Confession

Just as cancer metastasizes, unconfessed sin, spreads, saps a believer's strength, steals their joy, and eventually brings forth death (James 1:15). Do you think those around you don't struggle like you? Consider the number of hands that shoot up after the prayer requests for the lost, indigent, and sickly. You know, that point when the minister asks:

      "Are there any unspoken prayer requests?"

Believers have no problem openly sharing prayer requests for fleshly needs, but when it comes to habitual sin publicly, we plead the fifth. Why? For scripture clearly tells us if we submit to the Spirit and publicly confess, we can mortify our flesh and bring it into subjection! (Romans 8:13)

Protestants and Catholics hold doctrinal positions on confession their camps insist are diametrically opposed. Yet the dogmas share a systemic premise. Each believes the way to combat recurrent sin is to confess privately and discreetly. One says, "to a priest" (in Persona Christi), the other, "directly to God" (prayer closet)

Despite an act of contrition, private confession to a priest is akin to pleading guilty to a traffic violation, paying a fine or taking a remedial class to keep your driver's license. Absolution is given, a penance is prescribed and subsequently performed, then what? Rather than teaching a chronic sinner to abhor and shun sin, the subliminal message is they retain a license to sin; that they can simply "pay for" any and all subsequent transgressions by slinking back to the confessional. Lather, rinse, repeat...

Since God is privy to all our sin, private confession to Him sheds no new light on it. There is no reassuring ecclesiastical declaration of forgiveness in this scenario either. One can only assume their contrition is considered earnest and that any self-imposed penance will repair the damage and restore right relationship. But more often than not this manner of confession does not alter the behavior of the soul caught up in a cycle of sin and sadly most leave in as weak and wretched a state as they entered. Lather, rinse, repeat...

That is not to say that confessing sin to God or a priest is wrong or that each sin we commit needs to be dealt with publicly. But those darling sins of ours, those we return to repeatedly to our shame and dismay, the surest way to be cleansed of them is to expose them to the light by freely and openly confessing them (James 5:16). Public confession is humiliating yes, but unfettered honesty is cathartic (Acts 19:18). And lest we forget God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud (1 Peter 5:5-6). 

Fact of the matter is there is not a more grace-full and patently scriptural way to claim God's promise of being cleansed of chronic sin than open, honest, inglorious public confession! Can you think of a more effective deterrent when temptation knocks than the thought of having to run that gauntlet should we succumb to it?

Curiosity piqued? You may benefit from reading "Cleansing Confession"; a blog endeavoring to flesh out the ways and means of public confession.

Tertullian's Dictum "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" rings true in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  While most church leaders refused to openly oppose the Nazi regime and criticized colleagues who did, this brave minister and theologian stood firm and fast with the "Confessing Church" in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. The Church lost a true visionary when he was martyred at Flossenbürg  Concentration Camp scarcely a month before it was liberated. 

From the theology of Bonhoeffer I gleaned this idea that public confession is the Believer's key to attaining a cleansing victory over chronic sin and unrighteousness. Below are some excerpts from his writings which were published posthumously:

"Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being...

Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, cuts a man down, it's a dreadful blow to pride. To stand there before a brother as a sinner is an ignominy that is almost unbearable. In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blinded that they no longer see the promise and the glory in such abasement...

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution... 

Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we're not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person...

The Cross of Jesus Christ destroys all pride. We cannot find the Cross of Jesus if we shrink from going to the place where it is to be found, namely, the public death of the sinner. And we refuse to bear the Cross when we are ashamed to take upon ourselves the shameful death of the sinner in confession. In confession we break through to the true fellowship of the Cross of Jesus Christ, in confession we affirm and accept our Cross." 

Dear reader, do you have something you would like to confess and receive prayer for?  We welcome you to visit our prayer chatroom. Would you like to speak to someone directly about how to address and resolve the issue of recurrent sin in your life? Contact us using the chat popup, or anytime day or night at: (678) CLEANSE