Free to Confess

A Brief Exhortation to Confession

       As we journey through this Holy Week with Maundy Thursday where Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment to love one another as he has loved them, and Good Friday with the story of Jesus' trial and death, it might be the proper time to think about confession and forgiveness.  It is a vital part of our weekly worship- confessing that we have fallen short on things we have done and left undone, thought about and failed to think about.  Then we hear that word of grace pronouncing that we sinners are forgiven once again.  We get a second change, again.  We are FREE to confess and FREE to receive the blessing of a clean slate once more.  

It has been said that confession is good for the soul. Martin Luther, who struggled with the rigorous demands of confession in his life as an Augustinian friar, eventually found God’s grace through the holy scriptures.  In this section of his Large Catechism entitled "A Brief Exhortation to Confession" he criticizes the papacy for forcing Christians to come to confession because “it so greatly burdened and tortured consciences with the enumeration of all kinds of sin that no one was able to confess purely enough.”

 However, he did not desire to abolish confession altogether like some reformers did, namely Johann Agricola (best known for being a part of the Antinomian Controversy with Philip Melanchthon).  Instead Luther wanted people to be able to come voluntarily to confess their sins so that they might be set free from a burdened conscience and receive a word of forgiveness that gives hope and comfort.  

Luther points to the Lord’s Prayer as a confession and says this kind of confession which we make to God and to our neighbor “must take place as long as we live” because it is the “essence of a genuinely Christian life.”  He identifies three types of confession which all give comfort and peace: to the pastor, to God alone, to a spiritual brother or sister.  He encourages believers to, at any time, go to a fellow Christian and confess what is on our heart so that we may receive strength and good advice.  “Thus by divine ordinance Christ himself has placed absolution in the mouths of his Christian community and commanded us to absolve one another from sins.” It is through another person, Luther declares, that God absolves sin.  

Confession consists of two parts according to Luther.  The first part is where the sinner laments and seeks to be forgiven.  That is our work in the matter.  The second part is God’s work where he absolves our sin through the kind words of another believer.  In this way we do not need to work ourselves up wondering if we have made our confession rightly, if we have remembered everything, or even if our hearts have been pure enough.  That only drives us to despair!  This “priceless treasure” of confession and forgiveness may be obtained without coercion.  It is a wondrous gift given to us by God and gives us the assurance of mercy and grace.  May you experience true forgiveness this Holy Week, forgiveness that frees you for all that God has planned for your life.  This is most certainly true!