“Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
We regularly flip the script. We find it easy to confess our sins to God and difficult to confess them to our family and friends. This reveals that we do not understand the seriousness of sin or the holiness of God. God is the last place we should feel safe being laid bare. No one hates sin more than God and no one has more authority to judge it than Him. Our neighbor is the first place we should feel safe confessing our sins. No one can relate better to our depravity than our friends and no one has less reason or authority to judge us than them. But in Christ, we can approach the throne of grace with boldness and our neighbor in humility. We have no reason to fear either because we are free from all condemnation in Christ.
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