LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 224

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224

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
absolution, and the forgiveness that Christ won for
us is actually conveyed.
3. The pastor is not merely a pastoral counselor or
teacher who reinforces what the Christian already
knows, but he handles the very Means of Grace
that keep the Christian’s faith alive.
4. The pastor vows never to reveal the contents of a
person’s confession.

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
Part Two:
Helping the Pastor
Introduction

I

Like every child of God, pastors need the saving,
relieving and strengthening Gospel, even as they administer it. The pastor is a fallen sinner. Without Christ, he
will die in his sins. All share in this fallen condition, but
sin also shows its power in unique ways in every life. So,
the help Christ gives to pastors through individual confession is like that received by every other child of God
and also specific to his calling.

The pastor is first a Christian. Though he is a shepherd, he is also a lamb in need of a shepherd. Tidball
observes, “Casualties of the pastoral ministry abound
because they themselves refuse to have pastors.”64 In
contrast to this isolation, however, is the pastor who celebrates his place in the Body of Christ: “Skillful shepherds
will place their ministry firmly within the body of Christ.
They will remember that even while they are shepherds
they are also sheep. In this way their isolation will be
overcome.”65 Löhe understood this:

Help for the Pastor as a Child
of God

f Christ’s gift of private confession and
absolution is to benefit the church today, how may
we reclaim it? Any restoration of private confession
must begin with pastors, whose office is centered in
proclaiming Christ and His forgiveness. Those who
preach Christ and His gifts do so rightly when they have
received His gracious gifts themselves.

Just as one cannot be judge in his own case, so one
cannot rightly pass judgment on the ways of one’s
own life and heart; and as a patient cannot heal
himself, but needs a physician … so also a person
needs a comforter and physician of souls through
whom the comfort and medicine of the Holy Spirit
can be handed him from the Word of God.66
64
Derek Tidball, Skillful Shepherds: Explorations in Pastoral Theology
(Leicester: Apollos, 1997), 321.
65

Tidball, Skillful Shepherds, 337.

Wilhelm Löhe, “The Sacrament of Repentance,” Una Sancta 10:2
(1951): 3–4.

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CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

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PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS

own experience of confession and absolution in Isaiah 6,
where his cry of “woe is me” reflects not only his own sin
but also the sin of the corporate people. God responds
through a messenger of grace with a declaration, and
even a touch of absolution, that purifies Isaiah’s unclean
lips. Indeed, lips that will proclaim God’s judgment and
salvation are lips that have first experienced God’s judgment and forgiveness. “This has touched your lips; your
guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Is. 6:7).
The battle of sin is the war of all wars. Only when sin
is finally defeated — in the eschaton — will humanity’s
rebellion finally end (1 Cor. 15:22–26). What is true for
humankind is true also for us individually. Despite the
distraction of countless troubles in our lives, no other
problem is as serious as our sin. Sin remains the cancer
we battle lifelong, the disease that leads to physical death.
More importantly, left unaddressed, sin will kill us eternally. We dare not underestimate this enemy — sin and
Satan, who scripts its malignancy (Eph. 6:12).
Our Lord teaches us poor sinners to confess our
sin, not as catharsis, but in prayerful, honest acknowledgment to our Father (Matt. 6:12). Every child of God
— man or woman, old or young, church worker or
layperson — and also every pastor “should plead guilty
of all sins, even those we are not aware of.”69 Therefore,
confession is part of daily prayer before God alone and
part of the corporate prayers of the church in its worship.
But as we have shown above, the Word of God does not
command, but it certainly invites individual confession
of sins before a fellow Christian as another time-tested
aid and comfort for poor sinners.
The Church’s regular practice — enacted most
obviously in her liturgy — puts onto our lips words that
acknowledge this struggle, phrases that beg our hearts to
assent to their truth. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” “Let us then confess
our sins”; “we are by nature sinful and unclean”; “we have
sinned against You”; “we have not loved You”; “we have
not loved our neighbors”; “we justly deserve Your present
and eternal punishment”; “I have ever offended You and
justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment”;
“Create in me a clean heart.”70 In the Litany, we plead with
our good Lord to deliver us “from all sin, from all error,
from all evil; from the crafts and assaults of the devil” and

