Chapter 12
A Continuous Walk
*“Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all sins,” Proverbs 10:12.
*“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:9.
*“Therefore confess your sins one to another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” James 5:16.
*It had been a long time that I would read the verse in Proverbs and wondered how this was true. How could love cover all sins? I thought that it was because to love was to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. Yet, it is my understanding, now, that love covers over all sins because of community.
*So many times we have to go to the buildings self-dignified. We have to put on the religious face that makes every one think that we’re righteous, but inside we feel as though Hell is prevailing. Why does love cover over all sins? Because, to speak the truth in love (even about ourselves in confession) is to cover all sins. We are all sinners. There is not one of us perfect. There is not one of us who has “arrived.”
*It is interesting to me that I would use such language as telling people to be holy or be perfect as God Himself is perfect. I’m not either of these things. It was a long time that I read the verses, “Be ye holy as I am holy,” and, “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How? Is God mocking us by telling us to do ridiculous things?
*We cause ourselves to be anemic by not tapping into these small commands. By ignoring the command in James to confess our sins to each other, we cause a schism in our own spiritual lives, and therefore are left without hope and in a great depression. God has given us His Body for the “healing” of our sins. In the context of James 5:16, the true Christian’s sin is considered a sickness. Why do the elders come to anoint with oil? Why should we pray? Why do we confess? So that the sin might be uprooted and blotted out.
*It is hidden sin that will tear apart a fellowship. When the Body can’t minister to the Body, there cannot be true healing. It causes a block. Just like when there is a barricade in an artery the man dies, so when there is a block for healing and growth in the community the community dies. We want to confess our grievous sins to God alone, and hopefully that is good enough. God desires that we would be open with one another.
*We are to love one another enough to be able to minister to one another, even in the area of praying for and encouraging our fallen brother or sister. Instead of judging, ridiculing, scoffing, or being offended by an offense, we ought to have the love and humility to realize that we are all in this together as sinners, and every single one of us has the capability to fall to the same temptations.
*The cross has two beams. There is the horizontal, and the vertical. Without the vertical beam, it is no longer a cross. Without the horizontal beam, it is no longer a cross. Our lives together are completely governed by our relationship to God, and our relationship to God is completely governed by our lives together. If we are not willing to show mercy, though we’ve been shown mercy, we will not receive mercy. If we are not willing to show forgiveness, then we will not receive forgiveness. It is a suffering, and a humiliation to bear your sins and be transparent, but it is a necessary act for the sanctifying work of Jesus Christ.
*I am one who believes that the Body needs to heal itself. We shouldn’t have a man up on the platform who is “above” every one else, and every one sits and listens while he rambles on about whatever he feels necessary. When a man or woman confesses to a brother or sister, they release themselves from their sin. To speak to someone who has the Holy Spirit within them, in an atmosphere of true fellowship, you are confessing to very God Himself. God even made the Ark of the Covenant to have two cherubim upon the top looking into one another’s faces, but all the while looking unto the mercy seat. It is a perfect example of our community life being one of love toward one another to confess our faults one to another, and to chasten one another in love while looking to the mercy seat because all have fallen short of the glory of God.
*When we have it set up as a pyramid with either the pastor or the chairmen or the district supervisor at the top, and then the rest trickle down from there, we have given ourselves over to a faulty system. If the man on top cannot confess his faults without losing his job, then a fraudulent atmosphere is produced. There is deception. The whole thing is now a façade in which the man on top doesn’t have to confess his sins to anyone but God, because he would lose his paycheck if he confessed, therefore the entire congregation follows in their footsteps to only confess before God.
*Where there is no confession of sin to the brothers and sisters, there is no healing of sins. We might be able to “get a handle on things,” but we will not be cleansed. It takes someone else to be able to see the wound and be able to patch it up, and possibly clean it out. There has to be confession so that the brethren might pray for and keep accountable the man or woman in fault. It is an endless cycle. The Body forms a sphere where while one man is praying for his brother or sister to be delivered, he himself is also being prayed for. The Body works for the other members of the Body. Not one man is without fault, nor are they ashamed (Genesis 3). But because they are all open together with one another, it gives room for the Spirit to bring truth and actual deliverance, instead of a quick clean up by becoming a little more moral.
*The question comes up in my mind of what the definition of perfection might be. If God calls us to be perfect as He is perfect, and to be holy as He is holy, then what does that look like? God is not one that will mock those He loves. He won’t tell us to live one way, but in actuality it is impossible to live it. So what does perfection and holiness look like?
*The verse about perfection comes from Matthew 5:49. Just before Jesus makes this statement, he tells us to bless those who curse us, and love our enemies. This isn’t possible unless we are in a fellowship with other believers who are also sinners. Because of our shortcomings, we are going to clash from time to time. It is in these moments that God refines us and gives us His life and love to be able to love them in that moment, as we ought. How do we be perfect as God is perfect? By expressing the love of God to the men of this world, and even to our enemies. By our practice of confession and speaking the truth in love to one another, we will be refined and purified by the hand of God so that when we stand before our enemies we will only be able to bless and love those who are sinners just like us.
*This is what it means to be holy. For us to practice in our communities a lifestyle that is bountiful in love, we practice the very holiness of God itself. The world can’t trust each other. If a community of believers is open to one another and transparent, they express something that is more heavenly than anything this world could possibly produce. The very holiness of God is captured in the transparency of the saints. Because we are able to express love to one another, even in our sins and transgressions, we display before men a holiness and reality of God that would otherwise be impossible. This is the perfect Church. When the saints of God can fellowship with one another, despite their sins and shortcomings. It is in this that God has promised, “I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:9 (note 1 John 1:5-7 for context).
