May
19
2009
The Risk of Confessing Our Sins
Just came across this from a John Piper sermon, 20+ years ago, on the risk of admitting our sins:
Proverbs 28:13 says, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” And James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
But this is risky business. It’s much safer—in the short run—to keep quiet about your struggle with lust or homosexual feelings or alcohol or food or anger. And I don’t mean to say that every skirmish of the soul should go public. But on the other hand, James does mean something when he says, “Confess your sins to each other.” There is a kind of privacy with sin that paralyzes. There is a kind of concealing that can kill faith.
About a year ago the editor of Partnership magazine called and asked if she and a photographer could come to our house to interview Noël and me for one of their feature articles. They always feature some smiling pastoral couple on the front of their magazine for pastors’ wives.
Noël said she would check with me and let her know. Well, it just so happened that things were not good on the home front at that time. We were upset with each other and there were unresolved tensions between us. And so my response was: No way! I could no more sit down like a model pastor’s couple and smile for pictures than I could feel happy about the way things were.
What are we going to do? She expected us to call back. What would you have done? What would the editor think if I called and said, “Things aren’t good here and I don’t think we should do the interview. It would be too inauthentic”? Would she think we were about to get divorced, and spread the word around the Christianity Today offices that John Piper’s marriage is on the rocks?
It may sound like a small thing, but that was one of the hardest phone calls I have had to make in years. But to me righteousness and integrity—the cause of God—were at stake. And so we took the risk. We called off the interview. And that is all I know to this day.
Some of you have taken significant risks in this whole area of relationships and are much the better for it today. Others of you are hurting yourselves and the cause of God by bottling up something that someone should know about—some grudge, some failure, some habit, some remorse. May the Lord give us the wisdom to know the difference between an unhealthy indulgence in self-exposure on the one hand and the biblical risk of authenticity and confession on the other.
6 Comments
That is pretty cool. Thanks for posting Justin.
Amen to this. It is amazing to see this stuff from that far back.
There is a whole other side to this question besides what is set out in the posting and that is the issue of whether the consequences of such public confession are not more grave than that of not confessing in public.
Somewhere in his _Systematic Theology_ Charles Hodge sets out the principle that public sins ought to be publicly confessed whereas private sins are best confessed in private.
To some, such a distinction will seem overly fastidious. I disagree. Think back to the reports from a decade or more ago about student revivals on various Christian campuses. Students were lined up at microphones to “confess” before whole auditoriums of people a lot of things that were very lurid and not in keeping with the cautions of Ephesians 5.3,4. What is there about the confession of sin that requires private shameful acts to be confessed before audiences of both genders, not bound by close relationship to the one confessing?
That smacks of the courtroom, not Christian fellowship.
Or to think of another scenario: many of us have heard of congregations which try to take church discipline seriously by requiring not-yet-married couples,discovered to be promiscuous, to make open confession before the whole congregation with which they have been associated. Again, I ask – where is the fitness of making private sin _this_ public? Surely there is a confession of sin, behind closed doors to the appropriate spiritual leaders, which accomplishes all the same good. [Having said this, I would add that the old practice of private confession to a priest -now making something of a comeback among Catholics - was so beset with priestly indiscretions that it became one of the best arguments for clerical marriage. All this to say that private confession is not trouble-free].
Surely confession of sin to another implies some clear relationship to exist which makes it especially appropriate for the one hearing the confession to hear it. Call it an accountability relationship if you will. I do not agree that the magazine editor wanting to book a photo shoot (even as a believer) is a person with which such an accountability relationship must be reckoned to occur. Wouldn’t it have been sufficient simply to have declined tactfully? (This is not to say that some great principle was violated by what JP did under the circumstances). I find it hard to question Charles Hodges’ wisdom on this point.
Ken Stewart
Also see “Forgiveness and Cleansing according to 1 John 1:9″ by Ed Glasscock in the April – June 2009 edition of Bibliotheca Sacra.
Ken, I wholeheartedly agree with your idea from Hodge. I remember Adrian Rogers added a 3rd sphere of personal sin. This is where you have sinned against a particular person then go to that person. Rogers said that the sphere of confession should match the sphere of the sin.
For me, my sin as a pastor was public so my confession has covered all 3 spheres.
And let’s not forget the Puritans :)
http://www.puritansermons.com/baxter/baxter29.htm