Sin in the church

Confess your sins to one another (part 5)

Tony Reinke Anthony Burgess, Confessing sin, Puritans, Sin in the church, Sinfulness

I am grateful for my friend Travis who is working diligently to produce an electronic copy of the great (and forgotten) Puritan book: Anthony Burgess, Spiritual Refining, part 2. To commemorate his progress I wanted to post one of the many quotes that stand out in this priceless work. One especially fits in our series of learning to confess sins to one another.

This excerpt shows why, when we look for sermons to tickle our ears, we have thus failed to understand the purpose of the Word and preaching. The same is true of friendships.

Burgess writes,

“That one main end of the Word of God,
and preaching,
is to discover this deceitful heart.
It’s to make us know ourselves;
compared therefore to a glass,
that will show a deformed man all his unloveliness,
and this is a glass,
not to the face but the heart;
all those hidden and unknown lusts may there be brought to light.
And the Ministry that is compared to light;
as the sunbeams discover those many thousands of motes in the air,
which the darkness concealed;
thus the Ministry,
in a powerful and soul-saving way dispensed,
will make thee see thyself to be that beast,
that devil,
yea to have that dunghill,
that hell in thy heart,
thou didst not perceive:
look then for this benefit by preaching,
not what may fit thy ear,
may please thy fancy,
but what may discover the dark corners of thy soul,
what may bring glorious light into thy breast;
that thou mayest cry out;
O Lord, how long have I lived and did not know myself!
I thought all was well,
everything was in quiet;
but now I am like the Syrian army,
that being by the Prophet stricken blind,
and thought they were guided to their own camp,
as soon as ever they had their eyes opened,
they found themselves in the midst of the enemy’s camp:
Thus thy eyes being opened,
thou seest thyself to be in the power of all thy sins,
all thy enemies and the curses of God.”

– Anthony Burgess [d. 1664]
Spiritual Refining, Part II: A Treatise of Sin, pp. 19-20

O, that we would likewise no longer be superficial in our friendships but be willing to dive into difficult conversations for the purpose of discovering the “dark corners of thy soul.” Confess your sins to one another, Paul says. What an excellent standard for true friendship.

Confess your sins to one another (part 4)

Tony Reinke Confessing sin, Mortification, Puritans, Sin, Sin in the church, Stephen Charnock

In a church, the sign that the wall of superficiality has been broken to pieces is when fellow Christians come together in humble confession (a goal that may take several years in some churches). Once the wall is broken down, another danger takes its place – the tendency to be blinded by personal sin.

Once we honestly look at our own hearts, we can quickly become overwhelmed in the dark cloud of our own remaining sin. The flesh and the spirit war on.

For some reason we naturally think that — while we are saved through no merits of our own — God’s acceptance of us as Christians is dependent upon our successes. And so under this legalism, the condemnation of our accuser and our own hearts becomes crippling.

In our repentance, Puritan Stephen Charnock reminds us to look beyond our sin to our Advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1). While we hate personal sin, and long for the moment we look Christ in the eye (1 John 3:2), “let us not be so dejected by them [sins], as cheered by the advocacy of our Savior.”

He writes,

“Hence arises comfort against
all the attempts and accusations of Satan
and the Rebellion of our own corruptions.

He [Christ] foresees all the ambushes of Satan,
searches into his intention,
understands his strategies,
and is as ready to speak to the Father for us,
as He was to turn back and look Peter into a recovery at the crowing of the cock.

The Devil accuses us when we fall,
but he has not so much on his side as we have.

All his strength lies in our sinful acts,
but the strength of our Advocate lies in His own infinite merit.

Satan has no merit of his own to enter as plea for vengeance.

When he pleads against us with our sins,
Christ pleads for us by His sufferings,
and if our adversary never ceases to accuse us,
our Advocate never ceases to defend us.

How comfortable it is to have One,
day and night,
before the throne to
control the charge of our enemy,
and the despondencies of our souls,
that Satan can no sooner open his mouth,
but He has one to stop and rebuke him,
Who has more favor in the Court than that malicious spirit,
and employs all His life and glory for our spiritual advantage,
Who will not upon such occasions want [lack] a good word for us!

And as to our corruptions,
He is in Heaven to make up all breaches.

His blood has the same design in His plea,
that it had in the sacrifice,
which was to purify us (Titus 2:4).

The difficulty of the cause does not discourage Him,
but honors both His skill in bringing us off,
and the merit of His blood which is the cause of our restoration.

Upon every occasion He steps in
to plead with the holiness of God
and pacify the justice of God
for our greater as well as lighter crimes.

While therefore we feelingly groan under our spiritual burdens,
let us not be so dejected by them,
as cheered by the advocacy of our Savior.”

