Monday, September 11, 2017

Reflections on Bonhoeffer’s Life Together – 103


“In confession there occurs a breakthrough to the cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia [Latin for pride]. I want to be for myself; I have a right to be myself, a right to my hatred and my desires, my life and my death…Confession in the presence of another believer is the most profound kind of humiliation.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 90.

Bonhoeffer argues that Jesus Christ suffered shame for us, being crucified as an evildoer, and that when we confess our sins to one another that we are forced to abandon our pride and selfishness and experience humiliation and shame, and in so doing share in the Cross. “The cross of Jesus Christ shatters all pride (page 91).” There is also a breakthrough to community in confession for we lay down our masks, our pretentions, our religiosity, and stand together at the Cross of Christ – all of us in need of the forgiveness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Crucifixion was a humiliating death, we are called to the fellowship of that death – the last vestiges of our pride must go, and must go again, and must go again. “Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life (page 91).”

Contrast the shame inherent in Biblical confession with the therapeutic disclosure of struggles and wrong doing and “mistakes” that society encourages us to engage in today – both within and without the church. There is no closure in such practices, no forgiveness, no peace – without the confession found in Biblical repentance there is no Cross and no forgiveness. Therapeutic deism avoids the Cross and its shame, it avoids admission and confession of sin; rather than insisting on the death of the old humanity and its sin nature it seeks to reform it into respectability, to administer palliatives, to clothe it in psychology and extra-Biblical images and thinking.

Bonhoeffer writes that in confession we find “a breakthrough to new life.” The break with the past is made when sin is hated, confessed, and forgiven (page 91).” He quotes Proverbs 28:13, “No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

“What happened to us in baptism is given to us anew in confession. We are delivered from darkness into the rule of Jesus Christ (page 91).”

Why has Bonhoeffer chosen to emphasize confession to one another at the end of this book? Why is he taking so much time with it (for there is more to come)? Why does he see so many breakthroughs inherent in confession one to another? Why is this so important to him? What do you think about all of this?

I cannot pretend to know all of the answers to the above questions. I do know that as long as we hide behind our self-righteousness that we are playing a religious game, and that simply saying, “I am a sinner,” or “I have sinned,” or joining in public congregational general confession and not naming our sin in confession one to another allows us to continue our hypocrisy and façade, it allows us to continue to play the game. We need not humble ourselves when we avoid naming specific sin in confession, we need not confront the shame that Christ endured on the Cross, we need not participate in His shame and humiliation.

Not naming sin in confession one to another allows us to live in isolation and it allows sin to continue its hold on us, we are prisoners of that which we hide and do not confess – sin thrives in darkness, but when it is exposed in confessional repentance then it flees. Again, this is not some voyeuristic therapeutic exercise in which we parade our sin and evil before an audience seeking sympathy and applause, this is Biblical confession and repentance acknowledging not just that we have sinned against other men and women, but that we have sinned against a holy God and desperately need His forgiveness.

Perhaps we have become powerless to minister to others mired in deep sin and seeking deliverance because we no longer see sin for what it is in our own lives. If we look for therapy for ourselves we will default to therapy for others; only the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross can deliver from sin, can heal from its effects, and can restore us to fellowship with God and with one another. Perhaps we have been so therapeutically smart that we are spiritually stupid.


There can be no real life together if we pretend to be something we aren’t. 

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