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At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive.
Some seem to think that when Jesus shouted “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” in Mark 15:34 that it was a moment of weakness. Not at all. This was His moment of greatest triumph. Jesus, who had walked in constant communion with the Father, now became so totally identified with humankind that He was the actual embodiment of sin.
Having accomplished this greatest of all His works, Jesus then took refreshment. “It is finished,” He announced. That is, this great work of redemption was completed.
To shame our sins
He blushed in blood;
He closed His eyes to show us God;
Let all the world fall down and know
That none but God such love can show.
—Bernard of Clairvaux
Without the cross, the Discipline of Confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves an objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.
In a sermon titled “The Repentance of Believers,” John Wesley spoke of the necessity of Christians coming into more of the forgiving grace of God. The Discipline of Confession helps the believer to grow into “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
But, you may ask, “Isn’t confession a grace instead of a Discipline?” It is both. Unless God gives the grace, no genuine confession can be made. But it is also a Discipline because there are things we must do. It is a consciously chosen course of action that brings us under the shadow of the Almighty.
The followers of Jesus Christ have been given the authority to receive the confession of sin and to forgive it in His name. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). What a wonderful privilege! Why do we shy away from such a life-giving ministry?
Martin Luther himself believed in mutual, brotherly confession. In the Large Cathechism, he writes, “Therefore when I admonish you to confession I am admonishing you to be a Christian.”
God has given us our brothers and sisters to stand in Christ’s stead and make God’s presence and forgiveness real to us. The Scripture teaches us that all believers are priests before God.
Bonhoeffer wrote, “A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light.”
Not only is it true that “we love, because he first loved us,” but we are enabled to make confession only and especially because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
“An examination of conscience”
This is a time, as Douglas Steere writes, “where a soul comes under the gaze of God and where in His silent and loving Presence this soul is pierced to the quick and becomes conscious of the things that must be forgiven and put right before it can continue to love One whose care has been so constant.”
“Sorrow”
This is necessary to a good confession. Sorrow as it relates to confession is not primarily an emotion, though emotion may be involved. It is an abhorrence at having committed the sin, a deep regret at having offended the heart of the Father. Sorrow is an issue of the will before it is an issue of the emotions. In fact, being sorrowful in the emotions without a godly sorrow in the will destroys the confession.
“A determination to avoid sin”
This is the third essential for a good confession.
It is the will to be delivered from sin that we seek from God as we prepare to make confession. We must desire to be conquered and ruled by God, or if we do not desire it, to desire to desire it.
One further note on the preparation for confession; there must be a definite termination point in the self-examination process. Otherwise, we can easily fall into a permanent habit of self-condemnation. Confession begins in sorrow, but it ends in joy. There is celebration in the forgiveness of sins because it results in a genuinely changed life.
Then, there is the practical matter of to whom we should go to confess. It is quite correct theologically to say that every Christian believer can receive the confession of another, but not every Christian believer will have sufficient empathy and understanding.
The key qualifications to receiving confession are spiritual maturity, wisdom, compassion, good common sense, the ability to keep a confidence, and a wholesome sense of humor. Many pastors—though by no means all—can serve in this way. Often ordinary folk who hold no office or title whatever are among the best at receiving a confession.
Like any spiritual ministry there is a preparation involved in being able to hear rightly the confession of a brother or sister. We begin by learning to live under the cross. Bonhoeffer writes, “Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.”
Once we see the awfulness of sin, we know that—regardless of what others have done—we ourselves are the chief of sinners. Therefore, there is nothing that anyone can say that will disturb us. Nothing.
By living under the cross we are delivered from the danger of spiritual domination. We have stood where our brother now stands and so the desire to use his confession against him is gone. Nor do we feel any need to control him or to straighten him out. All we feel is acceptance and understanding.
It is important that when others are opening their griefs to us that we discipline ourselves to be quiet. We will be tempted severely to relieve the tension of the situation by some offhanded comment.
Additionally, it is often helpful by prayer to set the cross between yourself and the penitent. This protects them from receiving merely human emotion from you and protects you from receiving any harmful influences from them. Everything is filtered through the light of the cross.
The Discipline of Confession brings an end to pretense. God is calling us to be a Church that can openly confess its frail humanity and know the forgiving and empowering graces of Christ. Honesty leads to confession, and confession leads to change. May God give grace to the Church once again to recover the Discipline of Confession.