I’m too busy to blog myself right now, and so I am ‘inviting’ Dr. John Frame to do my blogging for me this morning.
All Christians confess in at least a theoretical way that repentance is important. We believe that all are sinners. Practically, however, we find it difficult to admit — whether to others, to ourselves, or to God — that we have personally done wrong and need to change.
“When someone criticizes our behavior, our first instinct is, too often, to defend ourselves. Although we confess in general terms that we have sinned, we don’t want anyone to think that we have sinned in any specific way. That attitude is even more prominent among people in authority. For them, the stakes are higher.
“For a prominent person, to admit to sin is to endanger the status that one may have carefully nurtured for a long time. So when a Christian leader freely admits sin and asks for forgiveness, many of us find that strange. It is impressive, however, not only because of its rarity, but also because of its profoundly biblical character. It marks people who aim to lead as servants, rather than as masters (Matthew 20:25-28).”
[John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life