Good News Quote #29

From Chapter Five, Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations: Or, How Love Seeks the Good.

So what should you do if you do discover that you have bad motivations for doing good things? First of all, join the club. You are a fallen human being, and you too have a deceitful heart. So of course you have mixed motives all the time. [...]


That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything about it. But instead of trying to improve your motivations or find the right one, the thing to do is repent and confess your sins. [...]


This is a point we often get backward. For some reason, we think we can make Christianity attractive to non-Christians by telling them how God's Spirit has been working in our lives to make us such good, loving people -- so different from our nasty, unloving Christian neighbors. And we wonder why non-Christians think we're self-righteous! It's one thing for a former drug addict to testify about how Christ has turned his life around; but when nice, well-off people who have their lives together talk about how powerfully God is working in their hearts, it's obnoxious.

Life Together Quote #53

From Chapter Five, Confession and Communion. This is the last quote from Life Together.

[Breaking Through to Community] In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).

Life Together Quote #52

From Chapter Five, Confession and Communion.

The misery of the sinner and the mercy of God -- this was the truth that his Church was to live. Therefore, he gave his followers the authority to hear the confession of sin and to forgive sin in his name. "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20:23).

When he did that Christ made the Church, and in it our brother, a blessing to us. Now our brother stands in Christ's stead. Before him I need no longer dissemble. Before him alone in the whole world I dare to be the sinner that I am; here the truth of Jesus Christ and his mercy rules. Christ became our Brother in order to help us. Through him our brother has become Christ for us in the power and authority of the commission Christ has given to him. Our brother stands before us as a sign of the truth and the grace of God. He has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ's stead and he forgives our sins in Christ's name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.

Life Together Quote #51

From Chapter Five, Confession and Communion.

"Confess your faults one to another" (Jas. 5:16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding 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. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone.