Excerpt for IWU student study in Spiritual Formation/LCE class

—from the book Unveiled Faces by Keith Drury

Confession

Confession

The spiritual discipline of confession is humbly admitting our sins and shortcomings to another person as a means of spiritual healing. Of course we should confess first to God in prayer. But the spiritual discipline of confession is not about confessing to God in solitude but confessing to another person. Confession is good for the soul. Confessing is humbling. It strips us of casting an image that is better than we really are. Confessing our sins to one another lets others “see through us”—in confession we become “transparent.” In confession we make known to others what is God already knows. Of course, another person cannot forgive our sin and wrongdoing—only God can do that. But another person who serves as a “confessor” can represent God in assuring us that we are indeed forgiven of our offenses. Such confession can bring “assurance of forgiveness” to us. There is no stronger vice than a hidden vice. Bringing our sins and temptations before another person weakens their hold on us. While most of the other spiritual disciplines are personal and private, this one requires another person to complete. Confession is an interpersonal spiritual discipline with personal gains. It is a spiritual discipline with enormous psychological gains as well.

Why not keep it private?

Why not keep our sins and faults between God and us alone? Why get others involved? Nobody can forgive sin but God—there is only one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. But the Bible calls us to go beyond a private confession to God alone—it says, “Confess your sins one to another” (James 5:16). What right do we have to dismiss this command? Christians are supposed to find other Christians and make a full confession to them. It is the Bible way. Certainly we ought to confess to God first, but then we should finish the work by finding another person or small group to complete our confession. Why is this so hard to obey? Perhaps it is because of the second half of the quote we started with: “Confession is good for the soul—but bad for the reputation.” The point of the quote is to remind us that keeping our confession between us and God to does not harm to our reputation. Confessing to another could let people see who we really are. It could harm our carefully manicured reputation. This is why confession is the most powerful antidote to the nastiest sin of all—pride. We don’t have to confess everything to everybody, but we certainly ought to confess at least some things to somebody. The Bible tells us to.

The benefits of confession

That the Bible commands confession should be enough for us. But there are benefits beyond obedience. Confession is a humbling experience thus we increase in us the virtue of humility. Confession opens the door to feeling forgiven. We may have long ago confessed to God our sins yet still feel a tinge of guilt? Why? Because being forgiven and feeling forgiven are different. We can be forgiven in a moment by God yet still carry a sense of guilt. When we confess to another and see their forgiving attitude and hear their pronouncement that God has indeed forgiven us we often find the assurance of forgiveness we crave. Feeling forgiven makes it easier to forgive ourselves.

Confession also provides accountability. Each of us will some day “give an account” before God. Confession lets us give such an accounting before our fellow confidant/confessor here on earth. When we have confessed our sins and temptations to another person we give that person permission to correct and caution us. Confession connects us with others—it makes our temptations and sins their business too. It gives them permission to watch us, nudge us, remind us and even reprove us.

But the greatest benefit of confession may be the healing power we receive from doing it. Confession has a curative effect. This is why James finished his sentence “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” There is both physical and spiritual healing in owning up to our sin and temptation. It heals our wounds. It makes us better and stronger. It helps us recover. This curative effect of confession is central to all Twelve Steps recovery programs. In step four the person makes "a searching and fearless moral inventory" of their life, confessing their true state. The chains of addictive behavior are often connected to hidden past resentments. There is healing and freedom in bringing another into the quiet sanctuary of our lives and making a full confession to them receiving their affirmation that God has indeed completely forgiven us.

Confession in the early church

This spiritual discipline is hard for Protestants. We conjure up images of Catholics lined up at confession booths where priests dispensed forgiveness. We complain, “Only God can forgive sins.” Of course we would rather keep our sins between God and us. So, while we recognize the Bible urges us to confess we are slow to obey. Assigning confession only to Roman Catholics shows our ignorance of what really happened. Confession as a rite appeared fairly early in the church and took its place in the weekly ritual of worship long before there was any sort of “Catholic” church. Actually at the very beginning the church had no provision whatsoever for sin after a person was baptized—it was simply assumed that sin was gone forever once a person entered the kingdom of God. Experience eventually taught otherwise. The church rapidly responded with rituals to deal with sin after baptism: confession and penance. Making confession a regular ritual is not without its problems. It is easy to get on the sin-and-confess treadmill. Henry Ward Beecher once remarked, “There are many persons who look on Sunday as a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week." The Christian life hopes for more than such a weekly emptying of the trash. Penance was added to confession by the 300s—so that a person would do more than confess-and-walk-away but took some penalty to “train” them to stop sinning. Eventually the church came to specify precise acts of penance assigned to certain sins, just as the laws of every country in the world now do. (We will deal with penance in another chapter). Confession was a part of the church from its early stages.

Luther and Calvin

Through the middle ages, confession was corrupted and even used as fund-raising schemes along with other rites and sacraments of the church. In the 1500s Luther rejected required confession to a priest but was deeply convinced it was a means of grace for believers. The Protestants believed in the “priesthood of all believers” so they could go to any other believer for their confession. The “priesthood of believers” did not mean a person could serve as their own priest as many wrongly take it now. It meant any other believer—not just the clergy—could serve as a priest and hear confessions. John Calvin opposed compulsory confession but valued private confession because he saw how it brought assurance of sins forgiven. However Calvin preferred pastors to serve as the confessors for their people.

John Wesley and confession

Since John Wesley was so well known for teaching on sanctification and holiness one might think he’d have little to say about confession. What would a holy people confess? However the opposite is true of John Wesley. In the 1700s he took this spiritual discipline more seriously than any Protestant before and perhaps since. In the bands and weekly “class meetings” the Methodists were to “speak freely and plainly about the true state of their souls.” While Wesley taught the possibility of living a holy life he did not ignore confession. In his meetings four questions of accountability were to be asked of each person every week:

"What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?"

"What temptations have you met with?"

"How were you delivered?"

“What have you thought, said or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?"

Do you know of many Christians today—even Wesley’s heirs, those in the “holiness movement”—who risk facing such questions in their group each week? While we see some cell groups and accountability groups taking confession like Wesley’s seriously it is rare. Imagine going around the circle one by one in a group confessing our known sins since the last meeting. If we have not knowingly sinned certainly we have been temped—so then we share these temptations and precisely how we were delivered from sinning. Finally we submit to the group’s spiritual leadership by reporting anything we have “thought, said or done” of which we’re not sure if it is sin or not—and the group will help us decide if it was sin (moderating the too-sensitive conscience or the seared conscience). Most of us who live in a world where spirituality has been privatized and secret-ized cannot imagine following John Wesley’s approach. We say, “It’s none of their business” or “that’s between me and God.” Most of us would be terrified of doing this sort of confession with a group of twelve people. But could we do it with one?

Confession and us

Luther, Calvin and Wesley were then—this is now. They were them—we are us. Do we need confession? Now? How? Certainly a counseling setting provides a good format for some confession. In fact pastoral counseling and friendship counseling may be the dominant way we confess today. Many Protestants don’t know that the traditional confession booth of the Roman Catholics has largely been replaced by what is now called the “sacrament of reconciliation”–something more like a face-to-face therapeutic counseling than the confessional booths we see in old movies. But still, fewer Catholics today confess by either mode. And very few Protestants confess at any time.

Could it be that we take confession less seriously today is because we now take sin seriously? Yet God takes sin seriously and so should we. So we should confess—to God and someone else. Some worship liturgies provide for a weekly generic confession where as a group we admit, “We have done things we ought not to have done and left undone things we ought to have done.” That helps and may even open us up to practicing personal confession better. But the practice of specific and personal confession is rare outside of a scattering of accountability groups and a few small groups. Perhaps it is time to restore confession to Protestant circles again. Then we’d see the humility, release, healing and the liberation it supplies.

What to confess

There is more to confess than sin. We have spoken mostly of confessing sin but there is much more to confess to your confident-confessor when you get one. What to confess?

1. Recent purposeful sin. Sin is like a fire, it can be quenched at first with a glass of water—left to itself it will consume the whole house. Confessing recent sin cuts a fire-line across the path of spreading sin.

2. Recent unintentional sin. Even if our intentions are perfect we sometimes sin against another and don’t know it until it is pointed out. We become accountable for these sins once we know about them and they should be confessed. Often sins of the tongue are in this category.

3. Sins of attitude. Inner attitudes in the recesses of our heart like bitterness, grudges, ill-will, envy, racism, jealousy, or resentment.

4. Recent temptations. What sin is Satan enticing us toward? What sinful attitudes could develop if we don’t weaken their hold by bringing them out into the light?

5. Past sins. Even if they are long ago forgiven, if we still sense some level of guilt we may need to confess them to another to bring final inner healing.

6. Flaws and faults. Our flaws and faults that are not sin can still block our effectiveness—so we confess things like being too self-centeredness, talking too much, being too-easily hurt, lazy, overly sensitive, harsh or other tendencies that could lead to sin or make us less effective.

Can we imagine what regular confession of this sort would do for us? Think of the change that would come over a church body that did what we are supposed to do—confess our sins one to another. Why do we linger and delay? This would be a great week to start the discipline of confession and get in the flow of God’s grace that runs down this channel.

How to start practicing this discipline.

1. Confess something this week to someone. Even if you do not take this chapter very seriously at least confess something to someone this week—even if it just as homework for this book. Come clean about one thing to a co-worker or spouse. Perhaps you aren’t attracted to high-grade confession, but you could do something low grade couldn’t you? Do you feel you have nothing to confess? Then ask your roommate spouse or children for suggestions.

2. Be careful of broadcasting confessions. Sensing full forgiveness from others sometimes leads the immature to confess too broadly. Confession is not advertising. It is not designed to tell everybody your tawdry sins in order to “give them something to talk about.” It is for you—so you can be humbled and assured of God’s grace and forgiveness. The circle of confession seldom needs to be larger than the circle of offense.

3. Think of someone for a personal confessor. Who would you go to if you wanted to confess something? Who could you trust to keep things secret? Who would have the grace to hear your confession forgivingly? Who would have the wisdom to guide you and the authority to assure you that God has indeed (perhaps long ago) forgiven you on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ? Can you think of such a person? Pastor or laity? It is someone near or far away? Someone you already know or a stranger you’ve heard about? If you ever begin this discipline you will have to have someone to confess to—the first step is thinking of who that might be.

4. Ask your prospective confessor. Tell than what you want. Take them this chapter. Ask if they’d be wiling to hear your confession and assure you of God’s grace.

5. Start small. Even if you trust your confidant/confessor start small. See the list above and start with your flaws and faults before working up to recent sin. Don’t worry, as you find the joy of true confession you’ll then be motivated to move deeper on the list.

6. Accept God’s word through your confidant/confessor. Just as you let God speak through your preacher let Him speak through your confessor—this is the best understanding of the “priesthood of all believers.” Listen for God’s assurance that you are forgiven and believe it. You may have to help your confessor understand you don’t need advice so much as assurance. Good advisors are often poor confessors. What you need is a listening ear, an accepting smile, a gentle spirit, a nodding head, kind eyes, empathetic facial gestures, and a person who will speak God’s words into your life then pray without giving you advice.

Now, what about you? What are your specific plans to practice this discipline this week?

Helps for teaching and leading your class or small group through this chapter are located at the back of this book.