Yes it’s plainly obvious that if a person said “they went to confession and confessed their sins to God”, that people would know this person meant they confessed their sins to God through a man who calls himself a priest.
However it’s also plainly obvious that if a person said “they confessed their sins to God”, that this meant they confessed their sins directly to God.
It’s also plainly obvious that if I left out the info about going to a confessional (even though that’s what I did) and merely said, “I confessed my sins to God” I would be telling the truth.
There’s no need to assume when the following statement in Psalm 32:5 so obviously means what its says; “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and just like “Sing to Him a new song;” Psalm 33:3, so obviously means sing directly to God and not sing to God through so and so.
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The comparison doesn’t hold. Nowhere in the definition of “sing” do we find anything about going to a priest.
However, “confess” can have that meaning. From Webster’s Dictionary:
confess *v.t. *1. to acknowledge or avow (a fault, crime, misdeed, or weakness) by way of revelation. 2. to own or admit as true; concede; *I must confess that I haven’t read it. *3. to declare or acknowledge (one’s sins) esp. to God
or a priest. *v.i. *4. to make confession; plead guilty; own; *to confess to a crime. *5. to make a confession of sins,
esp. to a priest.
Numbers 1, 2, and 4 don’t deal with sins (at least not in a spiritual sense). But numbers 3 and 5, which do deal with sins, have in their definitions confessing to a priest.
Now, if you want to point out that #3 also says it means confessing to God, I have never denied that. What I take issue with is your idea that the definition of “confess” in the verse you quoted *must mean confessing directly to God *when *nothing in that verse eliminates the other definition of confessing to a priest. *That has been my point all along.
If you want to argue that the verse says “to the Lord” instead of “to a priest” I argue that confessing to a priest has always had within it the meaning of confessing to God through the priest, never the meaning of confessing just to the priest. You admitted this youself when you said, “Yes it’s plainly obvious that if a person said ‘they went to confession and confessed their sins to God’, that people would know
this person meant they confessed their sins to God through a man who calls himself a priest.” And I have further demonstrated that even if all I said was “I confessed my sins to God” that doesn’t eliminate the method of doing it through a priest.
So, if you want to argue that it means confessing directly, you’ll have to go to the context of the verse, including its historical context. However, since jmcrae is more knowledgable in this area, I’ll let the two of you slug that out.
But I would think at this point I’ve demonstrated that “confess” in that verse doesn’t automatically mean confessing directly to God, unless, of course, you want to argue with the dictionary.
In other words, that verse cannot be used to show that God desires us to confess to Him directly, since confessing through a priest is completely compatible with it.
Jesus did not “do away with” the OT ways. He came to make them perfect. We have to keep in mind the OT for us to understand the NT. If we throw away the OT then we are throwing away our Jewish roots. We need them to stay alive. If we cut off our roots we could stand a chance of dying without our roots. They are our foundation on which we build our faith.