Bonhoffer Chapter 5

In this chapter, Bonhoffer tackles the topic of confession and communion. He points out something that is really important, for us to understand about Jesus and the cross, and he words his point really well. He states, 

“He was not ashamed to be crucified for us as an evildoer. It was nothing else but our fellowship with Jesus Christ that leads us to ignominious dying that comes in confession, in order that we may in truth share in his Cross… We cannot find the cross of Jesus if we shrink from going to the place where it is to be found, namely, the public death of the sinner” (114).   

Following this statement, he talks about how as sinners, we are prone to running away from confessing when we do something sinful and keeping the sin to ourselves. Unfortunately, this leads to an uncontrollable spiral of sinning and pushing it away. Our hearts become hardened and our relationship with God gets less and less significant when we do this. I think as believers we all know that when our hearts are aligned with God’s and we confess when we participate in something sinful, it is so freeing! So why are we do prone to running away from this freeing confession? Bonhoffer states that when we can confess our sins to God as well as other believers it opens up doors for “true fellowship”. He says in a way, we are taking up our Cross that rescued us and following Him. How freeing is that? The sad thing is, God knows our sins. He knows when we have blatantly disobeyed Him, and we know that He knows, but it’s almost as though the enemy put’s in our minds that if we keep our mouths shut and push the sins away, that the issue will go away. Maybe others haven’t struggled with this so much, but I know I have.

I grew up as a pastor’s kid. My family always joked that being a pastor’s kid (or PK as we liked to call it) was like living in a fish bowl. Everyone is looking in on our family, watching our every move, judging when we did something bad, and talking (really it was gossiping) to those around them about the pastor’s family and all of our actions. Even outside of the church building, I felt like my every move was being watched because people from the church lived in my community. I’ll never forget, one Saturday I went to the grocery store with my mom, and she had just gotten out of the shower before we left. Typically, she would blow dry her hair, but this day she was in a hurry and decided to let it air dry. When we got to the grocery store, we ran into a member of the church. She stood there for a good 5 minutes and gave my mom a hard time for her hair not looking “presentable” with her wet hair when she was the pastor and should always look presentable… on a Saturday morning… at the grocery store… I’m sorry, what?

From that story, and as you can imagine, many more stories, you could probably imagine why confessing of my sins to other people has never proven easy for me. however, as stated before, when we chose to confess them, we can find fruit in that. I can feel chains being broken when I take that step (or leap!) of faith and talk to others and God about my wrongdoings. Often, I have found that the person I feel lead to talk to about it is someone who is either walking in the same thing currently or has walked in that path before and has insight as to how to push through it. I love the way God put’s people in our lives for that reason. To love on us, extend grace and mercy to us, and point us to our heavenly father through it all.