Bonhoeffer on confession

Alone in church?
Confess your faults one to another (James 5.16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, not withinstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. 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. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (translated by John W. Doberstein), 86.

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