Confess Your Sins

by Travis Rymer

One time in a corporate meeting of our church, we confessed the neglect we had had over an older member of our church.  She was only minimally present mentally, she was in an assisted living home, most of our members had not met her since she had not been able to attend a gathering in person for the last 8 of the 10 years of our church’s existence.  Yet she was a member and over the last several months few of us had gone to visit her.  We felt bad.  We wanted to make it right, but first, we confessed it as a corporate sin.  

Afterwords, someone said, “As soon as we said it before God, I felt the weight of that sin lifted off my soul.”  This is what confession does.  It clears the air and God cleanses us (1 John 1:9).

Hard as it is, confession of sins is important.  There is something remarkable about the healing power of naming and confessing sin before God.  Yet we are reluctant to do it.  As I’ve argued before, confession is not repentance, but it is fundamental to it.  And to that end, Thomas Watson wrote, “Repentance is purgative; fear not the working of this pill” (Repentance, 1999, p. 7). If repentance is a healing pill, confession is the swallowing of the medicine.

Principles for Confession of Sins

It is tempting to keep our sins hidden either so that we might not be embarrassed or to further hurt people we have sinned against.  If we aren’t really repentant, it’s so that we might have the opportunity to indulge them again in a future time of weakness.  We tend to think our sin is under control, so there is no need to bring someone else into it. Often times, when we do confess sins, we keep them quiet between ourselves and God.  And when we do confess to someone else, we generalize without naming the sin itself. 

All of this keeps us from the cleansing and forgiveness we need.  And in our relationships, it keeps us from the healing restoration we want.  Yet God provides a pathway for our forgiveness, healing and freedom through confession.

Confession brings hidden sins into the light

Like the rays of the sun on a viral load, confession brings sin into the light to kill the sin itself.  The light of God is the light of God’s holy presence and our communion with Him. Confession is the opposite of walking in the darkness.  It is walking in the light.  “God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. If we say, ‘We have fellowship with him,’ and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth” (1 John 1:5b-6).

Jesus said the exposure of the light is exactly why people won’t come to Him.  “This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed” (John 3:19-20).

In this way, confession seeks prejudgment on our sin before the final Day of the Lord so that it would not be judged on that day (cf. 1 Cor. 11:32).  Jesus said, “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17). People avoid Jesus for this very reason - to escape that judgment.  Confession looks to have the light expose and dispose of our sin now. 

Confession leads to healing

James 5:15 tells us, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”  Confession of sins is linked with physical healing of the body.  This the whole person.  

This certainly could be in the form of discipline from the Lord as a judgment or chastisement.  Remember how Paul wrote that in the Corinthian church some were sick and had died for eating from the Lord’s table without recognizing the body (i.e. sinning against Jesus and His church).  He went on to say, “If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:31). 

Yet, maybe even more often, it's part of the effects of sin itself. Multiple Psalms teach this very thing.  Psalm 32:3 says, “When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.”  It is in verse 5, when the Psalmist decides to confess his sins to God that forgiveness and healing came.  Psalm 38 poignantly describes the guilt, shame, and anxiety associated with hidden sin.  It should not surprise us to know that hidden sin would effect our sleep, our concentration, our emotions and more.  Over time, the feeling of brittle bones crushed under conviction may fester into physical wasting. 

This is not to say that if you are sick, you must have unrepentant sin (cf. Job!).  But it is to say that confession is healing in more ways than one.  Have you considered the healing power of the command to confess your sins? If we would be well spiritually and physically, we should confess our sins and not keep them hidden.

Think about a relationship where verbal sin has occurred as a pattern over time.  Perhaps you’ve spoken harshly to your spouse or children for a while.  They have been sinned against (Col. 3:19).  But maybe you’ve been convicted about.  So you confess to God and ask forgiveness.  You, by His grace, rightly begin to change your patterns.  While your family will benefit from it, the lingering effects of unconfessed sin will continue to taint your “new leaf.”  How do they even know this is the result of repentance?  So doubt remains that this is only temporary. But where you admit your error and ask them to forgive you, they are further comforted by your repentance through your confession of past sin.  It’s true, you might still fail again, but because you have confessed past sins, the slate is clean to begin again for everyone.

Confession restores integrity

When David confessed his sin to God he spoke of God’s desire for integrity in the inner self (Ps. 51:6). As Christians, when we sin, we practice dishonesty - the inside does not match the outside.  This disingenuous presentation of ourselves makes us hypocrites.  Confession is the first step in restoration to a life of integrity and the peace that accompanies it.

When we pray to be cleansed by God the results are transformative.  Think about the wholeness established through this process.  The words David used in Psalm 51:6-9 are “teach me wisdom,” “clean,” “joy and gladness,” “rejoice,” and “blot out all my guilt." While we hide our sin these are the very things withheld from us even though we pretend to have them.

You wouldn’t naturally think confession is needed for all this, but when you think about the nature of sin it makes sense. It's true that many sins are outward actions visible to others if seen.  But the nature of sin is that it is like a plant grown from a seed.   James 1:14-15 describes them as desire birthed into action.  Long before we do, we think, desire, and indulge in the heart.  It is this deep seed of sin that is brought forth when we admit our failings and integrity is restored.

Confession should be to God and to one another

Confession to God is most important. Sin is foremost against God and Him alone (Ps. 51:4).  Yet, confession to one another is also taught. The James 5:15 passage cited earlier is an example of this.  Why is this necessary?  There may be many reasons, but a few stand out.

First, when we sin against others, we hurt them.  We take something from them.  When we confess we become vulnerable in a way that resembles their vulnerability when we sinned against them.  This may be why it's so restorative.  How many relationships could be restored if an offending party would only admit their guilt?

If reconciliation is the pattern and the goal of the Gospel, a most crucial step in that process is admission of wrong and the offer of forgiveness.  That can only happen when repentance produces confession to one another.

At the risk of speculating, I also expect that there is something about confessing to another person that plays into the prejudgment mentioned above.  All people bear the image of God and our Christian brothers and sisters also have the Holy Spirit dwelling within. As we live out these principles, we minister God’s presence - His judgment and His forgiveness - to others.

In the acts of discipline (Matthew 18:15-20) Jesus says He is with the church as they call wayward sinners to repentance.  “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.” (Notice Paul speaks in the same way as he applies these instructions in Corinth in 1 Cor. 5). But it’s not just prejudgment we are gaining, we’re gaining the forgiveness God gives.  In the same passage Jesus’s instructions go the other way too: “whatever you bind…whatever you loose.”  Bind and loosing is the language of affirmation and disaffirmation. 

Paul gave the same kind of instruction to Corinth when he wrote, “…so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him” (2 Cor. 2:7-8). Part of the ministry we carry on among the church is the administration of God’s forgiveness to one another as we confess and forgive.

When our church corporately confessed the sin of neglect of one of our older members, we were ready to make it right. We were ready to repent practically. Someone began to visit her often and helped organize others to go as well.  We were cleansed and able to see integrity and healing restored.

Confession of sin agrees with God about what is right and good.  There is much to be gained by confessing our sins and much to be lost by hiding them. So let us confess our sins and be healed!