Therefore when I admonish you to confession, I am admonishing you to be a Christian.
– Martin Luther
In June of 1987 London held its breath. While working on a building site, a construction foreman thought his workers had hit a cast iron pipe while using a pile driver. After picking up and then dropping the huge object, they realized the pipe looked like a bomb. It was. It turned out to be a 2,200-pound World War II bomb, one of the largest the Germans dropped during their blitz which killed more than 15,000 Londoners. This one, though, had never exploded. After evacuating the area, a 10-man bomb disposal unit worked 18 hours before deactivating the seven-foot device.
Unconfessed sin, like an unexploded bomb, can rest in the heart of an individual or a church family. Unless deactivated through confession, it can cause devastating damage. It’s why James 5:16 commands, Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. The beautiful, freeing truth of authenticity is that being open and vulnerable relationally doesn’t require walking in perfection, yet it does require walking in confession.
There is nothing that hurts us, our relationships and our church more than unconfessed sin. While we are quick to confess to God, confessing our sin to each other, is probably one of the most neglected spiritual habits.
Have you ever had a piece of meat that’s somehow hidden in your refrigerator until it devolves into a biology experiment? You notice an obnoxious odor and begin investigating until you find it. That’s what unconfessed sin does to our relationships. It spoils them. As we begin a new year, if there is any new habit that will increase health in all of our relationships, it’s honestly confessing our sin to each other as needed.
In Chuck Colson’s book, Born Again, about his conversion and experiences during Watergate, he shares one of President Nixon’s character flaws: Nixon could never admit that he was wrong about anything. Even when Nixon obviously had a cold—nose running, red face, sneezing, all the symptoms of a cold—he’d never admit it. Ultimately, that prideful habit cost Nixon the presidency.
Americans love to forgive. If President Nixon had simply confessed that some of his supporters had, unbeknownst to him broken into the Democrat Headquarters at the Watergate Office Building, rather than being part of a cover-up, he might be remembered as one of our greatest presidents.
What’s our greatest hinderance to confessing our sins to each other? PRIDE. We don’t want to admit that we’re wrong, yet we all sin against each other from time to time. Unconfessed sin is a relational cancer that will soon grow out of control. While Christ-followers are willing to confess their sins to God, too often, that’s where it stops. And our relationships are diseased by our unwillingness to come clean with each other. Then, if we do admit we blew it, we undermine our confession with a big BUT. It goes something like this, I was wrong but… We must take responsibility; admit we were wrong and leave it there. To grow spiritually, each of us must acknowledge our own sin. Certainly, anything or anyone can tempt us to sin, ultimately sin occurs as an act of our own will and each of us is personally responsible for it.
How do we start?
Relational confession starts in our most intimate circle. Confession of sin should begin in our marriage. Otherwise, a marriage will struggle with intimacy, not just sexual, but emotional and spiritual because one or both won’t acknowledge they’ve sinned against the other. Love grows through honesty and transparency. To have a healthy marriage we need our partner to let us know when we’ve offended them, so we can humbly make it right.
Our next circle of confession should be those closest to us. If you’re a parent, that’s your children whether they are young or adults. All of us blow it. We say the wrong thing, get irritated, impatient or angry. We need to own it. Often, this can be tougher for a father. A common complaint among adult children is that my dad never admitted he was wrong. But honest confession pays huge dividends over the long haul in relationships.
We must keep things right between our brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of our churches suffer from broken relationships that erode into bitterness. For example, a believer says something hurtful or offensive. They may not even know they’ve wronged you. If we’ve been offended, Matthew 18:15 commands us to go privately to them.
I’m not talking about small stuff. On that, some need to grow up and stop being hypersensitive. So, it’s not neglecting to greet someone or naively doing something. For that 1 Peter 4:8 urges, Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. From time to time, we all rub each other the wrong way. Matters that need confession are things like saying something that’s knowingly offensive. It’s gossiping or talking about someone behind their back or breaking a confidence.
How do you know when you’re offended and need to resolve it? When you think of that person or hear their name, you can feel that your heart is out of sync. The thought of them doesn’t bring up kind thoughts of a brother or sister in Christ but that you’ve been hurt or offended.
Individually, we’ll be stunted spiritually and as a church family relationally unless we grow in the habit of confession. None of us grow in isolation but in a safe community. Sadly, a culture of confession is rare, but it should be common among us as gospel people. Without transparency and relational confession, we hinder the Spirit’s work among us.
Periodically, Christians come through our doors at Grace who’ve been hurt in a previous church. We want to be honest with them. Because we’re sinners we’re going to potentially hurt them too. The difference is that at Grace we want to problem-solve, confess our sin when needed, and cultivate healing and unity. Because of the blood of Jesus, we don’t have to be afraid of confessing our sin—not because we don’t sin or that it doesn’t have consequences, but because through the gospel, we know we are forgiven of our sins. We can confess our sins to each other so that the forgiveness that our Savior has already given us can be pronounced again and again in our church family. We want our church to be a culture of confession and grace.