Confession and Absolution

Nowhere do systematic theology and pastoral theology so unmistakably intersect as in confession and absolution. In the act of confession, sin is not theoretically defined but named coram deo, and in the absolution there is no speculative inquiry into the nature of the forgiveness of sins. Instead, forgiveness is delivered in a powerful word granted by the authority of the crucified and risen Christ. This is no mere discussion about Christ and his reconciling work. Rather, it is the preaching of the healing Christ into the ears of those broken by sin. Systematically, as Gerhard Forde puts it, “The only solution to the problem of the absolute is actual absolution.” [2]

It is the absolution that is the compass for Lutheran theology. Martin Luther radically reoriented a long tradition that gave theological priority to the act of confession. For the Reformer, confession embraces the recognition and naming of sins and the word of God’s forgiveness for the sake of Christ, the absolution. In contrast to the Roman Catholic practice, [3] Luther shifted the emphasis from the act of confession to the speaking of the word of divine forgiveness. As Werner Klän observes, “Luther’s concept of confession and repentance is marked by a dual structure consisting of human and divine actions, wherein the divine action carries the whole weight.” [4]

Luther shifted the emphasis from the act of confession to the speaking of the word of divine forgiveness.

Confession and Absolution and the Distinction of the Law from the Gospel

The human action of confession was confined to the recognition and naming of sins which were known and felt in the conscience while acknowledging the totality of one’s sinfulness. Luther was adamant that troubled Christians not be burdened with the Roman demand for the enumeration of every sin. Such an unachievable rubric would press broken sinners deeper into uncertainty and despair and subvert the evangelical comfort of the absolution. “Up to now, as we all know from experience, there has been no law quite so oppressive as that which forced everyone to make confession on the pain of the gravest moral sin. Moreover, it so greatly burdened and tortured consciences with the enumeration of all kinds of sin that no one was able to confess purely enough.” [5] Luther’s pastoral concern is echoed in Articles XI and XXV of the Augsburg Confession which call for the retention of private absolution without the necessary enumeration of every sin; both Articles XI and XXV cite Psalm 19:12 as the biblical basis for the Reformation practice.

Confession and absolution are an exercise in the ministry of the law and the gospel. Through the law people are brought to know their sins before God and so are crushed with the recognition of their condemning consequences. The heart broken by the law can only acknowledge that God’s verdict is true. This knowledge of sin, Luther says in his lectures on Psalm 51 (1532), “means to feel and to experience the intolerable burden of the wrath of God.” [6] Such a heart has nowhere to turn except the promise of God: “a broken heart and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17). To this broken heart, incapable of mending itself, the absolution is spoken as the purest and most concentrated form of the gospel: “I forgive you your sins.”

Confession makes of us beggars before God. The divine wisdom of the gospel is that God is merciful to sinners for the sake of Christ Jesus. To confess one’s sins is to make supplication to God for mercy. To pray for mercy as David does in Psalm 51 is not to trust in oneself or works. Luther says “God does not want the prayer of a sinner who does not feel his sins, because he neither understands nor wants what he is praying for.” [7] Such praying, Luther contends, is to be compared to a beggar who cries out for alms and when offered money begins to brag of his riches.

Confession makes of us beggars before God.

Thus mercy is our whole life even until death; yet Christians yield obedience to the Law, but imperfect obedience because of the sin dwelling in us. For this reason let us learn to extend the word “Have mercy” not only to our actual sins but to all the blessings of God as well: that we are righteous by the merit of another; that we have God as our Father; that God the Father loves sinners who feel their sins—in short, that all our life is by mercy because all our life is sin and cannot be set against the judgment and wrath of God. [8]

David is like a beggar, he asks for forgiveness for no other reason than that he is a sinner.

To confess sin is to cease the futile attempt to self-justify. Indeed, it is to join with David in saying to God: “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you might be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (Ps. 51:4). In confession, the sinner acknowledges that God is right. It is to agree with God’s verdict: guilty. “When sins are thus revealed by the Word, two different kinds of men manifest themselves. One kind justifies God and by a humble confession agrees to His denunciation of sin; the other kind condemns God and calls Him a liar when He denounces sin.” [9] Confession of sin is the opposite of self-justification; it is the justification of God. 

This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023), pgs. 391-393.