Honest Confessions
Honest Confessions
The Light of Grace on Specific Sins
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. - James 5:16
When I was a child I’d insist on having the night light on all night, and, like most children, I’d have a parent double check all the predictable, shadowed places where a monster might be lurking (in the closet, beneath the bed, etc.). With darkness, a visual impediment, children allow their imaginations to run wild, crafting the suspected ghoul into the image of their worst nightmares.
This idea has a spiritual parallel: children hate the dark for the same reason that sinners love it – because of what it hides. With darkness in this figurative sense, sinners allow our equivocation to run wild, crafting our real and specific sin into a more vague and stomachable form (if we confess the sin at all). Where the child’s imagination makes the monster more grotesque, the sinner makes our sin less offensive, both through a covering of darkness.
Confession has been a theme in my journey through the year 2020 this far. My past confessions to loved ones were slow to come out and infrequent. Why was this?
I think Protestants can take a healthy rejection of the Catholic doctrine of hearing confession and wrongly turn it into a weapon against confession generally speaking. This is all the more spiritually perilous when supports for this wholesale rejection come in the form of bad application of theology. For example, “we have a high priest, Christ, who intercedes for us and absolves us our sins, why need we confess to another?” Or the quick retort, “but the curtain was torn in two!”
What statements like these can create is a confusion of justification with sanctification. But we do not confess our sins to our neighbors because through it we are saved; we confess our sins to one another because through it relationships are healed. Or, alternatively, we hesitate confessing because it mighty smart my ego or blemish my image.
Two great truths were proclaimed at the confluence of the cross, the hill where the rivers of God’s grace and God’s justice met: one truth glorious and the other inglorious.
At the cross, the truth of God’s infinite love for us was displayed in the sacrifice of Jesus in our stead. We are well-primed to live in the light of that glorious truth.
At the cross, the truth that we are sinners was also displayed. We avoid living in light of this truth when we stifle our confession or clean the outside of our cup.
That we are sinners was proclaimed at the cross. This Lenten season, let us again learn to put off our ego and our self-righteous image, and learn to live in light of both truths by confessing to our neighbor when we sin, that there may be healing. Live in the light, not in the darkness. Be concrete and honest, not vague and rationalizing. Then, let your brother or sister be a “priest” to you, extending forgiveness in Jesus’ name based on Jesus’ merits.
May God give us grace to confess specific sins to specific people, believing we have broken specific commandments. And in this confession, may God remind us we are simultaneously a sinner yet justified who is strengthened in hope for the day when corruption will be forever undone and every sad thing will come untrue.
Thoughts for Reflection
1.) The German Reformer Martin Luther believed in the universal priesthood of all believers, and Paul calls the church a “royal priesthood.” What might executing this priestly office look like for today’s saint? In what ways have you seen this office abused?
2.) Does the act of confessing specific sins to specifically-offended people have a biblical precedent? Is there ever a time to leave out particulars when confessing a sin? When and why?
All Saints Contributor - Kaidon Hempton