“to beat down Satan under our feet.”71
Such stark reminders cry out for our attention. Personal reflection in the mirror of God’s Law reminds us
that the battle is raging not only cosmically, but within
us. We see that we “daily sin much.” And in the first table
of God’s Law, we see that “the devil, the world, and our
sinful nature” seek to “deceive us or mislead us” into the
depths of sin’s rebellion, that is, “into false belief, despair,
and other great shame and vice.”72 We need such a
heartfelt, honest assessment. Our sins are seductive — it
is all too easy to get friendly with them as no more than
dalliances and fail to see how Satan uses them to draw us
from the One who is our true hope and joy.
In the order for confidential, individual confession
before the pastor from Lutheran Service Book (LSB), the
penitent “plead[s] guilty before God of all sins,” including self-centeredness, disobedience to His commands,
faltering prayer and a failure to love as we are loved. Such
words could be echoed by every child of God without
modification. But the penitent adds, “What troubles
me particularly is that…,” with the ellipsis in the order
itself.73As one finishes the sentence, he is facing the
battle head-on, sharing specific sin that “weighs on us or
attacks us, eating away at us until we can have no peace
nor find ourselves sufficiently strong in faith.”74
This invitation to unburden oneself of specific sins
before a fellow believer is one of the blessings of private
confession. A component of it is that in confession to
another, we are inviting that person to be an ally in the
battle of sanctification, an “accountability partner” of
sorts.75 It is a privilege extended to every individual
Christian, no matter what that person’s vocation. Although such honest admissions of besetting sin may be
made to a trusted friend or another person, confession
before a pastor carries with it the emphatic assurance of
complete confidentiality that he promised at his ordination. While other trusted friends may keep confidences,
they most likely do not have the pastor’s acute awareness
of the importance of that responsibility and the compre71

LSB 288.

LSB 324, Luther’s Small Catechism, Lord’s Prayer; cf. SC, “Lord’s
Prayer,” KW 358.18.

72

73

LSB 292.

74

“A Brief Exhortation to Confession,” 13, KW 477.

“Accountability partner” is a term often used in both quasi-therapeutic settings, such as Twelve Step sponsors, and also in Evangelical
discipleship practices. It refers to someone with whom one shares
weaknesses and sins and to whom one holds oneself accountable. There
is no reason to scorn the idea of having someone who knows the battle
an individual engages and checks on how we are doing.
75

LSB 326, Luther’s Small Catechism, Confession; cf. SC, “Holy Baptism,” KW 360.18.

69

70
From LSB Divine Service, Setting One and Setting Three, 151, 184,
192.

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

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PART TWO: HELPING THE PASTOR

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CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

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Recognition of our need for the Lord’s constantly
nourishing grace is for all. The pastor stands on the same
level as those he serves; both need the forgiveness of sins,
and both receive it in absolution. Both pastor and people
are beggars; there is no difference.

‘We flee for refuge’
Confession’s alternative is flight from God, attempting to
hide our sin. Our first parents introduced us not only to
sin itself, but also to denial, hiding from and fleeing the
only One who can save us from the scourge that would
consume us (Gen. 3:8). To seek the Lord’s aid is counter to
fallen human intuition; its logic is to flee our judge and
hide from Him. Yet, He calls out to us in love: “Come now,
let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are
like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are
red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is. 1:18).
Rather than drive us away to run and hide from Him, our
God woos us in the preaching of the Gospel, the promises
of Baptism and the invitation to the altar. He continually
invites us to “flee for refuge to [His] infinite mercy, seeking
and imploring [His] grace for the sake of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”76 The confidence in these words from the general
confession flows from the Lord’s promise to welcome
sinners. This powerful refrain of God’s mercy is woven like
a thread through the Old Testament:
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster. (Joel 2:13; see also
Ex. 34:6; Num. 14:18; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Jonah 4:2)
In the confidential setting of the confessional, the
penitent sinner is encouraged to bold faith and an open
admission of the sin(s) that bring turmoil. Our attempts
at hiding sin — our exercises in denial — are nothing but
self-deceit:
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts
no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
LSB 184.

