Theopedia

Confession of sin

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

— 1 John 1:9

Definition

Confession of sin is a believer’s acknowledgment of specific sin, made to God for pardon and, in certain cases, to another person as well. Scripture treats confession made to God alone as sufficient for forgiveness; confession made to a fellow believer is a separate, voluntary practice, for reconciliation where someone has been wronged or for counsel and comfort in a private struggle, rather than a further condition God requires before he pardons. It is the outward expression of the sorrow, humbling, and turning from sin that make up repentance, not a separate transaction alongside it.

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession devotes no separate chapter to confession as such. Its chapter on repentance comes closest, stating that saving repentance involves “praying for pardon and strength of grace,” and that “as repentance is to be continued through the whole course of our lives… it is every man’s duty to repent of his particular known sins particularly.”1

The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), part of the wider Reformed confessional family, addresses the doctrine directly, under its own heading “Sacerdotal Confession and Absolution”:

“We believe that this sincere confession which is made to God alone, either privately between God and the sinner, or publicly in the Church where the general confession of sins is said, is sufficient, and that in order to obtain forgiveness of sins it is not necessary for anyone to confess his sins to a priest, murmuring them in his ears, that in turn he might receive absolution from the priest with his laying on of hands, because there is neither a commandment nor an example of this in Holy Scriptures.”2

It grounds that judgment in David’s confession, “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin” (Ps. 32:5), and in the Lord’s Prayer’s “forgive us our debts” (Matt. 6:12), while still approving James 5:16’s “confess your sins to one another” and voluntary private counsel from a minister or another mature believer when a person is overwhelmed by sin.2

Biblical Basis

Confession to God runs through both Testaments. David confesses directly to the Lord after Nathan’s rebuke, “I have sinned unto the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13; Ps. 51:1), and states the principle Scripture repeats elsewhere: “I acknowledged my sin to thee, and did not hide my iniquity” (Ps. 32:5). Daniel’s prayer for the exiled nation confesses corporately, “we have sinned, and have committed iniquity” (Dan. 9:5), as does the whole restored community under Ezra and Nehemiah after the exile (Neh. 1:6; 9:2-3). Jesus’ parable contrasts the tax collector who will not even lift his eyes to heaven, praying only “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13), with the self-justifying Pharisee beside him, and pictures the returning prodigal rehearsing his own confession before he ever reaches his father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (Luke 15:18-19). John states the promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Confession to another person has its own distinct warrant: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16), addressed to believers generally rather than to any single office. The Old Testament likewise pairs sacrifice with spoken confession, as when the high priest confesses Israel’s sins over the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:21; see also 5:5; Num. 5:7).

Historical Development

Confession’s post-biblical history centers on its gradual attachment to a specific priestly office, and the Reformation’s rejection of that development. Calvin traces the underlying shift to medieval scholastic theology, which divided repentance into contrition of the heart, confession of the mouth, and satisfaction of works, and in his judgment kept “a strange silence” about the internal renewal of mind that Scripture actually requires while multiplying casuistic distinctions around the external ritual.3

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), under Innocent III, made that attachment formal: it required all believers, from the age of discretion, to confess every sin in secret to their own priest at least once a year.4 The Council of Trent later made the practice dogma, declaring sacramental confession to a priest divinely instituted and necessary to salvation and anathematizing anyone who denied it.5 The resulting doctrine, as A. A. Hodge summarizes it, treats penance as a sacrament composed of the penitent’s contrition, comprehensive auricular confession to a priest holding “the power of the keys,” and priest-imposed satisfaction, completed by the priest’s judicial, not merely declarative, absolution.6

Calvin and the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) both rejected the priestly requirement as without warrant in Scripture, restating instead the pattern of confession made directly to God, supplemented by a voluntary, unforced confession to another believer for counsel.72

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic theology holds confession of sin to a priest to be one of the constituent elements, along with contrition and satisfaction, of the sacrament of penance, completed by the priest’s own judicial act of absolution. On this account confession must be auricular (spoken aloud to the priest), comprehensive (“without reserve,” including every mortal sin and its qualifying circumstances), and made to a priest holding ecclesiastical jurisdiction; an unconfessed mortal sin remains unforgiven, and willfully omitting one is itself a further, graver sin.6 Trent grounds the priest’s power to absolve in Christ’s grant of the keys to the apostles (Matt. 16:19; 18:18; John 20:22-23), understood as conferring authority to “sit as judges” over sin, remitting or retaining it by a sentence that stands as ratified in heaven itself.5

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t James 5:16’s command to “confess your sins to one another” itself warrant confessing specifically to a priest? Calvin observes that James names no particular office to receive the confession, and leaves believers free to confess to any member of the church who seems fittest, though a pastor’s training often makes that the wiser choice.7 What James commands is voluntary, sought out for counsel and consolation in a time of need, not a rite that “compels” a full enumeration of sins as a condition of forgiveness.7 The Second Helvetic Confession draws the same line: seeking a minister’s private counsel when overwhelmed by sin is commendable, but it is not the sacramental confession-and-absolution Rome requires, and Scripture gives no command or example of the latter.2

Doesn’t Christ’s own grant of “the keys of the kingdom” (Matt. 16:19; 18:18; John 20:22-23) establish a priestly power to absolve sin judicially? A. A. Hodge answers on several fronts: the promise in Matthew 18 was made to the whole body of disciples, not to a separate priestly class, and the earliest ministers of the church neither claimed nor exercised any such power; the Christian ministry is not itself a priesthood in the Old Testament sense; and absolution, on the pattern of Hebrews 5:1-6 and Levitical practice, “is a sovereign, not a priestly act.” The power of absolute forgiveness belongs to God alone and was not, as a matter of fact, granted to any creature.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 15, “Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation,” paras. 3-4. ↩

  2. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chap. 14, “Of Repentance and the Conversion of Man,” “Sacerdotal Confession and Absolution.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 4, sec. 1, 533-35. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 19, “Faith and Conversion.” ↩

  5. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace.,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 463-708. ↩ ↩2

  6. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 32, “Repentance and Penance,” 490-92. ↩ ↩2

  7. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 4, sec. 12, 544-45. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 32, 492-93. ↩