(For greatest benefit reading this, have your Bible at hand to look up references.)
A common challenge to Orthodox Catholic Tradition is, since the Apostolic Scriptures teach us that Christ is the ONLY mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5): “Why do we need to confess our sins to a priest? Why can’t we just confess our sins directly to God?”
First, not only can we confess our sins directly to God, we in fact must do this, and in fact we do in so many of the Church’s traditional prayers and singing of Psalms. To cite just a few specific examples of communal prayers we use constantly: the Lord Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven…forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!”; the Liturgy moves us to cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” over and over again; we sing a penitential Trisagion Prayer at every Sunday Liturgy in the Byzantine tradition, as our Western Catholic brethren say The Confiteor (“penitential act”) at every Mass. In our personal prayer we are invited frequently, even continually, to make use of the ancient Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” And if this is not already part of your own personal daily prayer, let me urge you to make it so.
Having answered that, let us focus on the primary, or real question we struggle with: “Why do we need to confess our sins to a priest?”
There are many good reasons, and the truth of this compels us to begin addressing these by first acknowledging that confession of sins is truly one of the most difficult things Christ calls us to do. And well it should be, for sin is no small matter! So instead of chastising ourselves and each other for feeling such reluctance, as if sinning and confessing sins were really no big deal, let us accept this struggle matter-of-factly, as a sign of the great value and importance for us of what Jesus calls us to do. Whatever comes too easily has too little value. Whatever is most difficult for us holds the most value, so this already tells us there are many good reasons to confess our sins to a priest of Christ, all of which ultimately comes back to One reason ~ because God tells us to!
Yet our Creator does not want the blind “obedience” of uncaring automatons from us. He didn’t make us robots or animals of mere instinct. He has made us to be in His Own Image and Likeness (Gen. 1), and because, “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1), God wants us to work together with Him (Eph 2:10); to invest ourselves in, take responsibility for and ownership of our lives He gifts to each of us (Luke 14:27). So He tells us WHY He wants us to confess our sins to His priests: It is because He longs for our true healing and gain of holy innocence! Thus He inspired St. James to say: “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed (5:16)!”
Note: according to the Epistle of St. James in the Bible, it is not just praying for one another that invites God’s healing upon us, but doing so after we confess our sins to one another! Yet again we may ask “WHY?” and yet again we already know the answer: because, for remedies to be applied aright, true causes of illness must be brought to Light!
Again, God wants us to be involved in and take ownership of our healing and growth in health, both in body and in our soul. We cannot do that by keeping soul-wounds and diseases hidden in the dark of our minds and hearts. If avoiding dealing with physical ailments, or superficially and carelessly “self- treating” them only leads to more problems (often to self-inflicted increase of ailments, and even enslaving addictions), what other than fear and shame makes us think we are better off keeping our soul-wounds hidden, avoiding dealing with them, and “self-treating” them? Is not our Enemy, Satan, the O.G. of self-deceivers?! The Holy Trinity didn’t make us to be islands unto ourselves, but declared at our creation: “it is not good for man to be alone!” (Gen. 2:18)!
We must come to understand that sin is no mere breaking of some arbitrary rules. It is breaking of communion with Life! It is truly being bent away from and broken off of our original Source and our intended aim (the word “sin” translates the Greek word “amartia” which literally means, “to miss the mark!”). And just as a branch cannot long survive being bent to breaking off from its tree or vine (John 15:1-12) so is sin truly a warping disease and disorder poisoning our souls and finally bringing death even to our bodies. Like disease, infections, or the disorder of cancer in our bodies, unchecked sin eats away at our souls bit by bit, or it can overwhelm us with catastrophic affect all at once (hence the Latin tradition’s distinction between “venial” and “mortal sins”)!
The most helpful way for us to stay aware of our constant need for Christ and His strength and mercy, then, is like recovering addicts. We do NOT go through life mostly pure and immaculate and just occasionally “fall off the wagon” when we sin, as used to be thought of alcoholics. Sin’s wounding hold upon our soul’s innocence is more like what addicts have had to learn in order to actually recover and gain mastery over their addiction ~ they must accept that the craving stays with them! Like cancer patients, recovering addicts can only remain vigilant to keep seeking help against the illness taking over their lives by accepting that their vulnerability remains with them. Similarly, only by accepting that, 1) God has made our souls more profoundly deep than we think, and, 2) therefore sin infects us more deeply and profoundly than we think, can we stay vigilant to keep seeking our Great Healer, Jesus Christ, and keep inviting Him with His forgiveness and healing more and more deeply into our lives, day by day, unto eternity.
