CONFESSION
The Path to
...FREEDOM
...COMMUNITY
...FORGIVENESS
...HEALING
...GOD'S LOVE
"Confess your faults one to another"  James 5:16
He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their lonliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners.  The fact is that we are sinners!
    But it is the grace fo the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. "My son, give me thine heart" (Prov. 23:26) You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you...He wants to love you.
     Christ became our Brother in order to help us. Through him our brother has become Christ for us in the power and authority of the commission Christ has give to him. Our brother stands before us as the sign of truth and the grace of God. He has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ's stead and forgives our sins in Christ's name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.
     In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light.
      Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. Now he can experience the true grace of God. The confession now enables him to find true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.
      In confession the break-through to new life occurs...conversion...Confession is conversion. "Behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17) Christ has made a new beginning with us."He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy" (Prov. 28:13). In confession the Christian begins to forsake his sins. Their dominion is broken. From now on the Christian wins victory after victory.
    What happened to us in baptism is bestowed upon as a new in confession. We are delivered out of darkness into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Confession is the renewal of the joy of baptism. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Ps. 30:5) 

~Taken from Life Together, Confession and Communion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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