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

“Almighty God, our maker and redeemer, we poor
sinners confess unto You that we are by nature sinful
and unclean and that we have sinned against You by
thought, word, and deed.”67 On behalf of the entire
assembly, the pastor speaks these words of confession.
The congregation’s response makes plain that they take
them as their own; nonetheless, they remain the pastor’s
admission as well. Neither office nor ordination exempts
him from Adam’s fall — from the ranks of that “huge
rebellious man.”68
The Scriptures provide many examples of God’s
servant-leaders falling into private and public sin, from
Aaron (Exodus 32) to the sons of Eli (1 Samuel 2) to the
priests in the time of Malachi (1:6). David’s great sin and
confession are well known (Psalm 51). Isaiah recounts his
67

LSB 184.

68

LSB 569, stanza 1.

through my groaning all day long. (Ps. 32:1–3)
The penitent is invited to go with David into a full
acknowledgment of sin: “I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my
transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity
of my sin” (Ps. 32:5).
To be sure, one may honestly acknowledge sin without
resort to private confession as we do in personal prayer.
But in private confession, the presence of the confessor
who hears one’s admission of individual sin is a striking
instance of how God gives forgiveness through means. The
pastor preaches God’s Word, not his own (1 Thess. 2:13).
He is Christ’s hands and mouth in Baptism, bathing with
water as the Head commands and speaking the words the
Head directs to tongue and vocal chords (Matt. 28:19). The
same is true in the Supper as the pastor’s voice speaks the
Head’s Words of Institution over bread and wine and as
his hands extend the bread that is the Head’s body and the
cup full of His blood assuring yet again, “Take, eat, this is
the body of Christ. Drink of it, this is the blood of Christ”
(see Matt. 26:26–28). So also, then, in the confessional, the
pastor provides ears and tongue for the Head to use. The
penitent speaks in the hearing of human ears that belong
to the Head of the Body. And then the penitent hears
a human voice, by which the Head of the Body speaks,
forgiving the sins just confessed.
With an honest, candid and private confession of the
sin that deeply troubles, all hiding ends. Exposure to
the light may frighten. These are fearful words: “What
troubles me particularly is that…” Who would not gulp
before finishing that sentence with an admission of open
disobedience to God’s commandments, or with the confession of besetting sin that we have been hiding from
ourselves as well as the world, or with an acknowledgment that we feel like a hypocrite because our life falls so
far from our Christian convictions? But for the candid
penitent, a sense of freedom begins — freedom from
deceit, lies and a wasting of our souls.
This is confession’s first part in its most profound
form. “Note, then, as I have often said, that confession
consists of two parts. The first is our work and act,
when I lament my sin and desire comfort and restoration for my soul.”77 It is a hard work for sinners that
may involve real anguish, so it cannot be coerced and
must always be voluntary. Nevertheless, we should not
suggest that somehow there is no more need for this

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PART TWO: HELPING THE PASTOR

hensiveness of it. Nor have they taken the pastor’s vow
of complete confidentiality. To be reassured that what is
spoken in the confessional stays in the confessional
is a powerful encouragement to those whose sins are
attacking them, “eating away” until peace is gone and
faith itself is consumed. This is true of every believer.

76

‘We poor sinners’

“A Brief Exhortation to Confession,” KW 478.15.

PART TWO: HELPING THE PASTOR

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