This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
- 1 John 1:5-10
“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
- Isaiah 1:18
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’
- Isaiah 43:25
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
- Psalm 103:11-12
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
- James 5:16
“But, we may ask, did not Luther himself come perilously near to this perversion in the understanding of grace? What about his Pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo (‘Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still’)? You are a sinner, anyway, and there is nothing you can do about it. Whether you are a monk or a man of the world, a religious man or a bad one, you can never escape the toils of the world or from sin. So put a bold face on it, and all the more because you can rely on the opus operatum of grace. Is this the proclamation of cheap grace, naked and unashamed, the carte blanche for sin, the end of all discipleship? Is this a blasphemous encouragement to sin boldly and rely on grace? Is there a more diabolical abuse of grace than to sin and rely on the grace which God has given? Is not the Roman Catechism quite right in denouncing this as the sin against the Holy Ghost?
“If we are to understand this saying of Luther’s, everything depends on applying the distinction between the data and the answer to the sum. If we make Luther’s formula a premiss for our doctrine of grace, we are conjuring up the spectre of cheap grace. But Luther’s formula is meant to be taken, not as the premiss, but as the conclusion, the answer to the sum, the coping-stone, his very last word on the subject. Taken as the premiss, pecca fortiter acquires the character of an ethical principle, a principle of grace to which the principle of pecca fortiter must correspond. That means the justification of sin, and it tums Luther’s formula into its very opposite. For Luther ‘sin boldly’ could only be his very last refuge, the consolation for one whose attempts to follow Christ had taught him that he can never become sinless, who in his fear of sin despairs of the grace of God. As Luther saw it, ‘sin boldly’ did not happen to be a fundamental acknowledgement of his disobedient life; it was the gospel of the grace of God before which we are always and in every circumstance sinners. Yet that grace seeks us and justifies us, sinners though we are. Take courage and confess your sin, says Luther, do not try to run away from it, but believe more boldly still. You are a sinner, so be a sinner, and don’t try to become what you are not. Yes, and become a sinner again and again every day, and be bold about it. But to whom can such words be addressed, except to those who from the bottom of their hearts make a daily renunciation of sin and of every barrier which hinders them from following Christ, but who nevertheless are troubled by their daily faithlessness and sin? Who can hear these words without endangering his faith but he who hears their consolation as a renewed summons to follow Christ? Interpreted in this way, these words of Luther become a testimony to the costliness of grace, the only genuine kind of grace there is.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Costly Grace)
Basically, Bonhoeffer is saying that Luther was paraphrasing 1 John 1:5-10. We should not sin, but we sin. When we confess our sin, God is just and will forgive us our sin. We may not need to be as “bold” as James says in James 5, confessing openly, one to another, but in some cases, if we need to dig that sin out by the roots, finding someone who will hold that in confidence, confessing to someone else might set up an accountability to not do that sin again. And I am not talking about a priest, someone that you know and trust.
But Bonhoeffer does spend a lot of time on that phrase “Sin boldly” to put it in the proper perspective. Those two words seem to usher in cheap grace. Cheap grace could easily say, “God forgets our sin, so just keep sinning.”
But wait! God is all knowing. How can God forget anything if He is “ALL” knowing? Isaiah is saying that God has washed away our sins (the Isaiah 1 reference) but He holds no sin against us (the Isaiah 43 reference). It is like God files away our sins. He has them in a filing cabinet with a triple lock, and He has swallowed the keys.
So, God, like in Psalm 103 has removed us from our sins like east is from west, in that we are not accountable for those sins.
But the bold part of this is in the confession. The illustration of a sinful life being a life in darkness is a good illustration. Many things are done in the shadows or at night with less eyes that might catch what happened. But confession brings that sin out into the light so that it might be dealt with. That sin has no power over us. God has forgiven the sin, and we no longer waste our time by trying to hide that sin. As John said in the first Scripture above, if we deny the sin, we deceive ourselves. Keeping the sin in the darkness is a form of denying that sin.
Thus, we admit we are sinners boldly. We confess our sins before God boldly. He already knows, but in confession, it gives us the chance to turn from that sin, to repent. The sins buried in the closet can be brought back out and tried again. Confess them and they no longer have that power over us.
Lord, guide me. I am a sinner. I get a lot of things wrong. I turn my eyes from my gaze on Jesus too much of the time. But the more that I study Your Holy Word and ponder upon the things of Your kingdom, I have the strength to resist temptation. In fact, the temptations lessen the more I keep my eyes on You. Thank You, Lord. In Your name I pray. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
Leave a comment