Confessions of God's People

God's covenant people are a confessing people. Historically, the redeemed have come again and again to God, confessing their need of him, confessing their sin, and confessing their faith in his promises. As Isaiah draws for us a prophetic picture of the city of God's redeemed, the church of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom over which Christ reigns, he describes as well their confessions before their holy God.

First, those in the strong city of salvation, those who walk the level path, those whose minds are kept in perfect peace, those whose hearts are filled with passion for God, will confess that they have done nothing themselves, but that whatever has been accomplished by and through them is of God. He wrote in verse 12: "Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us." How this sounds like Jesus' words in John 3:21: "But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." Both of these passages affirm that indeed we do things for God, but both of them affirm forcefully that whatever we do for God in fact God has done for us, that is, it is the work of God. Such is the glory of the Christian life. It is doing all things through Christ (Philippians 4:13); it is realizing that without Christ we could no nothing (John 15:5), that the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63). May God's holy people always confess that all they do is done through God, that it is ultimately his work, and to his glory.

Second, we confess that God alone should receive honor (verse 13). Scripture proclaims it from Genesis to Revelation: all glory and honor and praise to God. "Your name alone do we honor." May we ever confess soli deo gloria: "to God alone be the glory!" And thus we confess the mighty works of our God: "You have enlarged the nation. You have gained glory for yourself…" (verse 15).

And then we confess our desperate need. We come to God with nothing in our hands. We come as beggars, utterly destitute, without money to buy freely, bankrupt, morally ruined, seeking mercy at the foot of the cross. Isaiah describes our condition in these words: coming in distress, barely able to whisper a prayer (How descriptive!), like a woman in great pain during childbirth who brings forth nothing but wind. Distress, weakness, and laboring painfully with no results. "We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world." We have failed! So we confess our sins, our distresses, our failures, our total inability.

And God raises us up. He brings life to the dead. "Your dead (God's people, though dead in trespasses and sins, see Ephesians 2:1-5) will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy." (verse 19). Isaiah speaks of the ultimate resurrection of the body, but we must remember an initial resurrection from spiritual death to life that occurs in our new birth, our regeneration. It is that regeneration that assures the final resurrection of our bodies to eternal life.

And so we confess. And we praise the God who hears us and raises us to life!