– Stephen Charnock
A Discourse of Christ’s Intercession
Works of Stephen Charnock [1684 ed.] pp. 2:1152-1153

It’s in this fog of self-condemnation that we help our brothers and sisters press closer to the Cross, and be “cheered by the advocacy of our Savior.”

Confess your sins to one another (part 3)

Tony Reinke Community, Confessing sin, Puritans, Richard Sibbes, Sin, Sin in the church

No man is more ready to charge the church
than she is to confess her infirmities.
She never hideth them,
she never justifieth them;
she is black,
she hath afflictions,
she kept not her own vine,
she wants [lacks]
knowledge,
affection,
discretion,
love.
She never denies it,
but confesses all freely from her heart;
she hides not her sin,
but tells what she is,
what she hath done,
that so she may give glory to the Lord God of Israel.
And indeed, it makes much for the honor of Christ,
and commends his grace,
that he, such a king,
will set his heart and his eye
upon such a deformed slut as the world deems her to be.
It makes for the comfort of her poor children,
and much stayeth [sustains] them,
when they shall hear the church in all ages,
and in her Abraham, David, and Paul, saying,
‘I am black,’
I have affliction,
corruption,
as well as others.
It makes for the silencing of all saucy [flippant] daughters
that will upbraid her;
an ingenuous confession,
stops their mouths,
and puts them all to silence.
It much quickens her to the use of the means,
and maketh her cry,
‘Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest.’
And to seek her comfort in Christ Jesus.
Oh it doth her good to receive the sentence of
death,
shame,
poverty,
damnation,
in herself,
that so she may be found in Christ,
arrayed with the rich robes of his righteousness.
Hence her plain-hearted openness in her confession.
Let us do the like,
and leave it to the harlot and whore of Babylon
to say herself is a queen, she is glorious, she cannot err.
But let us say with the church, we are black;
yea, let us see it,
let us speak it
with sorrow,
with shame,
as the saints have done,
and be so affected with our estate,
that it may truly humble us,
and cause us to say,
‘It is the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed.’
And let us so confess it in ourselves,
that we pity others,
and bear with them,
though full of sins and miseries;
so confess it,
that we stir up others thereby to run,
as Paul did,
and use the ordinances with all diligence,
to pray much,
to read much,
to hear,
to confer,
to advise,
and be humble
and sincere.
A verbal confession of frailties,
without humility,
mercy,
diligence,
without the use of the means,
is hypocrisy.
If we will speak with the church,
we must feel what we say,
and so well understand ourselves and our estate,
that we may gain
humility,
mercy,
and watchfulness
by it.

– Richard Sibbes, Works 7:97-98

Confess your sins to one another (part 1)

Tony Reinke C.J. Mahaney, Community, Confessing sin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fellowship, Kris Lundgaard, Sin, Sin in the church

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” – James 5:16

If he had the opportunity to revise his famous book (The Enemy Within), what would Kris Lundgaard add? At the final session of The Enemy Within conference in Omaha, he said he would add a chapter on sanctification within the community, specifically the importance of confessing sin to one another. (Listen to session 4 of the Lundgaard audio here).

He opened session four by reading large sections of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s parable, The Minister’s Black Veil, a story of a pastor who lives out the end of his life under a black veil seeking to hide his own personal sin from the rest of the church.

But I was especially interested in Lundgaard’s reference to a small book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the title, Life Together. I was not familiar with this book and so the following quotes hit me.

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation… This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16)…”

“The root of all sin is pride… I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God … In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blinded that they no longer see the promise and the glory in such abasement.”

“Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother… Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

These quotes remind me of C.J. Mahaney’s presentation at the Together for the Gospel 2006 conference where he encouraged pastors to be (discreetly) willing to confess sin from the pulpit in a way that builds honesty and openness with our hearers.

Likewise, it reminds me of the Psalmist. Asaph in Psalm 73 openly declared and confessed sins (sin that would otherwise remained hidden from sight). In fact he says, I almost went public with my confession (v. 15). But he didn’t. He was willing to lay his heart sins open and compose one of the most cherished of all the Psalms.

Asaph, Mahaney, Lundgaard and now Bonhoeffer have taught me much about the dynamics of Christian community. By hiding our sins under a black veil, our Christian lives are un-authentic and sin grows unhindered. We must work to be more open, to lay bare the heart, to confess “concrete sins,” build communion with our brothers and sisters, to be freed from the sinful pride that veils our personal sin. By the graciousness of God, if we can die to self here we will build a “fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

O, that God, while seemingly blessing our age with great doctrine, will also open our hearts to bless our communities and pulpits with pride-killing honesty and humility.