Confessing Your Sins to Others

I always believe that vulnerability is a great asset that leaders can have. Leaders who are willing to be vulnerable garner a level of trust that followers would otherwise never develop towards their leaders. The reason is simple. When the leaders are willing to be vulnerable (admitting mistakes, limitations, and weaknesses, or simply sincerely saying "I am sorry. That's completely my fault"), followers can associate themselves with their leaders in a far more profound way.

In the context of Christian community, that may mean leaders who are willing to confess their sins to a (few of) Christian brothers and sisters in their accountability circles. The practice of confessing sins is without question very hard to do in cultures that uphold face-saving. Confessing sin is a big way to lose face, one runs the risk of losing his/her reputation for good. Sure the risk is minimized or even absent in the context of a Christian accountability group. But the risk is still there on the part of the confessor. But what is interesting is that this tendency is not exclusive to those cultures. Because of the prevalent presence of pride in every person, no one likes to confess sins. The following quote from Bonhoeffer's Life Together says it best:

“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, andthe 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.”