What comes to your mind when you think of confession?
Perhaps it’s the moments you’ve spent in prayer, earnestly crying to God about your sin and calling on him to see you through Jesus, like David in Psalm 51. Perhaps it’s the last church service where you stood alongside brothers and sisters, chanting the prayer you read off the screen. Perhaps it’s the last time you held the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper: with your minister’s invitation, you spent some time, head bowed, confessing your sins before God.
While I believe these are all good models of confession, I want to suggest that there lies a gap—a dark, wet and lonely gap, where our sin likes to grow like mould. If the gap is not ventilated and dealt with, it can lead to serious health risks. James proclaims that there is healing in confession confidently (Jas 5:16). But despite confessing in all the ways mentioned above, do you, like me, still feel the stain of your sin?
Ever since I became a Christian, confession is something that I have struggled with—not because I struggled with the act of confession, but because I struggled with understanding what confession was all about. I was attending to confession regularly to bring my sin before God: I would cry out earnestly and beg for cleansing; I would slowly meditate on Jesus’ sacrifice for my continued sin as I ate his flesh and blood; I would mean every word as I proclaimed my sinfulness alongside my brothers and sisters in church; and yet, every time I walked away from confession, I don’t think I really felt the healing James guaranteed.
It wasn’t until four years ago when I was sitting on a plane in my sin-stained skin that the promise of freedom became clearer to me. I was listening to a sermon that told me what my problem was: I was still hiding in the dark with my sin. I was so afraid that if people saw my stains, they wouldn’t respect me anymore. They wouldn’t love me or look up to me. My solution was to make sure I covered those stains as best I could. I had confessed to God, I knew I was forgiven, but my heart of fear kept me in the dark. I wondered if that was really what confession is meant to do—keep us afraid. Shouldn’t it give us assurance in forgiveness instead?
The what of confession
At this stage, it’s important to define what I mean when I say “confession”, because it’s easy for us to understand confession too simply, without its full richness. The simple way of seeing confession is that it’s about admission—admission of sin and guilt. But John shows us that confession is much more than that:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)
John shows us that if we don’t confess, the truth is not in us, and not only do we deceive ourselves, we also make God out to be a liar (vv. 8, 10). But sandwiched in between these pronouncements, John points to the inseparable link between confession, forgiveness and purification: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (v. 9). This is why I would say that confession isn’t merely an admission; it’s more than that. Confession is the act of giving words of admission of your sin to another in order to receive forgiveness and to be reminded of the hope of change.
This is a gospel-shaped definition of confession, rather than a law-shaped definition. We confess through the lens of Christ crucified, which gives us joy and hope, rather than confessing to a judge with an uncertain ruling of guilty or not guilty.
But one thing that both my definition and John’s does not make clear is who we give our words of confession to.
The who of confession
John Stott is someone who has tried to answer the who question. In his book Confess Your Sins, he writes, “[C]onfession must be madeto the person against whom we have sinned and from whom we need and desire to receive forgiveness”.1 Using this framework, he discusses confession in three categories: the secret confession (which is done to God and God alone), the private confession (which is done in a private moment to the brother/sister you have wronged and are seeking forgiveness from) and public confession (where a sin has been committed against a larger group, or a congregation and needs to be addressed publicly).2 His discussion can be summarised by the following table that I have put together:
|
Confession type |
To |
Purpose |
|
Secret confession |
God |
To receive the mercy and forgiveness of sins that is promised after uncovering sins, and to help us in our battle to forsake our sins. |
|
Private confession |
An offended individual |
To acknowledge the reality of the consequences that some sins have on others for the sake of divine forgiveness. To facilitate forgiveness from the offended individual to the offender. To bring about peace and reconciliation where relationships are marred. |
|
Public confession |
The church |
To bring about public forgiveness and restoration by the church for the offender. To enable further church discipline to take place. |
Stott shows us clearly where confession is needed, who confession should be made to, and why confession needs to take place. But staring at this table, I can’t help but notice a missing row. As I mentioned before, there is a dark gap where, despite being confessed to God, our sin is hiding and thriving. How do we expose this gap? How do we ventilate it, and how do we stop trying to cover the stains of our sin? I think the answer is found in the light of fellowship.
The missing row
I’ve become convinced of the benefit of confessing our sins to one another in fellowship, not just because we have wronged someone, but because we ought to desire the freedom of being fully known by God and those around us. Scripture tells us to “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2) and to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (Jas 5:16a). I think these are necessary steps for helping our Christian communities to grow in authenticity with each other and to step away from the individualistic culture we have cultivated. When we fight our individualistic tendencies and bring our sins into fellowship, we grow a culture that takes sin seriously and embraces the Bible’s teaching on the importance of the church family.
Covering up sin
In his book, Stott also speaks of our dangerous tendency to cover up our sins even when our rituals appear to be an act of uncovering. We can build a regular pattern of confession in our walks as believers, and yet profess nothing but hollow words because of our natural desire to conceal sin.
“But,” you might say, “how is confessing my sins regularly a sign of covering up my sin?” Instead of outright denying our sin, we might sit happily within the general confession of our sinfulness. It’s easy to stand together and say, “We have … strayed from your ways … We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done”. 3 It’s easy because it’s true and we really believe it. But in doing so, we are not being confronted. We are not telling the person standing beside us how we’ve strayed, or what we’ve done that we shouldn’t have done. No one has to know about the gossip you spread, the moment you yelled at your kid this week, the drink that pushed you over the limit, or the video you watched when you sat in a dark room with nothing but a glowing screen. We get to sit safely in the comfort of general confession while we save the specifics for God, when we are alone and when no one can hear the truth of who we are.
