession, I have aimed to show the practice as integral for fulfilling the essence and content of worship itself. The essence of worship is drawing near in communion with God by faith in the gospel; the content of worship is the proclamation and enactment of the gospel. In liturgical confession, the trifold sequence acts out the essence of the gospel and so fulfills the essence and content of worship.
Therefore, this paper argues that liturgical confession functions as a condensed rehearsal of the gospel. The trifold sequence of liturgical confession becomes an enactment of the gospel message, thus expressing the means by which the believer shares communion with God.
This paper will sequentially explore each of the three movements of liturgical confession by examining biblical texts, theological principles, and liturgical examples pertinent to each movement. In doing so, I will demonstrate how each isolated movement carries seeds of the entire gospel message; and ultimately, the three movements function in tandem as a condensed rehearsal of the gospel. The call to confession embodies how God’s self-revelation initiates relational engagement with his people while exposing their need of redemption; the confession of sin embodies repentance and faith in Christ for salvation; and the assurance of pardon embodies the eternal security of the believer as being united to Christ to share communion in the life of the Triune God.