The Healing Balm of Confession

Church of St. John the Baptist, Ein Karem, Jerusalem

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

James 5:16 (CSV)

Several weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about Protestant Christians in general, sort of like...talking about one's family to another family member.  One of the observations we agreed on is that almost 100% of the time the Church has this "perfection complex" that works against its effectiveness in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.  Here's how it goes:

The Church lives in mortal fear of making a mistake.  This fear makes the Church operate so timidly and conservatively that its effectiveness is terribly diminished.  THEN, when a mistake is made, it is covered up.  We do not, as a general rule, "confess our sins to one another".  We are afraid to do that, lest anyone think that we are less than perfect.  Pride, people...spiritual PRIDE!  Also, though, we think (wrongly) that if we appear less than perfect it will drive people away from the Savior.  The truth of the matter is that our phony pretense of perfection drives unbelievers away.  They look at the sham and think either
1.  "I can never be that good."  or
2.  "They can't possibly be that good."

Holiness was never meant to be a lie.  The resplendent walk is not linear.  None of us is "that good".  All Christians sin.  They slip, they slide, they fall back.  But, they also allow God to pick them back up, forgive, clean and restore them, in order to get them back into the spiritual fight in which they were wounded in the first place.  We can fall in our Christian lives, but faith gets back up.

Now, the Catholics have applied this verse to requiring members of that church denomination to periodically "go to confession".  What happens is that the person goes into a booth, similar in some respects to the one pictured above, and confesses his or her sins to a priest, who then "forgives them".

Nowhere in Scripture are we told that a human person has the power to forgive our sins.  James 5:16 was not written to intend or convey that.  Only Jesus Christ, our Savior and High Priest (Hebrews 3:1, 1 Timothy 2:5) is our Mediator who can forgive our sins.  James 5:16 does not command us to confess to one another in order to obtain forgiveness, but instead to speed along our spiritual healing from the sins we committed.

Confession may or may not be public.  There is nothing in James 5:16 which specifies one is better than the other.  Pretty much - - the confession should fit the situation being confessed, wouldn't you agree?
I'll tell you this, though.  If you, as a Christian, have a fellow Christian to whom you can confess your deepest sins, you are most blessed.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2 (ESV)

If you do have such a one, thank God!  If you don't, pray to God to send you such a "friend and a brother (or sister)" because we are all going to fall down at one time or another.  It is a huge burden to carry the pain of a sinful fall alone.  Pray to God to let you BE that person to someone else!

Of course, Jesus waits for us at His throne of grace.  But, Christian friends, He admonished us through His half-brother, James, for a reason.  It's not that He is not "enough".  It's just that He knows in our times of deep, deep pain we need "Jesus with skin on".

Some of you reading this are VERY lonely Christians, carrying your burdens of pain all alone.  Jesus never intended the Christian walk to be that way.

Can I get an "amen"?

💗