One Another 3: Confess Your Sins to One Another
For Meditation
This week, we're continuing to look at how to be in healthy relationships with one another, and will look specifically at the practice of confessing our sin to one another. This can be a very scary idea, especially for the culture that we live in-- a culture that celebrates strength and perfection, and that shuns weakness and vulnerability.
We spend so much of our days pretending to be better than we really are— pretending to be more beautiful than we really are, stronger than we really are, more virtuous or hardworking than we really are. So it seems crazy that Scripture calls us to confess our sin, to admit our weakness and imperfections. It feels like we’re being exposed, becoming dangerously vulnerable in front of one another.
But God knows that this is what we’re made for: to be in deep, intimate relationship with one another, and to be vulnerable with one another. Because what we actually long for is deep connection, to be known for who we really are and yet still be received in love. God, through Jesus, creates a community in which that can happen. We can own up to who we really are, we can stop pretending and take off our masks. We don’t have to fear rejection anymore, because we know we are all sinners and have all been forgiven and received by Jesus in his love.
So if we are to really grasp the gospel of grace, and that we are all need that grace, we are free to reject the patterns of pretending and fakeness, and instead live vulnerably and transparently before each other. This creates healing, wholeness, and freedom — for ourselves, for our relationships, and for our life with God.
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James 5:13-16
13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
1 John 1:7-10
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
