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Lesson text: James 5:13-18
By: Omar Eby
Email: ebyo@emu.edu

“Confess your sins to each other.” Reading verse16, again I am plunged into Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic title, Life Together (Harpers, 1954).

“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 suddenly discovered among the righteous” (p. 110).

Some might find the book too old, some 50+ years since its appearance. Some might find his notions about living the Christian experience too visionary. But I always find his ideas about confession helpful. I read it and quote from it.

We Protestants, having abolished the Catholic’s confessional booth (granted, it had abuses and could become coldly ritual) have no established public place to confess or hear confession. Despite that, it does happen: student to teacher, player to coach, youth to camp counselor, pastor to spiritual director, and patient to psychotherapist. Will anyone risk sharing an experience of confessing or being a confessor? Or are all such matters private and confidential? Are we, whether peasant or scholar, too fearful or too sophisticated?

I turn back to Bonhoeffer with summaries and his words on confession.

“A Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ.… What a difficult thing it often is to utter the name of Jesus Christ in the presence even of a brother!… Our brother [and sister] hears the confession of our sins in Christ’s stead, and he forgives our sins in Christ’s name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.… I meet the whole congregation in the one brother to whom I confess my sins.… Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light.… Only the brother under the cross can hear a confession.… It is not experience of life but experience of the cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions.”

One person should not be the confessor of all in the fellowship. Don’t make a pious show of your confession. Why is it easier to confess our sins to God than to a brother or sister in the Christian fellowship?

Editor's Note:
Today is the final writing of Omar Eby, veteran writer, educator, and adult Sunday school teacher from Harrisonburg, Va.
Your comments on the contributions Omar made to your study of this quarter of lessons are welcome. Send your email message to the Adult Bible Study editor at horsch@mpn.org or letter to Adult Bible Study Online, 616 Walnut Ave., Scottdale PA 15683. Omar may be contacted directly by using the email address provided in his byline above.
Next Sunday begins the fall quarter of the Adult Bible Study, “The New Testament community.” Writer for this weekly online feature will be June Galle Krehbiel, Moundridge, Kan. June, a freelance writer/editor, is author God with Us Today: Devotions for Families. She chairs the worship committee and teaches Sunday school at Eden Mennonite Church (Western District Conference).

Raymond H Reimer, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is author of the Adult Bible Study. Eve B MacMaster, Gainesville, Florida, authored the Adult Bible Study Teacher.

This message relates to the Adult Bible Study. For additional information on Adult Bible Study or Adult Bible Study Teacher, send email to info@mpn.net. To order either publication call Mennonite Publishing Network at 1 800 245-7894.