Confession is Good for the Soul
James 5:16
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.
We begin our worship every Sunday the same way. After remembering our baptisms with the words, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we confess our sins. Right now, this is the confession we’re using:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Let us confess our sins to the Lord.
Holy God, gracious Father, I am sinful by nature and have sinned against you in my thoughts, words, and actions. I have not loved you with my whole heart; I have not loved others as I should. I deserve your punishment both now and forever. But Jesus, my Savior, paid for my sins with his holy life and innocent death. Trusting in him, I pray: God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
God, our gracious Father, has forgiven all your sins. He sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Savior. Jesus paid the penalty for your guilt by his death on the cross and freed you from death by his resurrection from the grave. You are at peace with God. Live in the comfort and joy of his forgiveness.
We all stand together and confess that we are sinners. We are sinful by nature. We have sinned in thought, word, and deed. Through Jesus, God forgives our sins.
But what about what James says? “Confess your sins to each other.” How often do we do that? On the one hand, when we sin against someone, we might be more ready to confess to them. After all, they are the one against whom we sinned. We want them to forgive us.
On the other hand, we may confess to another sins which we didn’t commit against them. Now that’s hard. Why would I want to tell someone about my sins if my sins have nothing to do with them? I don’t want them to think any less of me. What purpose would it serve to tell them about my struggles with sin? Why shouldn’t I just keep it between God and me?
God hasn’t made us to struggle with sin on our own. Out of pride, we may try. But we often look at keeping it between God and me as just keeping it to ourselves. And when we just keep sin to ourselves, it’s easy to just keep right on sinning.
Moreover, holding onto sin harms us. King David describes it in Psalm 32, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” The longer we hold onto sin, the more dangerous it becomes to our faith.
It’s easy to say, “I’m a sinner just like everyone else. Nobody’s perfect.” It’s hard to say to someone, “I’ve been struggling with x.” We think they’ll judge us. They won’t want to be our friend anymore. They won’t love us anymore.
James encourages us to confess our sins to each and pray for each other. It’s not about judging. It’s about forgiving. Jesus told his disciples in John 20, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven.” Through his sacrifice, Jesus gives his people the power to forgive sins on the basis of his life, death, and resurrection.
One-on-one you will hear specific sins forgiven. In our hymnal Christian Worship (pg. 154), right after the general confession there’s an opportunity for you to confess specific sins. To unload the sins that mightily weigh you down. And to hear that that sin—yes, even that sin—is forgiven!
I encourage you to find someone to whom you can confess. It can be a trusted Christian friend. It can be your pastor. Someone on whom you can unload your burden. Someone who will pray with you. Someone who will say to you, “In the name of Jesus, I forgive your sins.”