How should I confess my sins to others?
Confessing sin to God and others is an important part of pursuing holiness, but how we do it takes great wisdom. We should ask God for that wisdom (James 1:5) and get counsel from trusted brothers or sisters. Here are three guidelines I give when helping people think about how to cultivate helpful accountability relationships. These are not biblical commands, but pastoral suggestions to consider.
#1—Consistently confess your sins to one or two people. By keeping your confessions between you and God, and one or two other people, you guard yourself from being both foolish and deceitful.
You guard yourself from being foolish because not everyone needs to know everything about you. The pendulum has swung in our culture from never talking openly about personal things to an unhealthy indulgence with self-exposure that posts everything for everyone to see. Neither of these extremes are healthy. Limiting your confessions to someone you sin against and one or two accountability partners seems like a good rule.
You guard yourself from being deceitful by limiting your circle of confession. If you have many people you confess your sin to, you could spread your confessions around to alleviate guilt, but never allow anyone to have a real picture of who you are. This is what I did in my years of struggling with pornography. I’d tell one person one time and another person another time. I see now how deceitful I was being by not limiting my circle of confession.
A few other notes:
- The person you confess to should be a person you can sit down with regularly. Confessions don’t always need to be face to face, but having a buddy from college you talk to about your sin isn’t as helpful as having a person you can meet with, look in the eyes and learn to be honest with.
- You should fear the person you confess to. What I mean is that if you and another friend are sinning in the same way, you can fall into the “oh you did it again, me too” pattern. Galatians 6:1 says that spiritually mature people should be involved in the restoration process. Because of this, I’d encourage finding someone you don’t want to confess to because you don’t want to disappoint them, but who you will confess to because you know they love you and are mature enough in Christ to help you.
- I’m working on a forthcoming article about whether or not your spouse should be an accountability partner. Pray for wisdom.
#2—Confess your sins within 24 hours. There are two reasons this is one of the most important guides I can suggest when it comes to confession. First, it makes me not want to sin. If I know I have to tell the people who keep me accountable that I’ve sinned, it helps me to be sober-minded about giving in.
Second, confessing within 24 hours guards me from rationalizing why I shouldn’t confess it. The longer I leave sin in the dark, the more likely I am to figure out some way to justify not telling anyone, or maybe just waiting till the next time to confess. Sin is a poison that we must not allow it to stay in us very long. I strongly encourage you to confess your sin to God immediately and to whomever keeps you accountable within 24 hours.
#3—Confess with honest language. One of the other ways we hide our sin is by not speaking honestly when we confess. I used to say things like, “I had a rough night, pray for me,” or “I struggled with purity, but it wasn’t as bad a it could have been,” or “I was tempted again.” Those aren’t what I would consider honest confessions.
We want to avoid specifics that will potentially cause someone else to stumble, but at the same time, we need to be honest. There is a huge difference in a confession that says “I struggled a little on the Internet” and one that says “I intentionally stayed on the internet for three hours looking at explicit pictures. I turned the computer off and then back on and didn’t stop. I gave into self-gratification afterwards.”
No one wants to say those kinds of things, and that’s why it’s good for us. It is honest and doesn’t give sin a safe haven in which it can hide. This goes back to humbling ourselves and putting fear of man to death. Using honest language, and opening ourselves (without defensiveness) to our friend’s follow-up questions, we take a flamethrower to the deceitfulness of sin.
