Notes on Life Together (5 of 5)
- Posted by forhisglorycc
- 0 Comments
If you’d like to read through the entire series on Life Together, please use the following links:
• Community
• The Day with Others
• The Day Alone
• Ministry
CHAPTER FIVE: CONFESSION AND COMMUNION
He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.
As Christians, we can be involved in all manner of corporate worship and fellowship, and still be alone. The final breakthrough does not occur until we have fellowship as sinners (James 5:16). Many fellowships, in the name of piety, permit no sinners; everyone must conceal sin from self as well as the community.
The Gospel says that you are a sinner and desperately one. Come as the sinner you are to the God from Whom you can hide nothing. He wishes to give liberation and grace, so that we no longer need to go on lying to ourselves and brothers as if we were without sin. Through Christ, men can be sinners, and only in being so, can they be helped.
And so Christ gave His followers authority to hear confession and to forgive sin in His name (John 20:23). By the power and authority of commission Christ has given him, our brother stands in Christ’s stead as a sign of the truth and the grace of God. He hears our confession of sins in Christ’s name and keeps secret our confession as God keeps it. When the call of brotherly confession and forgiveness goes forth in the Christian community, it is a call to the great grace of God in the Church.
BREAKING THROUGH TO COMMUNITY
Sin demands man by himself. The more isolated he is, the more destructive the power of sin, the more deeply involved he becomes, the more disastrous the isolation to the sinner and the community. Sin must to brought into light, revealed and therefore judged. Confession made in the presence of a Christian brother is where the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. It is the surrender of the sinner, during which he gives up evil, hears and finds forgiveness in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. Sin loses all its power. Confession in the presence of all members of the congregation is not required to restore one to fellowship, in that I meet God and the whole congregation in one brother in Christ and, in the fellowship of confession, am never alone again.
BREAKING THROUGH TO THE CROSS
The root of sin is pride: I want to be my own law, have my right to hatreds, desires, life and death, as God. Confession is the profoundest form of humiliation. It cuts man down and is a dreadful blow to pride. The old man dies a painful, shameful death before a brother. This is why we continually evade confession. But Jesus suffered the scandalous public death of a sinner and was not ashamed to be crucified for us as an evildoer. Our fellowship with Christ leads us to dying in confession, to share in the truth of the Cross. We cannot find the Cross if we shrink from going to the place where it is found = the death of a sinner. In confession, we affirm, accept the Cross and experience it as our rescue and salvation.
The old man dies, and it is God who has conquered him.
BREAKING THROUGH TO NEW LIFE
In confession, a break is made with the past where sin is hated, admitted and forgiven (2 Cor. 5:17). The Christian gives up all and follows Jesus. Confession is discipleship; the Christian begins to forsake his sins (Prov. 28:13). Confession is a renewal of the joy of baptism.
BREAKING THROUGH TO CERTAINTY
Why is it often easier to confess sins to God rather than a brother, when God is holy and sinless and our brothers is sinful like us? Could it be that we are deceiving ourselves in confession to God and are rather confessing to ourselves and granting ourselves absolution? Perhaps the reason for the countless relapses and feebleness of our Christian obedience is found in the fact that we are living in self-forgiveness and not real forgiveness. A real break from sin is accomplished by the judging and pardoning Word of God.
The brother can give certainty in confession that we are dealing with God and not ourselves. The brother breaks the circle of self-deception. We experience the presence of God in the reality of another person. Since sin must come to light some time, it is better that it happens today rather than on the last day in the piercing light of final judgment. It is a mercy that we can confess our sins to a brother.
Not only does confession of my sins to a brother insure me against self-deception, so the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to me only when spoken by a brother in the name of God. Precisely for this sake of certainty should confession deal with concrete sins. People are usually satisfied with generalities, but we experience the utter perdition of human nature when we see our own specific sins. Self-examination and preparation should be done on the basis of all Ten Commandments. Otherwise, we could play the hypocrite even in confessing to a brother and miss the good of it. Jesus asked Bartimaeus, What do you want me to do for you? We need to clearly answer this question before confession. Though not a divine law, confession is an offer of divine help for the sinner, a help that God deemed necessary to offer.
TO WHOM CONFESS
According to Christ’s promise, every Christian brother can hear the confession of another. Anyone who has once been horrified by his own sin which nailed Christ on the Cross will no longer be horrified by the brother’s rankest sins. Not experience of life, but experience of the Cross, makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp what sin is. The Christian brother knows when I come to him, here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. In daily, earnest living with the Cross of Christ, the Christian receives the spirit of serenity that the death of the sinner before God and the life that comes out of that death through grace becomes a daily reality.
TWO DANGERS OF CONFESSION
It is not good for one person to be confessor to all, because he will become overburdened and the task will become empty routine. This can give rise to misuse of the confession for spiritual dominion. He should refrain from listening to confession who does not himself practice it. For the confessant, let him guard against making pious work of his confession as this will become impure prostitution of the heart. Confess solely for the sake of absolution of sins.
THE JOYFUL SACRAMENT
Confession especially serves the Christian community as preparation for common reception of communion. Jesus commanded that none should come to the table with a heart unreconciled to the brother. This applies to every act of worship, and certainly to the reception of the Lord’s Supper. Prior to the Lord’s Supper, brethren come together each begging forgiveness for wrongs committed – all anger, strife, envy, evil, gossip and unbrotherly conduct must be settled if brethren wish to receive the grace of God together in sacrament. The time of preparation for the Lord’s supper will be filled with brotherly admonition and encouragement, prayers, fear and joy.
The day of the Lord’s Supper is occasion of joy for the Christian community. Reconciled in their hearts with God and the brethren, the congregation receives the gift of the body and blood of Jesus and receiving that, it receives forgiveness, new life, salvation. The fellowship of the Lord’s Supper is the superlative fulfillment of Christian fellowship. As the members of the congregation are united in body and blood at the table of the Lord, so will they be together in eternity. Here the community has reached its goal and joy in Christ, and His community is complete.
The life of the Christians together under the Word has reached its perfection in the sacrament.
0 Comments