[AI translation] It's been a week since the evangelization in our church was completed. The evangelization that we who attended said was blessed, good, enriched our souls. Perhaps its greatest blessing was that it shook us up by the preached Word, brought us before the living God, and there made us see the terrible shortcomings of our lives, of our Christianity. How our Christian life had become lazy, tired, externalised, what a luxury Christianity had become in our hands, in our lives, for which Jesus died and rose again.I was particularly struck by the realisation, as one of our preaching brothers said: we have received Jesus into our hearts, but not yet into our feet, our hands, our eyes. But if Jesus does not become life, movement and action in me, that is, if I have not received Him into my feet and hands, then it is only a sham and a lie that I have received Him into my heart. God has brought to the surface in the lives of all of us who have been involved in evangelism a lot of wickedness, trouble, sin. Even things that we may not have known about, things that we may not have been aware of, things that were buried deep down in the subconscious depths of our souls. And now you know what would be tragic, what would be terrible? It would be to leave it at that, if our sins were to sink back into the depths of our consciousness, to the place from which the Word brought them up. It would be terrible if the motives, the blessings we have received, if what God has moved in us with His Word, were now again stopped, dimmed, made nothing by the hustle, worry and toil of everyday life - that is, if the whole evangelism were nothing to us but a fleeting mood, a lukewarm spiritual bath that has passed away, and we go on living our lives in the half-hearted, powerless luxury of Christianity we have been.
It would be dreadful, it would be perilous, it would be condemnatory, if the blessings of God lavished on us did not result in renewal, awakening, new beginnings, the unfolding and fulfilment of the redeeming powers of Christ, in short, healing! Yes: it would be tragic, it would be fatal, if there were no real, visible healing among us! If someone were to ask me now what he should do to take hold of the blessings he has received, not to let them slip away, but to truly begin a new life by the healing power of God's grace, I could only say to him what the Apostle James says in the Word that he reads: 'Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed'. It shows exactly the goal we want to achieve, both healing and the way to it: confess your sins...
In the 20 years that I have been serving in this church, I have spoken about this Word many times, but now I am truly compelled by the Spirit of God to speak about it again, and even if I say common things about it, I say them in deadly earnest. Every word is emphasized in this Word. Let me try to emphasize it for you.
"Confess!" - Confessing something is significantly different than simply telling the problems, discussing, talking one's way out of it. This is also very good, necessary of course. We all know very well how good it is to be able to speak out what is on one's mind. It is simply a psychological necessity to be able to pour one's heart out sometimes in front of another, an understanding person. There is great relief in such a spiritual unloading. I read in a newspaper the other day that a Finnish pastor in Helsinki had placed an advertisement in a daily newspaper with the following content: 'If you want to talk to someone about your problems, your difficulties, call the following number by telephone between 5 and 6 p.m.'. And the number was given. Over the next few days, he received so many calls that he had to switch on new and new phone lines and involve 12 male and female helpers in the service. This short piece of news shows the unspeakable need of the human soul to talk to someone about its difficulties.
But good and necessary as it is, useful as it is, it is not the spiritual action that the Apostle James says: confess your sins to one another. It is one thing to tell our problems, the burden of our souls, to pour out our hearts to someone, and it is another thing to confess our sins. One is pleasant, the other is extremely difficult. The one is what my soul longs for, the other is what my soul protests against to the end, because it always means this: I accept sin as sin. To confess a sin is always the cruelest exposure. To confess, that is to say, to express that I no longer assume solidarity with that sin, that I no longer cherish it, no longer hide it within myself, that I call it by its name, that I take it by the ear, that I lift it out of my soul, that I expel it from myself. To confess it: it expresses the readiness to fight it. Sin loves the darkness, the cover. Satan abhors nothing so much as publicity. Well, when I confess, I have, as it were, exposed to the public, as it were, betrayed the Satan in me, and exposed his work. I expose him to God, and to a God who hates sin.
Confess your "sins" to one another, says the apostle. I know very well how difficult it is to come to the point of confessing sin as sin. We have beautiful, modern and scientific words that are much more pleasant than sin. We say, instead of some damnable passion, that it is an inherited trait. Instead of unkindness to people, we say nervousness; instead of common fornication, we say innocent flirtation, and so on. How often have I heard and said to myself: it cannot be a sin to drink a glass of wine! Or a nice, polite compliment to a blushing white man. Or it can't be a crime to deny yourself on the phone, because everyone has the right not to be disturbed all the time! Well, I can't tell you what is a sin, I don't tell you, the Lord does. But what God says is sin, I must accept as sin! I know very well how hard it is to get to the point, like the prodigal son, when he finally gets the courage to go out and say, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and you". It is much easier to say, Father, I came to this place, to the trough of the swine, because I myself was spiritually bankrupt, because I was driven to sin, because my spouse behaved this way and that way with me, or because unemployment was eating away my nerves, or because my life was in danger and I had to take the dishonest road, otherwise I could not have helped myself and my family. Yes, that's easier said than done. But it is not a confession! It is confessing the sins of others. And that makes no sense. It doesn't heal anything, it makes the situation worse, it makes the wound worse. The anxiety and pain will be even greater. I know I have tried to get rid of my sins in this way, blaming others. It didn't work! Neither can you! Confession of sin is so difficult because there is no room for misunderstanding, everyone comes to God with their own individual sins, everyone brings their own personal account. If you really want to be healed, if you really want to start a new life, if you really want to be cleansed, do not excuse yourself, do not blame anyone, do not look for any excuse, but confess your sins. All that God considers sin in you!
