Why should I confess my sins to others?
As we journey toward the happy land of heaven, we are faced with many temptations. When we give into them and sin, we become ensnared and hindered from pressing on toward our heavenly goal (Proverbs 29:6).
Here are two distinct ways God uses confession to other people as help for us to reach our heavenly home.
#1—God uses honest confession to cultivate humility in us. Pride is a deadly disease that God opposes (James 4:6). Pride seeks to exalt and protect ourselves at the cost of God’s glory and the good of others. This is why confessing our sin is good for us. It assaults our pride at the root by exposing us for who we really are, rather than who we pretend to be.
We, like Adam, want to cover up our nakedness rather than bear ourselves in honesty (Genesis 3:7). This is why we are tempted to paint up our sin or leave out incriminating details. We want to be thought of well by others, so we deceitfully play the hypocrite and hide it. This is all part of sin’s plan, which tempts our pride to flee the light and escape shame—but it is there in the darkness that our soul is in most danger.
Dietrich Bonheoffer insightfully describes this in Life Together: “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 in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person.”
This pride is only fueled by our fear of man, which the Bible warns us is a deadly snare (Proverbs 29:25). But fewer things put the fear of man to death like sitting down with someone, looking in their eyes and saying here is what I have done, please pray for me and remind me of God’s promises.
Bonheoffer captures this as well: “In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a 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. … 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 stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the cross of Jesus Christ.”
The Gospel promises help for those who look to Christ in faith. Humility, produced by faith-driven confession of our sins, clears the eyes of our soul so that we might see God more clearly (Matthew 5:8). Through confession, God applies the Gospel of grace afresh to our hearts and awakens our awareness of our need for Him.
#2—God uses honest confession to bring healing to us. The context of James 5 seems to say that some people are physically sick because of unconfessed sin (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:30). Now, this doesn’t mean that all sickness stems from specific unconfessed sins, but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater either. Harboring sins in our heart can lead to physical sickness, and it always leads to spiritual sickness.
In Psalm 32 David said, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” When we harbor sin, God graciously puts His hand heavily upon us to push us toward honesty, before Him and others. Unconfessed sin becomes like a splinter in the soul of a believer. Removing it can be painful, but not as painful as allowing it to remain. James 5:16 says that we should confess our sins to one another “and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” If you are harboring unconfessed sin, you need to confess to God and to others.
Do you have someone in your life who knows your most intimate struggles? If not, you are neglecting one of God’s greatest means of grace to produce humility and help you to heaven.