*It is true to say that anyone who claims to be without sin is a liar, but it is not true to say that there cannot be a perfect Church because of this. One man saw it as a ship that is held together by old broken ships and boards and vessels. The Holy Spirit is what keeps it afloat and confession and repentance is what kept it charged and energized. The metaphor was that we are all sunken ships held together by love and the Holy Spirit to make us sail together now in complete love and unity and harmony. We “shock each other back to life.” And we provide the cleansing for one another when it is necessary.
*God’s answer to our plea for sanctification is life together. For those who are truly His, they will yearn and long for the assembling together of the saints. God’s people desire nothing more and nothing less than true community with each other, mainly an atmosphere where we can come together and confess our faults one to another and receive healing from the hand of God through the other believers.
*It is a humbling and a humiliation that our pride doesn’t want to go through, but the end thereof is the glory of God. This kind of Body is what the principalities and powers of the air fear. They are authentic. They have the Spirit of Christ without measure, because they need His Spirit without measure just to love one another, as they ought. It is detrimental to the flesh, but propitious to the Christian.
*In my humble opinion, one reason why we have so little power and testimony today is that we are so egocentric and prideful that we won’t even confess to one another. Most of the time, it rings true that we won’t even relate to one another. We would rather sit next to, but never with, the other saints. We would rather know the name, but never the life, of our brothers and sisters. We would rather have a Sunday culture and a way of making friends than to have a community of people that share in our love for God and work with us to being the people Christ has called us to be.
*As long as we are unwilling to even relate to one another, we will never be a light or testimony to the dark world. As long as we are unwilling to see each other regularly, outside of our scheduled times of seeing each other, we will only receive yawns and scoffs from the principalities and powers of darkness. There is no reason for them to fear a people who don’t even love. There is no reason for them to fear the Church who is sick and unwilling to call out for help that God might heal her of her sin.
*We must ask the question as to why we are more willing to go to a holy God than to another person. There is the obvious answer of, “God shows mercy, and mercy even triumphs over judgment.” Yet, is that really the reason? I understand completely that people don’t always show mercy, but instead gossip and shut you out because of your confession. But many times, I must wonder if the real reason we don’t confess to others is because we have a greater fear of man than of God.
*Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the statement in his book Life Together that to confess our sins to one another is to be baptized once more. There is such a death to self that occurs in our confession to each other that it alone is considered as a re-baptism (death unto life). Is it possible that we don’t confess to one another because of that? It isn’t so much that we are afraid of what people will think, but instead what anguish and agonies we must endure in confession itself. This, almost obviously, would then bring into question our repentance to God. Do we confess to God, who is faithful and just to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, or do we confess to ourselves, and then act as though we’ve confessed to God, and claim for ourselves a clean conscience?
*This would explain entirely as to why we would go through relapses and do not find solace. If our confession is only a self-confession, then there is no way for the cross to have its course. The blood cannot be applied. There is nowhere for God to move upon the heart when it is only being “confessed” in the air, but not before God.
*What is the difference between confession to self and confession to God? The difference is community. To confess to a brother, which is to confess to the community as a whole, is to confess to God. In confessing our faults one to another, we confess to brothers and sisters who have the Holy Spirit within them, and therefore we confess to God Himself.
*To take a secret sin and place it before God in our “prayer closets” is something else entirely. Why are we exercising our pride in such a way? If we don’t need to be dolled up and dignified to come to Christ, then why do we need to be dolled up and dignified spiritually before the brethren?
*I fear that even within confession to others we might be deceived to think that we only need to confess a general thing. In bearing the fullness of it, we find release. When we confess, we need to do so in a specific manner. We can’t just generally say, “I’ve fallen to temptation in this area of my life.” How did you fall to temptation? You don’t need to try to lure your brother or sister into temptation by giving the grisly details, but you still need to be specific enough that it isn’t a deceptive confession that states such generals that there can be no real accountability. Tell your brother what kind of show you watched that caused for you to sin. Tell your brother of your sexual impurity. Don’t leave it open for them to have to figure it out.
*It is my awareness that even in my own life I have fallen to this deception. When we give a small trinket of our sin, but don’t confess the entire sin, or be specific enough to bear the weight of it all, we don’t find release and continue to fall to it again and again and again. The only way to break the vicious circle is to confess to the brethren that they might bear the same sin and shame with you. It isn’t that you confess to get it off of your shoulders, but that in confession, you transmit your sin to them like the priests imparted their sin to the goat in the Old Testament. It is then something that you both struggle through together.
*That is not to say that the brother or sister will now fall to the same temptation, but that they strive along side of you and carry the burden with you. For an illustration, imagine carrying a 50-pound rock up a hill for a mile. With one person, it is nearly impossible. Yet, when you confess to your brother or sister, they take hold of that rock with you. So now you each carry it together up the hill to freedom.
*In overview, God has given confession as a way of freedom from all sins. It doesn’t matter how deep it goes, nor does it matter whether it is known. In seeking counsel with each other in the sins that are known, the sins that are hidden (our blind-spots) are also dealt with. Let us take off this old man that strives for self-preservation, and put on the new glory in Christ that must suffer before the glory. In our daily lives, let us be to one another deliverance instead of hindrance, amen.