Hence Jesus told “those convinced of their own righteousness, who thus looked down on everyone else” the warning parable of the Self-righteous Pharisee vs the Penitent Tax Collector (Luke 18:9), and He chastizes our self-righteousness, saying, “It is not the ‘healthy’ who need a Physician, but rather the sick. I have NOT come to call the ‘righteous,’ but sinners!” (Mark 2:17). So He declared “Blessed are the poor in spirit!” (Mat 5:3), for those who know themselves sick with sin and needy of healing, know themselves to be needy and “poor in spirit” before God. They know themselves totally needy of the Physician, so they keep coming to Him, and so “the Kingdom of God is theirs!”
Hence, Jesus also said: “Hear Me, everyone, and understand: nothing a man takes in from outside of himself can defile him; but…what comes out from within his heart defiles man! For from within ~ out of human hearts ~ proceed evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, theft, murder, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, arrogance, slander, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile man!” (Mark 7:14-24).
God, our Life-Source, desires to heal and free us from this, completely. The purifying fire of His purging forgiveness and love is all about this! Thus we need to sincerely, humbly seek from Him the “remission of sins” in our souls, just as we would desire remission of cancer in the body, so that its growth and spread is stopped, reversed, and finally completely purged from us.
Since we are created beings, we are not and cannot be self-sustaining! Only our Creator can BE. We are absolutely dependent on Him, and completely interdependent and symbiotic with all His creation; therefore our sins cause an impact on all around us.
Even if I tell myself that a specific sin impacts and diminishes none but “me, myself, and I” (e.g., like using pornography is usually justified), it still diminishes me within myself for all of creation that I am part of! Inwardly I make myself less and less of God’s image, both for myself and for the world; I stray further away from God’s Image and so further “miss the mark” for which we are all created! I, “fall short of the Glory of God” (Rom 3:23) ~ the very Image of Christ Himself (Col 1:15-17) ~ Who made me and gave Himself up for me! Thus even “private” sins, which seem to affect only ourselves, actually bring everything down!
This is why Jesus warns: “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill them” (Mat 5:17), so He makes more clear the real meaning for us of the Ten Commandments: “You have heard your ancestors were told: ‘You shall not commit murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you, anyone who holds anger for his brother [or sister] is subject to judgment…[and] You have heard that it was said of old: ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you, anyone who even looks lustfully at a woman [or man] has already committed adultery with them in their heart!” (Mat. 5:21-22; 27-28).
The point is this, whenever we sin, we are not just bending away from or breaking ourselves off from God alone. We bend away from and fracture our own integrity as wondrous members of God’s good creation, made as its end to be its heart and raise it all back to God! We sin against each other and all around us, and the whole Christian community we are part of ~ the “Bride” (Jn 3:23-30) and “Body” (1 Cor 12:12-28) of Christ Himself, our Redeemer and Healer Who longs yet patiently, humbly waits for us to bring our sins to Him and open our wounds to Him, to invite Him in to heal us. As Jesus Himself says: “All whom I love I chasten and discipline, so be zealous to repent! Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and commune with them, and they with Me!” (Revelation 3:19-20).
This is why the Holy Spirit works carefully, not by deception to coerce us but by truth to convert us, and to stir our consciences within us to take our private sins seriously and not think lightly of them. For the Holy Spirit knows our vulnerability to the deceptions of the fallen spirits, who hate and envy us “dust of the earth,” made lower than they (Psalm 8:5) yet gifted with the glory of our Creator’s Image and Likeness (Gen 1:26-28), to, “become partakers in the Divine Nature!” (2 Peter 1:4). He knows how Satan plays on us more and more until finally we, by our own carelessness, choose to follow “the father of lies” (John 8:44) into bending further and further away from Christ our true Healer and Head.
So St. John said by the Holy Spirit: “This is the message we have received from Him and declare to you ~ that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all! If we say we have fellowship with Him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the Light, since HE IS THE LIGHT, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us of all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the Truth is not in us! But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness! If we say we have no sin, we make Him out to be a liar, and so His Word is not in us!” (1 Jn 1:5-10).