Is that really a safe space in which to live?
My conviction that confessing sins to one another is beneficial to us has been driven by my personal experience and my battle with my fear of being exposed by the light. I found that living publicly in the general and living secretly in the specific allowed my sins to fester in the dark. Furthermore, I found that my fear of exposure cried out louder than my testimony of trust in the truth of forgiveness. John 3:19-21 speaks of those who fear the exposure of the light, and compares them unfavourably to those who live by the truth and who come into the light. I wanted to trust more than fear. So something had to change.
What do we do when we fear exposure? We grab whatever is closest to us and cover ourselves up. Maybe we are hiding from ourselves as much as we are hiding from each other. Either way, we are covering up our sin. This concealing then impacts our fellowship, because we’ve decided to hide our sin from each other. We testify with our lips that we are all saved sinners, but when we look at each other, we struggle to see past the Sunday best in which we’ve dressed ourselves. We may tell people that the notion of “Sunday best” is absurd. We may preach that Christ ate with sinners. Yet I know I’m not alone in my fear of taking off my colour-coordinated, clean and curated outfit to reveal my stained, ragged and unappealing clothing underneath.
From the moment I became a Christian, I’ve felt this tension—the tension of how nice it feels when people look at me and see someone poised and put together, versus my fear of judgement when they see that that’s not really what I look like. My fear drove me to silence. I didn’t share my mess. I didn’t share my struggle. I hid behind the mask I’d allowed people to see—that is, until the weight of the years of sin and shame became all too much for me to endure.
Have you ever felt this tension in your own life? If so, there’s validity in the medical advice that “light is the best disinfectant”. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jesus comes to earth and shows us that he is the light, the one who will truly heal us.
Therefore, I propose an addition—not only to the table of Stott’s categories, but to our regular confession routine:
|
Confession type |
To |
Purpose |
|
Fellowship confession |
A fellow brother/sister of faith |
To help the sinner admit their sins in a private matter so that they can be reminded of God’s forgiveness of sins and encouraged in their forsaking of sin. |
Uncovering sin
Four years ago, I began the journey of uncovering my sin and bringing it into the light. I told a friend all I had been hiding. I still remember how I felt as the weight lift from my shoulders. The words of Proverbs 28:13 felt more real in that moment: “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” The thing I feared most—the judgement I was so afraid of receiving and the loss of respect I worried about facing—all disappeared the moment my friend took me back to the cross. We say that God’s words in the Bible are active and living and sharper than any double-edged sword (Heb 4:12), but it’s hard to feel that truth when merely reading them on the page. They take on a whole new life when a friend says to you, “Your sins are forgiven”.
I’d always wanted to know how the woman in Luke 7:36-50—the woman I’d associated myself with—felt after hearing those words come from Jesus lips after she had wept at his feet. In the moment my friend said that to me, I experienced forgiveness in a way that I had not really experienced in my times of secret confession. It’s not that my friend gained special power in that moment; only Christ alone has the power to forgive sins. But as she pointed me back to Jesus’ words and Jesus’ power, I was renewed in the hope and certainty of the power of the cross.
It seems like a paradox that we, who have the identity of saved sinners and who have the reputation of always talking about sin, manage to talk about our own sin so very little. Yet when we speak about sin openly and bring it into the light, we see a myriad of benefits—benefits for the individual, forgiven sinner, benefits for the community of forgiven sinners, and benefits for the yet-to-be saved sinners. The individual is given the felt experience of forgiveness of their sins—an experience that helps them embrace the truth of the death and resurrection of their saviour, and enables them to renew their hope. The community is blessed with a culture that allows and nurtures authenticity: when someone hears the confessions of another, it reminds them of the sin that tempts us equally and the battle that we are all engaged in; it encourages them, for they know they are not alone; and it enables them to be the one who reminds others of the power of the cross and the assurance we have in Christ. Finally, those yet to be saved get to see our confidence in the salvation that Jesus brings, and it attracts them so that they take up our invitations to hear about the one who gives us such assurance.
Stepping into the light
Confessing your sin to another Christian will not be easy. In fact, as you do so, a battle will take place within you that will make you want to pull back from the light. But let me remind you of the words of 1 John 1:7: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
What would it look like for you to step towards the light? First, turn your feet: put it on your agenda to confess. Then take a step: pick someone you trust to confess your sins to—someone you know who will point you to the cross and remind you of the forgiveness Christ has bought for you. Then take another step: ask the person you’ve chosen. Tell them why you want to meet with them and share your sin. Step again into the light and confess your sins to your friend, and feel the sweetness of grace.
And with each step you take, pray.
Caitlin Ogg has completed her second year at Moore College.
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Bible quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society, www.ibs.org. All rights reserved worldwide.
Photo by Trung Thanh on Unsplash.
Endnotes
1 John Stott, Confess Your Sins (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964) 12. Emphasis in the original.
2 Ibid.
3 From the order for morning prayer, The Book of Common Prayer (1662): http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/daily/morning.html. Accessed online 7 February 2023.
