Bonhoeffer's 'Life Together' (4)

'Confession' is a word that makes most Protestants grimace and twitch, but it is worthwhile hearing what Bonhoeffer has to say on the subject in the context of a Christian community. It helps to recall his strong Lutheran background and the nominal condition generally in the churches, quite apart from the issue of the state church's complicity with Hitler.

'He that is alone with his sins is utterly alone...The pious fellowship permits no-one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone in our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is, we are sinners!

'But it is the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. "My son, give me thine heart" (Prov 23:26).

This is where the Christian brother can help. 'Therefore [Christ] gave his followers the authority to hear the confession of sin and to forgive sin in is name. "Whose soever sin ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20:23)... So in the Christian community when the call to brotherly confession and forgiveness goes forth it is a call to the great grace of God in the Church. It is:

'...a breakthrough to community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him...In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart...He confesses his sin and in the very act finds fellowship for the first time.

'...a breakthrough to the cross. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation....we break through to the true fellowship of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

'...a breakthrough to new life. Where sin is hated, admitted and forgiven, there the break with the past is made.

'... a breakthrough to certainty. Why is it that it is often easier to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, he is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. Why should we
not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person...But since the sin must come to the light some time, it is better that it happens today between me and my brother, rather than on the last day in the piercing light of final judgement. It is a mercy that we can confess our sins to a brother.

'Does all this mean that confession to a brother is a divine law? No,confession is not a law, it is an offer of divine help for the sinner. It is possible that a person may by God's grace break through to certainty, new life, the Cross and fellowship without the benefit of confession to a brother...We have spoken here for those who cannot make this assertion. Luther was one of those for whom the Christian life was unthinkable without mutual, brotherly confession. Confession is within the liberty of the Christian. Confession as a routine duty is spiritual death; confession in reliance upon the promise is life'