Should We Confess Our Sins to a Priest?

00:00:00.000 | Gloria writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, James 516 confuses me. It says, 'Confess

00:00:10.040 | your sins to one another.' Is it saying that we have to confess our sins like

00:00:13.080 | Catholics do to a priest? Can you please explain what this means?" Right. No, I don't

00:00:19.640 | think the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church to, number one, elevate a

00:00:27.360 | priest to the position of a uniquely suitable confessor has any roots in this

00:00:35.800 | text. I don't think this text is a place you go to get that. In fact, I don't think

00:00:41.280 | there is a place in the New Testament where you can go to get that. So what this

00:00:44.200 | text does is to call us to something far more reciprocal than that, even when the

00:00:50.960 | elders are involved. It might be helpful just to read it, just so people have the

00:00:54.680 | context. "Is anyone among you sick?" This is James 514. "Let him call for the elders of

00:01:00.960 | the church. Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of

00:01:04.960 | the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord

00:01:08.720 | will raise him up, and if he's committed sins, he'll be forgiven. Therefore,

00:01:14.440 | confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be

00:01:22.560 | healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power in its working." So the

00:01:28.400 | first thing we see there is a plurality of elders, not a priest. "Call for the

00:01:33.960 | elders." If you think it's time to have the leaders of the church

00:01:38.000 | involved, the New Testament always thinks in terms of a plurality of elders. There

00:01:42.560 | isn't any church in the New Testament we know of that only had one. They never

00:01:46.400 | used the word "priest" for the pastors of the New Testament Church. So go ahead,

00:01:51.680 | call two, three, four, whatever your church provides. Call the elders and have them

00:01:57.240 | pray for you. But here's the interesting thing. After James describes that event

00:02:01.800 | with the elders and their prayer of faith and what will happen there, he

00:02:05.480 | seems to draw out in verse 16 an inference, and he moves from that

00:02:09.800 | specific situation, it seems, to something more general and more reciprocal. He says,

00:02:15.400 | "Therefore, confess your sins to one another." So there's something, some

00:02:21.560 | principal thing that was going on there about the way your sins emerged in that

00:02:26.160 | situation, and your sins got forgiven as well as your body got healed. Now here's

00:02:31.480 | a principle I'm drawing out. "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one

00:02:35.840 | another that that would be happening more and more." So I don't see this text

00:02:41.760 | leading toward a narrowing down of a saint and a priestly confessor. I see

00:02:48.240 | this text broadening out to the body of Christ, saying, "Confess your sins to one

00:02:54.400 | another that you may be healed." And so I ask the question, "Now why would that

00:02:59.520 | be? Why would mutual confession—it's like in a small group, or say you have a

00:03:04.560 | buddy that you meet for breakfast with, and you know you're struggling with some

00:03:09.920 | issue of anger or pride or lust, and you just lay your heart out for him in

00:03:16.200 | how you struggled yesterday. Why is that a healing thing?" And I think there's

00:03:24.240 | a beautiful example of it in the Psalms, and I know there's a beautiful example

00:03:27.920 | of it in my experience. David said in Psalm 32, "Blessed is the man whose

00:03:33.640 | transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom

00:03:38.360 | the Lord counts no iniquity, in whose heart there's no conceit." And then he

00:03:44.360 | says, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long." So

00:03:52.840 | that's the condition of the non-confessing heart, the heart that's

00:03:57.520 | all bottled up, never tells anybody what it's dealing with, just hides and hides

00:04:01.360 | and hides away from people. "For day and night your hand was heavy on me, my

00:04:06.060 | strength was dried up as the heat of summer." And then he says, "I acknowledged

00:04:10.680 | my sin to you, I did not cover my iniquity, I said I will confess my

00:04:16.760 | transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity." So there's a

00:04:21.120 | sequence here of sinning, bottling up and having your bones dry up inside, then

00:04:28.000 | letting it out and going public with it, in this context to God, but in the

00:04:33.560 | principle behind it probably not just to God but to the person you sinned against

00:04:37.720 | or to others who could help you bear this. So one another confessing is the

00:04:45.760 | principle here, and there's good warrant for why it is a healing thing. And

00:04:51.240 | I would just maybe very practically say, you don't have to do that to the

00:04:57.080 | whole church. One principle would be confess a sin against someone to that

00:05:02.080 | person, and that may be the place where it can simply end. If it's something that

00:05:06.040 | you're dealing with more generally, you can share it with your small group or a

00:05:09.160 | confidant that you have. I think everybody should have, like Jesus, a

00:05:14.320 | beloved disciple and a Peter, James, and John and a 12 and a 70. In other words,

00:05:19.000 | there are concentric circles that we live in of intimacy, and some things

00:05:24.760 | we're going to share with the beloved disciple, and some things Peter, James, and

00:05:29.200 | John, and some things the 12 and so on, and God will make it

00:05:33.800 | plain. There are times we confess openly to everyone, and there are times we are

00:05:39.520 | very careful lest we hurt anyone by our confession to be more discreet and

00:05:46.680 | confess to those who are very, very close to us. So no, my answer is no. This text

00:05:54.320 | doesn't give warrant that I can see to the practice of treating a pastor or a

00:06:00.840 | priest as uniquely qualified to be the place where we go to share our

00:06:06.380 | confessions. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your

00:06:10.360 | questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. You can visit us

00:06:13.760 | online at desiringgod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and

00:06:16.680 | other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host Tony Ranke.

00:06:19.880 | Thanks for listening.

00:06:22.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Should We Confess Our Sins to a Priest?

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