How to Confess Sin to God — Owen on Mortification
⏱ 13 min read
You have been carrying something for a while. Maybe a week, maybe a year. You have said the words I’m sorry into the quiet of your kitchen, into the dark of the early-morning chair, into the small space between the kettle and the prayer book on the counter — and the words have come out, and you have not been sure whether anything received them. The question that brought you to this article is not really what are the words I should use. The question is how do I confess sin to God in a way that actually lands somewhere, and the suspicion underneath the question is that the words you have been saying may have been falling through.
John Owen, writing in the 1650s for English Puritans who were asking the same question in different vocabulary, had a sharp answer that the modern reader almost never hears. Confession is not the prayer. The words are not the thing. The naming of the failure is the small ground-clearing for the actual prayer, which is the slow returning of the soul to a Father who has been loving it the entire time. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this kind of slow daily returning into a companion you can keep at the chair, if you want a place to bring the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
This article walks three substantial passages from Owen’s Communion with God — the book where his teaching on confession is most clearly anchored — and reads each one carefully enough that the practice underneath them can be carried into a real Tuesday. If the practice of structured daily reflection is new to you, how to pray the Examen is the Ignatian companion to Owen’s Puritan version, and the two are close kin. If the prayers you have been most reluctant to say out loud have been the ones you most needed to bring, a daily prayer journal that holds the asks you’re embarrassed to pray was written for exactly that slot. If you would like the wider structure of devotional prompts that hold confession alongside other slow practices, a prayer journal and devotion — 30 prompts that earn their place holds the spine. And on the evenings when the page is genuinely blank and even the confession will not come, what to write in a Christian journal when you feel blank is the gentler companion.
The first passage: the eternal, free love that comes first
“Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father, — as one full of eternal, free love towards them: let their hearts and thoughts be filled with breaking through all discouragements that lie in the way.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly. The English is the English of the 1650s, but it is closer to your kitchen than the modern devotional content most weeks reaches.
Owen is making one quiet, devastating claim. The reason most Christians cannot stay long with God in prayer — cannot, as he puts it, watch with him one hour — is not that they are lazy or undisciplined. It is that the picture of God they have been bringing to the chair is the wrong picture. They have fixed their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness, and the soul cannot endear itself to severity. The soul cannot rest in a presence it is afraid of. The hour will not hold because the relationship inside the hour is built on the wrong foundation.
What Owen is asking you to do, before you confess anything, is to change the picture of the One you are confessing to. Not to make Him smaller. Not to soften the holiness. To remember the eternal, free love that has been the ground of His dealings with you from the beginning, and to let that be the first notion of the Father you bring to the chair. The confession that lands is the confession spoken into a relationship whose ground is love. The confession that falls through is the confession spoken at the foot of a throne the soul is mostly afraid of.
This is the order Owen would have you walk every time. First, the eternal, free love. Second, the slow honest naming of what you have done. Third, the receiving of the mercy that was waiting before you walked in. Most Christian women have been taught to walk it in the opposite order — first the failure, then the trembling, then maybe, if there is room, the mercy at the end. Owen would gently rearrange the steps. The love comes first because the love is the room you are confessing inside of. The confession that has not been preceded by the recollection of the love is, in Owen’s account, almost always a confession that is going to fall through.
If you have spent years confessing into the wrong order, this is the place to stop and let the order shift. Before the words come out tomorrow morning, take one slow minute to remember that you are confessing inside the love of a Father whose thoughts of kindness have been from of old. That sentence is the room. The confession then has somewhere to land.
The second passage: the soul brought into the bosom of God
“To give a poor sinful soul a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections, that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him; to give, I say, a soul an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it twice. The sentence is long, and it is meant to be — Owen builds the cumulative weight of the mercy across the clauses, each one adding another stone of assurance to a soul that has been struggling to feel any of them.
Notice the verbs. Loves. Delights. Is well pleased with. Hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards. These are not abstract theological propositions. They are the verbs Owen is asking you to believe describe the Father’s actual posture toward you, the woman reading this article, on this particular Tuesday, with this particular weight you have been carrying. Not toward Christians in general. Not toward the saints in heaven. Toward you. The poor sinful soul Owen names is the soul you have brought to the page.
The inexpressible mercy he is naming is the mercy of being persuaded — affected throughout, in all the faculties and affections — that this is true. The persuasion is what most Christians have not yet received. They believe the propositions. They have been taught the doctrine. They can quote the verses. And underneath all of it, in the part of the soul that actually runs the daily emotional weather, they are not yet persuaded. The propositions are in the mind. The persuasion has not reached the heart.
Owen’s whole pastoral work was the slow persuasion of the soul that the doctrine was for it. He believed, and his sermons keep arguing, that the assurance was the mercy — that being persuaded of God’s posture toward you was, in itself, one of the chief gifts of the Christian life, and that most of the practice of communion with God consisted in the slow daily watering of that assurance until it began to grow roots inside the actual soul.
How does this connect to confession?
If you are confessing without being persuaded, the confession will produce relief at best and shame at worst. The pattern goes: name the failure, feel a brief lifting, feel the lifting fade, feel the failure return, name it again. Around and around. The relief does not deepen because the assurance underneath has not deepened. The confession is doing the work it can do, but it is not delivering the inexpressible mercy Owen is describing.