For this reason, when our Lord Jesus appeared to His Disciples in the power of His Resurrection, He told them: “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, so I send you!’ And after He said this He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit! Whosoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, and whosoever’s sins you retain, they are retained!’” (John 20:21-23), and, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations! Baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you! And lo, I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS, to the end of the age!” (Matt 28:19-20). Thus did Jesus seal the Covenant; the Promise He had already given His Disciples: “Whoever receives you, receives Me! Whoever receives Me, receives Him Who sent Me!” (Mat 10:40), and, “He who hears you, hears Me, and he who rejects you, rejects Me! And he who rejects Me, rejects Him Who sent Me!” (Luke 10:16).
Through the Holy Tradition (2 Thess. 2:15) of His New Covenant successively passed down from His Apostles to His Churches, Jesus Himself keeps alive His Covenant with and for us: ordaining overseer-elders (bishops and presbyters) to speak and act as personal “place-holder signs” of His Presence (Covenanted in His Blood and Spirit) with the Body of His Community ALWAYS (“Behold, I AM with you always, to the end…!” – Matt 28:20)! The Spirit does this all that we penitents may literally hear Christ forgive us our sins in the absolution His priest gives on behalf of Himself and His Church, and the guidance given to discern healing repair from our sin’s affects.
We were not made to be disembodied spirits, like the angelic beings! We are people of spirit and body eternally (otherwise what is the promised resurrection of our bodies in Christ for?)! For this reason Christ wants us to hear His Voice through the voice of His priests: to be assured that our sins are forgiven; that our healing has begun; that we are freed to discern how to work with Him in our souls to break Satan’s leverage on us through sin driven by fear of death (Heb. 2:15). This is why Jesus told His Apostles: “Whoever hears you, hears Me!” (Luke 10:16), and, “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you!’…Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, and whoever’s sins you retain, they are retained!’” (John 20:21-23), and, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations! Baptizing them…and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you!” (Mat. 28:19-20).
So in wrestling with the question “Why is the Mystery of Confession Necessary“ we ultimately find that it really does all come back to that One reason ~ because God tells us to! And in the process we discover that our All-good,-loving,-Selfgiving God tells us to because Christ Jesus IS the ONLY mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). Infected by sin as we are, and so vulnerable to Satan’s deceptions, we can’t be this for ourselves! Therefore Christ has given us sure signs of His promised Presence from His Word to His Apostles abiding with us in historically verifiable Mystery by the succession He keeps alive in His Church (1 Tim 3:15)! In the end, His command is all for our good!
ADDENDUM:
For those wanting further assurance that Christ’s command for His Apostles to speak for Him to forgive or retain sins didn’t end with them; that Confession and Absolution truly was practiced as a Mystery of Christ’s Presence inherited in the Church from His Apostles and endured ~ Here are written testimonies from the 1st to 4th Centuries after the Apostles; preserved and passed down from the Early Church with, and bearing primary witness to, the authentic writings of the Apostles that form the New Testament (in other words, without such Early Church authors as the following, we would not have the New Testament we have ~ just the undeniable historical fact the Holy Spirit chose to work through to connect us by succession back to the Apostles of Jesus Himself!)
The Didache [A.D. 70]
“Confess your sins in the Church, and do not go up to your prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life. . . . On the Lord’s Day gather together, break the bread and offer the Eucharist, after confessing your transgressions so that your sacrifice may be pure” (Didache 4:14, 14:1).
The Letter of Barnabas [A.D. 74]
“You shall confess your sins. You shall not go to prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of light” (Letter of Barnabas 19, teaching similar to the Didache).
Ignatius of Antioch [A.D. 110]
“For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of penance, return to the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ” (Letter to the Philadelphians 3). … “For where there is divisiveness and wrath, God does not dwell. To all those who repent, the Lord grants forgiveness, if they turn in penitence to the unity of God, and to communion with the bishop” (ibid., 8).
Irenaeus of Lyon [A.D. 189]
“[The Gnostics] have deluded many women [and led them into ritual fornication and adultery]… Some of these women make a public confession, but others are ashamed to do this, and in silence, as if withdrawing from themselves the hope of the life of God, they either apostatize entirely or hesitate between the two courses” (Against Heresies 1:22 ).
