Confession is a staple of a healthy Christian life. It’s the beginning cry of the lost, and the regular refrain of the believer who knows that he will continue to sin (1 John 1:8) even as he grows into maturity.
My first experience that I can remember of the power of confession as a Chrisitan was when I was around 12 years old. I was bored, laying around on the couch, playing with my pocket knife. Testing its sharpness on tissues soon lost its appeal, and I wanted to know what this thing was really made of. So, after hesitating a moment, knowing what I was about to do, I made about a four inch cut in my parents’ couch; surgical in its precision, but nevertheless damaging to something that was not mine to damage. I immediately felt the conviction, but decided to say nothing. Later that night, after my parents found out, they questioned us on who did it. They’ll never know for sure it wasn’t one of the other brothers, I thought. So I kept silent and hid what I’d done. Life went on, but in a moment of conviction later, after an argument or some other conflict with my parents, I felt compelled to finally confess to what I’d done. I was afraid – afraid to get in trouble and have some consequences, but also afraid of how my parents would react; what they’d think of me, whether they would forgive me, whether our relationship would fundamentally change once I came clean. I told my mom what I’d done, and I remember sitting in my room as she forgave me with no strings attached or subtle resentments – she was just happy that I had been honest and come clean. I remember feeling light, like a weight had been taken off of me. Free. Healed. I did not have to carry the secret in the dark anymore, and I knew that my parents still loved me. Confession didn’t make my parents love me, I had been their child before and continued to be their child afterward. But I was not experiencing healing and freedom – I was not experiencing what it is like to live as their child in relationship with them – until I confessed and received their forgiveness.
Confession and to and with one another is a powerful way God shows us his own grace. In the final chapter of Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s book on Christian community, Life Together, he has a powerful discussion of the need and benefits of confession for Christians – not just in our heads, or one time in the past, but out loud with others as a part of the Spirit renewing our lives. He writes: “He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. In confession the breakthrough to community takes place. 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…sin wants to remain unknown… It shuns the light…In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart.” The whole chapter is really great – I recommend it to you. But the point is this – confession is the way we experience freedom and healing, and it is one of the most powerful ways we are united with our fellow Christians in the body. I experienced this with my own confession as a boy, and as I’ve walked with Jesus over the years I love the opportunity for confession more than ever. When we confess together as a church, I’m reminded that I’m not alone and that, as Bonhoeffer writes elsewhere in that chapter, “the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to me only when it is spoken by a brother in the name of God.” In confession we come into the light of God, and find him to be a God of grace, whose perfect love casts out all fear. (1 John 4:18)