If you are confessing out of persuasion — out of the slowly grown sense that He delights in you, is well pleased with you, has thoughts of tenderness toward you — the confession changes texture. It stops being a transaction (give me forgiveness for this) and becomes a returning (I have wandered, and I am coming home). The Father in the parable did not wait for the speech. He ran. The confession that knows the Father will run is a different kind of confession from the confession that fears He might not.
You can practise this. Before you confess, sit for one minute with one of the Father’s verbs from Owen’s sentence above. He delights in me. He is well pleased with me. He has thoughts of tenderness toward me. Say one of them slowly, out loud if you can. Then bring the confession. The confession spoken after the verb lands differently than the confession spoken before it.
A note about the journal
If the slow daily practice of bringing confession into the Father’s love is the rhythm you want to build, the Prayer Journal for Women is built around exactly this kind of small daily returning. One page each evening, a short verse anchored in the Father’s posture toward you, room for one honest sentence, no demand to perform. The journal is not the cure for the cycling — He is — but the daily small practice is the showing-up, the keeping of the soul in proximity to the eternal, free love Owen named, until the proximity begins to do its slow persuasive work.
The somatic that goes with mortification
Pause here.
Owen used the word mortification — literally, the putting to death of sin — and the language can sound brutal to a modern ear that has been trained to fear self-flagellation. It is worth saying clearly: Owen did not mean self-punishment. He meant the slow daily withdrawal of the soul’s attention from the small habitual movements toward the wrong things, and the patient re-aiming of that attention toward the Father’s love. Mortification, in Owen, is a re-direction practice, not a punishment practice.
The body knows the difference. Punishment, in the body, contracts. The shoulders rise. The jaw sets. The breath becomes shallow and held. The soul that has been confessing in this mode for years arrives at the chair already braced, already preparing to suffer the necessary penalty before the relief is allowed.
Re-direction, in the body, softens. The shoulders settle. The jaw releases. The breath finishes itself.
Sit somewhere quiet. Put one hand lightly on your chest. Take one slow inhale, and on the exhale, ask the body one question: am I bracing for punishment, or returning to the Father? Do not answer with the mind. Notice what the chest does. Notice whether the breath gets shorter or longer. Notice whether the shoulders rise or settle.
If the body is bracing, you have inherited the wrong order — the terrible majesty first, the love maybe at the end. Sit with the hand on the chest for one minute. Let the breath finish itself. Say slowly, once, He has been kind from of old. Then take the hand away and continue reading. The body will not change overnight. The single minute of un-bracing is the practice. Repeated daily, it begins to teach the body that the confession is happening inside the love, not in front of the wrath.
The third passage: the watching that follows the rest
“When once the soul of a believer hath obtained sweet and real communion with Christ, it looks about him, watcheth all temptations, all ways whereby sin might approach, to disturb him in his enjoyment of his dear Lord and Saviour, his rest and desire.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once at speed, then once slowly.
This is where Owen’s account of confession finally meets his account of mortification, and where the two practices reveal themselves to be one practice with two faces. The soul that has obtained sweet and real communion with Christ — that has finally been persuaded of the Father’s love, that has stopped bracing for punishment, that has been received — does not then become careless about sin. It becomes more watchful, not less. But the watchfulness has a new motive.
The watchfulness, in the old order, was the watchfulness of fear. Watch yourself, because if you slip, the relationship is in danger. The watchfulness, in Owen’s new order, is the watchfulness of love. Watch yourself, because you have finally been given the enjoyment of His company, and you do not want anything to disturb the company. The watchfulness is the same behaviour. The engine underneath it is completely different.
This changes what daily confession is for.
In the old order, confession was the maintenance of an account — a transaction made to keep the relational record clean. In the new order, confession is the small daily protection of an enjoyment. The soul comes to the chair not to discharge a debt, but to keep clear the air between itself and the One whose company is now its rest and desire. I noticed today the small drift toward irritability with my children. I do not want it between us. Will you take it. The confession is short. The confession is exact. The confession is spoken into the love.
If you have been confessing as transaction for years, the transition to confession as protection-of-enjoyment will not happen in a week. Owen would say it happens slowly, by the daily watering of the assurance, until the heart can no longer remember a time when it was confessing in the other mode. The mortification is the slow daily watching. The watching is in the service of the enjoyment. The enjoyment is in the love.
This is the slow shape of communion with God, in Owen’s account, and this is what how to confess sin to God finally means in his vocabulary. Not the production of the right words. The slow daily return of the soul into a love that has been there from of old, and the patient watching that follows the return, in service of the enjoyment of the One whose kindness is now finally beginning to be felt.
The line worth keeping near the page
If you take only one sentence from Owen into this week, take the first one. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father — as one full of eternal, free love towards them. Carry it on a small piece of paper. Put it inside your journal. Read it slowly before any confession you bring. The order will begin to change. The confession will begin to land.
Your sister-articles in this contemplative-fathers series are what is true repentance — Edwards on godly sorrow and how to forgive yourself as a Christian — MacDonald on mercy. Edwards diagnoses the kind of sorrow that draws the heart toward God rather than into itself. Owen here carries the daily practice of mortification and confession. MacDonald, in the third, speaks to the place inside you that is still punishing itself after the confession is over. Read the three together if you can.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each evening, a short page anchored in the Father’s posture toward you, with room for the honest sentence — the small daily protection of an enjoyment that, slowly, becomes the home the soul confesses inside of.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Owen’s slow vocabulary — eternal, free love; thoughts of kindness from of old; the watching that follows the rest — into a daily companion built for the woman whose confession is, at last, ready to be a returning rather than a trembling.