Tertullian [A.D. 203]
“[Regarding confession, some] flee from this work as being an exposure of themselves, or they put it off from day to day. I presume they are more concerned about embarrassment than salvation, like those who contract a disease in the shameful parts of the body and shun making themselves known to the physicians; and thus they perish along with their own bashfulness” (Repentance 10:1).
Hippolytus [A.D. 215]
“[The bishop conducting the ordination of the new bishop shall pray:] God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… Pour forth now that power which comes from You, from Your royal Spirit, which You gave to Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and which He bestowed upon His holy Apostles…and grant this Your servant, whom You have chosen for the episcopate, [power] to feed Your holy flock and to serve without blame as Your high priest, ministering night and day to propitiate unceasingly before Your Face and to offer to You the gifts of Your holy Church, and by the Spirit of the High Priesthood to have the authority to forgive sins, in accord with Your command” (Apostolic Tradition 3).
Origen [A.D. 248]
“[A final means of obtaining forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious [is] the remission of one’s sins through penance, when the sinner…does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine, after the manner of him who said [Psalm 32:5], ‘I said, “I will confess my iniquities to the LORD.” And You forgave the guilt of my sin….”’” (Homilies on Leviticus 2:4).
Cyprian of Carthage [A.D. 251 & 253]
“The Apostle [Paul] likewise bears witness and says: ‘…Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. …“Of how much greater faith and salutary fear are they who…confess their sins to the priests of God in a straight- forward manner with sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience. …I beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while the satisfaction and remission made through the priests are still pleasing before the Lord” (The Lapsed 15:1 & 28).
“And do not think, dearest brother, that either the courage of the brethren will be lessened, or that martyrdoms will fail for this cause, that penance is relaxed to the lapsed, and that the hope of peace [i.e., absolution] is offered to the penitent…. For even to adulterers a time of repentance is granted by us, and peace [absolution] is [then] given.”… “But I wonder that some are so obstinate as to think that repentance is not to be granted to the lapsed, or to suppose that pardon is to be denied to the penitent, when it is written, ‘Remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the first works’ [Rev. 2:5], which is certainly said to him who has evidently fallen and whom the Lord exhorts to rise up again by deeds [of penance], for it is written, ‘Alms deliver from death’ [Tob. 12:9]” (Letters 51[55]:20 & 22).
Aphraahat the Persian Sage [A.D. 340]
“You [priests], then, who are disciples of our illustrious physician [Christ], you ought not deny a cure to those in need of healing. And if anyone uncovers his wound before you, give him the remedy of repentance. And he that is ashamed to make known his weakness, encourage him so that he will not hide it from you. And when he has revealed it to you, do not make it public, lest because of it the innocent might be reckoned as guilty by our enemies and by those who hate us” (Treatises 7:3).
Basil the Great [A.D. 374]
“It is necessary to confess our sins to those entrusted with the dispensation of God’s Mysteries.
Those doing penance of old are found to have done it before the saints. As it is written in the Gospel
that they confessed their sins to John the Baptist [Matt. 3:6], and in Acts [19:18] that they confessed
to the Apostles.” (The Rule Briefly Treated 288).
John Chrysostom [A.D. 387]
“Priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels. It was said to them: ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose, shall be loosed’ [Matt. 18:18]. Temporal rulers have indeed the power of binding; but they can only bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with a bond which pertains to the soul itself and transcends the very heavens. Did [God] not give them all the powers of heaven? ‘Whose sins you shall forgive,’ He says, ‘they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained’ [John 20:21–23]. What greater power is there than this? The Father has given all judgment to the Son [Jn 5:22]. And now I see the Son placing all this power in the hands of men” (The Priesthood 3:5).
Ambrose of Milan [A.D. 388]
“For those to whom [the right of binding and loosing] has been given, it is plain… Both are allowed to the Church… For this right has been granted to priests” (Penance 1:1).
Jerome [A.D. 388]
“If the serpent, the devil, bites someone secretly, he infects that person with the venom of sin. And if
the one who has been bitten keeps silence and does not do penance, and does not want to confess
his wound . . . then his brother [priest] and overseer [bishop], who have the word [of absolution]
that will cure him, cannot very well assist him” (Commentary on Ecclesiastes 10:11).
(list sourced from) What the Early Church Believed: Confession | Catholic Answers Tract