What's the difference between mortal and venial sin? I get one severs the grace of God from the believer, but what all is involved in reconciliation? Or is that purely a Catholic doctrine?
If it is something that must be confessed, what exactly must be confessed? Has this ever caused believers legal trouble? What dispensations are typically required?
James 2:10
10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
The law of God has been described as a chain: Break one
link of the chain and the
chain is broken. This is what James is saying, I believe, in the verse above. So, then, distinguishing among sins is an illegitimate thing to do. While particular sins may vary in their consequences here on earth, God sees them all as breaking the "chain" of His law and gives to any and all sinners the "wages" of their sin: Death (
Romans 6:23; James 1:14-16).
We can see something of God's view of our sin, the horizontal way they stand in relation to one another, in the following passage:
Proverbs 6:16-19
16 There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood,
18 A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil,
19 A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.
God's list of abominations that He hates begins, not with murder, or rape, or adultery, but with a proud (haughty) look. God hates an arrogant expression on the face of a person; it's an abominable thing, according to Him! He hates the abominable act of lying, too, which is stated above without qualification. Big or small, God says lying is an abomination to Himself. In fact, God condemns lying
twice in the list from
Proverbs 6, which suggests how abominable lying is. It's so awful, in God's estimation, that it stands in the same list with
murder (shedding innocent blood). Anyway, that God would put a prideful expression on a person's face on par with murder tells us that He doesn't have the hierarchical arrangement of sins that we like to construct.
All sin must be confessed. What is confession? It is simply
agreeing with God, admitting to Him, that our sin is actually what He says it is. See
1 John 1:9.
Has confessing sin caused a believer legal trouble? I'm not sure what you mean.... I know of people who have come to faith in Christ who have had to go to the police station and confess to crimes. Certainly, dire crimes - rape, murder, robbing a bank, selling illicit drugs to children, etc. - require this sort of action. Restitution, too, is often appropriate in other less legally-dire but still sinful instances, like having stolen your neighbor's snow shovel, or purposefully poisoned their rose bushes, or slandered a fellow employee at work, and so on.
I don't know what you mean by "dispensations." I'm guessing this is some sort of Roman Catholic thing. Regardless, nowhere in the Bible are Christians ever commanded to obtain a "dispensation" for sin from the Roman Catholic church. Instead, they find forgiveness of their sin through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross for their sin. He has paid the penalty for the sin of all mankind (
John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 4:7-10), fully satisfying God's holy, just demands (
Hebrews 9-10:21), and by repenting of life lived apart from His constant control (
Acts 3:19), confessing one's sin (
1 John 1:8-10), and trusting in him as Savior and yielding to him as Lord (
Romans 10:9-10), the forgiveness he has obtained for us is applied to us and we are thus made acceptable to God (
Colossians 1:19-21). This is God's "dispensation" for all sinners mediated, not by any human priest, but by Christ.
1 Timothy 2:5-6
5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all...
1 John 2:1-2
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.