Thus says the apostle: confess your sins "one to another". Is it not to God? Is it not enough to reveal your inner self to God? What need is there then for another man to know it? Here God wants to give man some great gift, some help in the difficult, struggling operation of confession. He gives a brother to the man struggling with his sins. This brother is there on God's behalf, to make the sinfulness of sin, the presence of the invisible God, more real, almost tangible, by his presence. So brazen are we human beings that we dare to confess our sins before God, "only" before God, without any blush. It is a sign that neither our sin really hurts, nor is the presence of God really conscious. The presence of another person makes me blush more when it is my own sins. Well, that's how that other helps me, helps me take my sins seriously, helps me tell them, unload them, helps me bring them to the blood of the cross, helps me pray, helps me receive absolution, helps me beg for God's mercy, give thanks. It helps me to sense that God is not an idea, not a thought, but a living reality, a reality as personally present, as truly all-listening and all-answering as this helping brother here beside me. That is why the apostle says: confess your sins to one another and so pray for one another.
And he adds: "that you may be healed!" True confession of sins means to come unveiled and fully before God. And wherever there is such an attitude towards God, a step into the presence of God: there is always healing. What is this healing? The miracle and liberating power of forgiveness of sins! It is what happened with David: "While I was silent, my bones were hardened by the wailing of the day. While day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my strength was failing, as in the heat of summer... I have confessed my sin to thee, my iniquity I have not covered. I said, I will confess my iniquity to the Lord, and thou hast taken away the burden of my sins." (Psalm 32:3-5) There are also many definite promises in the New Testament, but let me just say one: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 Jn 1:9) Do you know what hinders the miraculous work of God's forgiving grace and power in our lives? It is not our sins, but the fact that we do not dare or do not want to confess them. But if you have confessed, there is now no longer any obstacle to the healing power of Christ's redemptive death and resurrection flowing into you, so that you can grasp forgiveness of sin, or rather, forgiveness of sin can grasp you and carry you away. When you confess your sins, forgiveness becomes very concrete. You know what God has forgiven for the merit of Jesus. You know what your Savior paid for you! Confessing sin is nothing more than opening up the sore wound of our lives and bringing it into the healing rays of divine grace, and then God's forgiving love heals there, heals what was sick, what was hurting, where our lives were bleeding! Where the trouble was greatest. Yes, we are healed by God forgiving our sins. By God forgiving all the unclean desires, thoughts, actions, words we have confessed as if they never existed, never were. He wipes it from our lives, frees us from its burden, its memory, its accusation, its power.
You know the essence of the tape recorder, don't you? It's that our spoken words are recorded on a tape by a clever device. Every word is recorded on it, giving you everything exactly as it was spoken. But you can also use this wonderful device to "erase" the recorded speech. It is possible to erase everything as if it had never been there, as if it had never been spoken, and thus to have the opportunity of recording something entirely new instead of the old. There are so many things in our lives that we have messed up, that are not beautiful and not good, that we wish were not on the tape of our lives, that should not be. Well, God is able and willing to forgive, to forgive in such a way that the ugly, the sinful thing is completely removed, erased. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin! When God forgives, the old is gone and all things are made new! Then the ugliness of our lives will be replaced by the beauty of Jesus' life.
God Himself said in His Word, "I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like a cloud..." (Is 44:22) Just as the cloud, the morning mist, is dispersed in the rays of the rising sun, becoming nothing: so it is with confessed sin in the sunshine of God's grace. This is the healing of which the apostle speaks. With such a spiritual cleansing, we can begin our lives anew, begin anew in a different way than before! It is after such a great cleansing that one is free, that one is willing and able to live and work redeemed! It is after such a great experience of forgiveness that the redeeming power of Christ begins to work even physically, restlessness disappears, nerves calm down, excess stomach acid disappears, high blood pressure goes down, sleep at night becomes restful, unexplainable illnesses are healed in man.
It is true, then, what the apostle says: "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed." With all the wickedness of our lives, let us flee to him, confessing everything to him in sincerity, so that we may be healed by the power of his forgiving grace. And then He will truly make all things new for the merit of Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ.
Amen
Date: 13 October 1957.