Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to a 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. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a brother he will never be alone again, anywhere… 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. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham the sin confessed has helped him to find true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ… He can confess his sins and in this very act find fellowship for the first time. ![]() Now he can be a sinner and still enjoy the grace of God. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted… All that is secret and hidden is openly manifest. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. In confession the break-through to community takes place. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy… ![]() Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. ![]() It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.
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