A litany of Repentance: There is No One Righteous, Not Even One

Oh Lord my God, I have not glorified You nor given thanks to You.  My mind and heart are sinful and foolish.  I choose dark and futile paths.  I claim to be wise but am not. 

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I exchange Your truths for the lies of the world and I worship created things rather than my Creator.  I fail to praise Your holy name, I fail to honor You with my body and my mind.

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I am full of wickedness, evil greed and depravity.  My heart strains to break all of Your commands:  I hate and I deceive, I envy and I boast, I gossip and I slander.  I am senseless, faithless, heartless and ruthless.

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I invent ways of doing evil.  I do evil and approve of the evil in others. 

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I have no excuse.  I judge others and turn around and commit the same sins.  I show contempt for Your kindness, tolerance and patience.  True repentance is not in me; I am stubborn and self-seeking.  I reject Your truth.

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I pretend to instruct the foolish, to guide the blind, to be a light in the dark.  But I do exactly what I rail against; I dishonor You with my hypocrisy.  I justify my sins by the outcome I achieve; I propagate evil through pragmatism. 

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

As it is written:  There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.  Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.  The poison of vipers is on their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.  

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I have turned away, I am worthless; I do not do good.  My mouth is an open grave full of deceit and lies, full of cursing and bitterness.  I hurry to hurt others, destruction and pain are left in my wake; I do not know how to seek peace.  I fail to fear God. 

There is no one righteous, not even one. 

I am incapable of keeping Your law.  I shut my mouth, I am silenced before You, held accountable before Your holiness and conscious only of my helpless, sinful condition.

There is no one righteous, not even one.  I sin and fall short.  Even in the depths of my conviction, I try to justify myself. 

O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I

pray You of Your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.

There is no one righteous, only Jesus Christ Your Son.  I am justified freely only by Your grace, the redemption You give through Christ, the perfect At-One-ing sacrifice.  Through Him my sins are covered, Your holy demands are met.  Hide Your face from my sins and blot out my iniquity.  Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Save me from bloodguilt, let my lips sing only of Your righteousness, let my mouth sing only of Your praise.  You have heard my weeping and accept my prayer for Jesus’ sake.  Let the bones You have crushed rejoice.  Cover me in the righteousness of Christ and remember my sins no more. 

Amen, Amen, Amen

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I am reading Walther's "God's No and God's Yes" which is a distillation of his discussion of the proper distinction between Law and Gospel.   I had a ferocious argument with my husband and find that I am holding on to self-justification, anger and self-righteousness. I know that I should be repentant and desire reconciliation but I do not.  According to Walther, the good news of the Gospel message--forgiveness of God in Christ--is only for those who have been made repentant by the Law.  I know in my heart and mind that I am sinning, and I hear the writer of the book of Hebrews (10: 26) say that if I keep on sinning after knowing the truth of God's grace in Christ, what sacrifice for sin is left--only judgement.  While I read the words of confession each week in my church service, the words used address general sins and sins against social justice. They don't seem big enough to really confess the blackness of my heart.

I know in my mind and heart that I am a poor miserable sinner--these are the words of confession (above) used in the Lutheran Service Book, and their harshness is necessary and appropriate.  I want to hold on to my belief that there is something in me that is good, some kernel that is not totally depraved, but that is a lie; there is in me a shrieking, defiant, black-hearted demon screaming curses at God and demanding to stand in my illusory righteousness.  This litany is an attempt to crush that demon imp, to remind myself of the reality of my sinful condition and my total reliance on Christ. Walther states that the book of Romans represents the perfect outline of Law and Gospel, and so I reread chapters 1 through 3.  The confessional litany above is based upon Romans 1 through 3, with the center section being verbatim Romans 3: 10-18.  Walther is exactly right; read with penitent eyes, Paul's description of sinners in these chapters is not that of "someone else"-- is me.  I am a poor, miserable sinner totally reliant only on the grace of God.  The Grace section starts at Romans 3: 21, but without the preceding chapters, it is too tempting to forget that it is my sins which crucified my Lord.  The crux of the Law-Gospel discussion is in Romans 3: 25, 26--our Lord God is both Just and the One Who Justifies.  He preserves His perfect holiness, His demands for righteousness AND His love for me and all creation through the death of Christ my Savior. 

I'm also listening to pod-casts by Rev Jonathon Fisk, and he had a discussion on the imprecatory psalms--that is, the psalms that pray for enemies to be smite-ed in a way that makes modern readers uncomfortable.  He refers back to a book discussing the Psalms by Bonhoeffer, in which we are encouraged to hear all psalms as Jesus' psalms--and the imprecatory psalms are against any who stand in the way of Jesus' saving work.  Anyone, including me in my sin and my failure and my pride. 

This confession is dark and heavy, it is depressing.  It should be.  It is like an exfoliant which I need for my soul, which so easily forgets that the bloody wounds of Jesus were for my sins and not someone else's.  That shrieking imp will continue to shriek and deny and boast; I must continually repent and throw myself on God's grace and mercy in Jesus.