Truth is an essential concept in the Bible. Jesus goes beyond claiming that his words are true to claim that he himself is truth.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6 (ESV) 

We are guaranteed that God is true: he is the “God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16). His words are true, and they are, in fact, the standard by which we should determine truth. We are also told that the truth is central to our experience as followers of Jesus.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 

John 8:31-32 (ESV)

Unfortunately, there are stories throughout history where the church has fought the truth. One example is the attempt to suppress the evidence that the earth goes around the sun out of a mistaken belief that such a view contradicts the Bible.

We often see even more dangerous forms of truth avoidance in our approaches to sin and fellowship in the church. We hide our sins and our daily struggles from those around us. We convince ourselves that our sins are “little” sins that don’t matter (things like gossip or “white lies” or selfishness) or that exposing our sins will do more harm than good.

The damage done by this kind of truth avoidance is hard to measure, but not hard to find. It’s in the friendship destroyed by gossip. It’s in the seeker turned off by the church where everyone seems to live perfect lives. It’s in the church shattered by the discovery of a pastor’s secret sin or the lives tortured by the secrecy surrounding another minister’s sin.

My denomination has been in the news this past week, in a way that is both awful and potentially very good. You see, people have done terrible, sinful things, and those things have been covered up in the name of protecting church leaders, the churches, the denominational leaders, and the denomination. The good news is that as some of these sins have come to light the majority of representatives of the churches have chosen to do some right things and to seek more of the truth. We have yet to see how much change will result from the truth that has been revealed, but learning the truth has resulted in opportunities for change and healing that could never have happened without those revelations.

It’s easy to look at stories of big-picture hypocrisy and corruption in churches and think that the issue is about “them”: it’s all about the church leaders, whether pastors, deacons, elders, and so on. After all, they’re in charge of the churches and what they do, right?

But they’re not entirely in charge, because we are the church. While leadership may sometimes be corrupt and cause problems that are out of our control, individual members too often participate in truth-hiding ourselves. We can’t change what our pastors and other church leaders do, but we can live our own lives with integrity and refuse to cover up or even just turn a blind eye to sin in our leaders in the name of protecting the church or protecting someone’s ministry.

God will protect his own Church and the work of his Church without the help of our lies about sin. God will also provide healing from sin, but that healing requires the light of truth. There is a verse that I had to memorize as a child: 1 John 1:9. I have become convinced that to fully grasp the point here, we also need to look at the verses that surround it.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:8-10 (ESV)

We have all sinned. We know that, but we become tempted as Christians to see our sin as in the past or to see our current sins as small and insignificant and therefore unworthy of focus and confession. We’ll take our gossip or our little white lies or our “borrowing” of a small item or our feuding with a coworker and sweep it into a corner and hope no one notices it. That way we get to present the picture of the Christian who has it all together. Apart from the issue that these are not “little” sins in the eyes of God, there is no growth or healing in that approach. James makes a related point:

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

James 5:16 (ESV)

Based on the context, the healing here is primarily physical healing, but James is switching back and forth between physical healing and forgiveness of sin in this passage in a way that I think makes it clear that he considers them closely tied together. This shouldn’t surprise us much given our current understanding of the impacts of things like stress and guilt on our physical well-being.

There are two important points in this verse. The first is one I often prefer to ignore: James calls us to confess not only to God but also to each other. I think this is a reminder about the importance of truth and bringing things into the light of day in our lives. If we want healing (I suspect any kind of healing), we need to let our brothers and sisters see into the dark closets of our lives. I don’t think that necessarily means that the whole world needs to know every detail of every sin every one of us commits. It does mean that we need to be willing to confess the details to trusted fellow Christians. And I think it means that we should be more open in general about our failures and stumbles. The church is supposed to be a place for sinners and people with struggles and problems. Pretending our lives are perfect is not part of our mission on earth.

The second point I want to talk about has to do with the “prayer of a righteous person.” It’s easy to look at that phrase and think that it’s not about me. I’m not righteous: James was just telling me to confess my sins. However, James also told us to pray for one another. The point is that when we do confess, when we drag our sins into the light of day and turn away from them, we become the righteous person whose prayer is powerful. That’s what John was telling us. It’s a central point of the gospel, but one that we don’t focus on enough at times.

By dragging our failures and flaws into the light of truth, we become righteous and powerful. When we pretend to be righteous and powerful, hiding our undesirable traits, we remain weak and become stumbling blocks for those we should be helping.

I’ll leave you with a recent song by Matthew West; I’ve linked the official YouTube video below, but part of the chorus goes like this:

“I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit it
When being honest is the only way to fix it
There’s no failure, no fall
There’s no sin you don’t already know
So let the truth be told”