The Importance of Confessing Sin

James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” We can understand confessing our sins to God, (which is primary and necessary for salvation). But confessing our sins to each other? That seems much more foreign, much more difficult in the modern church.

I’m not talking about going into a booth where a priests waits on the other side to absolve you. I’m talking about the honest, vulnerable confession of sin from one brother to another. Genuine, biblical fellowship is impossible with out it.

Kevin DeYoung posted a great blog on this very topic. Here’s a sample:

“Some of us become Christians and just go on our merry way, never thinking of sin,
while others fixate on our failings and suffer from despair. One person feels
no conviction of sin; the other person feels no relief from sin. Neither of
these habits should mark the Christian. The Christian should often feel
conviction, confess, and be cleansed.

The cleansing, mind you, is not like the expunging of a guilty record before the
judge. That’s already been accomplished. This cleansing is more like the
scraping of barnacles off the hull of a ship so it can move freely again. We
need confession of sin before God like a child needs to own up to her mistakes
before Mom and Dad, not to earn God’s love, but to rest in it and know it more
fully.”

Read the whole post here.