Confession to One Another

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. JAMES 5:16

Life Together ends with a chapter on confession and the Lord’s Supper, and it is the part of the book that many Protestant readers find most surprising. Bonhoeffer believed that Christians should confess their sins not only to God in private but to one another — to a brother or sister in Christ, face to face. At Finkenwalde this was not a theory. It was practised. It was also, by the testimony of those who were there, one of the most difficult and most fruitful things they did together.

The lonely fellowship

Bonhoeffer began with a diagnosis. Many Christian fellowships, he observed, are lonely places. Their members pray together, sing together, study together — and remain utterly alone with their sins. Everyone assumes that everyone else is getting on well. Everyone hides. The fellowship is pious, but it is a fellowship of the pious, not of sinners, and no one is allowed to be a sinner in it. So each member carries his real failures in secret, and the more he hides them the more alone he becomes.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. PSALM 32:3–4

The gospel cuts through that loneliness. It tells us that we are sinners, all of us, and that God loves sinners. In Christ we are free to be what we are before God. And if we are free to be sinners before God, Bonhoeffer asked, why should we not be free to be sinners before one another?

Four breakthroughs

He described confession to a brother as a series of breakthroughs.

It is a breakthrough to community. Sin wants to be alone. It isolates, it hides, it withdraws. The more secret it is, the stronger its grip. When it is spoken aloud to a brother, it loses much of its power. The one who confesses is no longer alone with it; he has come into the light, and into fellowship.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 JOHN 1:7

It is a breakthrough to the cross. Pride is the root of sin, and nothing humbles pride like confessing a specific sin to another person. It is a kind of death. We would much rather confess to God alone, where no one else sees. Bonhoeffer thought that the humiliation of confession to a brother was a share in the humiliation of Christ, who was exposed and shamed on the cross for us.

It is a breakthrough to new life. Confession is a turning point. The past is broken with; the sin is named and renounced; the forgiven one goes on in freedom. Bonhoeffer linked confession closely to discipleship: it is a way of leaving the old life behind and following Christ into the new.

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. PROVERBS 28:13

And it is a breakthrough to certainty. This is perhaps the most practical point of all. Why, Bonhoeffer asked, is it so often easier to confess to God than to a brother? Perhaps because, when we confess to God alone, we are really confessing to ourselves and forgiving ourselves. We have no one outside us to tell us the truth or to declare the forgiveness. And so we are never quite sure. When a brother hears our confession and speaks God’s forgiveness to us, in Christ’s name, we hear it from outside. The word of pardon is real, spoken, concrete. We can believe it.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:9

Who should hear

To whom should we confess? Bonhoeffer was clear that this is not the privilege of an ordained priest. Any Christian can hear the confession of another, because every Christian has been given the ministry of reconciliation. What is needed is not a title but a person who lives beneath the cross himself — who knows the depth of his own sin and the greatness of God’s mercy. Such a person will not be shocked by anything he hears, because he knows what is in his own heart. He added a sobering rule: the one who does not himself confess should not hear the confession of others. Only those who have been humbled can be trusted with another’s humiliation.

And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:18

It is worth adding what the wider Protestant tradition has always said. The one who hears a confession does not forgive sins by his own authority, nor is confession to another believer required for God’s forgiveness. God forgives the penitent sinner who comes to him through Christ. What the brother does is declare that forgiveness, pray, and stand with the one who confesses. That, Bonhoeffer thought, is gift enough.

The dangers

Bonhoeffer was alert to the dangers. Confession can become a routine, a pious exercise performed without real sorrow. It can become a law, demanded of everyone, which destroys its freedom. It can become a spiritual technique, or a way of gaining power over others. And the one who hears can be tempted to curiosity, to spiritual domination, or to making himself indispensable. He warned especially against making confession an obligation, and against those who hear confessions too readily and too often. It is a gift to be received, not a rule to be enforced.

Before the table

The book ends at the Lord’s Table. Bonhoeffer thought that confession and reconciliation should precede the Supper: those who come to the table together should come at peace with one another, every quarrel settled, every wrong confessed. Then they receive together the body and blood of Christ, and the fellowship is complete. The community that began in the gift of Christ ends, each time, at his table.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. MATTHEW 5:23–24

For the ordinary church

Many Christians carry a single secret sin for years, confessed to no one, and could be set free by telling one trusted brother or sister and hearing the gospel spoken back. Bonhoeffer’s counsel is simple: find one person who lives under the cross, and tell the truth.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there a sin you have confessed to God many times but never to anyone else, and of which you are still not sure you are forgiven? Pray about whether to confess it to one trusted, mature believer.

2. Ask yourself whether your church is a fellowship of the pious or a fellowship of sinners. What would it take for you to be honest there?

3. If someone confesses to you, do not be shocked and do not lecture. Listen, pray, and speak the forgiveness of Christ.

4. Before you next take the Lord’s Supper, deal with any quarrel you know of. Go, and be reconciled first.

5. If you hear others’ confessions, ask whether you confess your own sins as well.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have hidden my sins, and I have been lonely in the hiding. I have prayed among Your people and kept my real self in the dark.

Give me courage to come into the light. Give me a brother or sister who lives under Your cross, to whom I can tell the truth and from whom I can hear Your forgiveness.

Make me such a person for others — unshockable, humble, faithful to keep a confidence, and quick to speak Your pardon.

Bring me to Your table reconciled, and let me eat and drink in peace with You and with my brothers. Amen.