What verses point to the sacrament of confession?
By CopticBot.ai (Coptic Space Inc.) · Last reviewed 2026-10-10
The Coptic Orthodox Church bases the Sacrament of Confession on the clear authority given by our Lord Jesus Christ to His Apostles and their successors. While heretics, particularly Protestants, claim that confession should only be "to God alone" in private, the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church prove that Christ established a specific order for the reconciliation of the faithful through the priesthood.
1. The Authority to Forgive (John 20:21–23)
This is the foundational verse for the priesthood’s role in the sacrament. After His Resurrection, our Lord breathed on His disciples and said:
"As the Father has sent Me, I also send you... Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
By giving the Apostles the power to "retain" or "forgive," Christ necessitated that the penitent must speak their sins aloud. A priest cannot know which sins to forgive and which to retain unless they are confessed audibly.
2. The Power of Binding and Loosing (Matthew 18:18)
Our Lord told His Apostles:
"Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
This "loosing" refers to the absolution given by the priest, which releases the believer from the spiritual chains of their sins.
3. Confession to One Another (James 5:16)
St. James the Apostle explicitly commands:
"Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed."
In the context of this chapter (James 5:14), the "one another" refers to the "elders of the church" (the priests, from the Greek presbyteros). We do not confess to a random person, but to a spiritual father who has the authority to offer the prayer of faith and the "anointing" mentioned in the preceding verses.
4. The Practice of the Early Church (Acts 19:18)
In the Book of Acts, we see that the early Christians did not merely pray in private; they confessed their deeds openly to the Apostles:
"And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds."
5. Old Testament Shadow (Leviticus 5:5–6)
The Coptic Church, following the Alexandrian school of interpretation, sees the Old Testament law as a shadow of the New:
"And it shall be, when he is guilty in any of these matters, that he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing; and he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord..."
Just as the sinner had to bring a sacrifice to the priest and confess his sin in the Tabernacle, so too must the Christian bring a "broken heart and a contrite spirit" (Psalm 51) to the priest in the Church to receive the grace of the New Covenant sacrifice.
6. The Necessity of Sincerity (1 John 1:9)
St. John the Beloved writes:
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
The Church teaches that this "confession" is the outward act that accompanies the inward repentance. Without the humility required to confess before a witness (the priest), pride remains in the heart.
Summary of the Coptic Perspective
The priest is a witness and an intercessor. When a person sits with their Father of Confession, they are confessing to Christ Himself in the presence of the priest. The priest then recites the Absolution, asking God to forgive the penitent based on the authority Christ gave to the Church.
This is not "forgiveness by a man," but forgiveness by God through the constitutional means He established in His Church. To reject confession to a priest is to reject the very mechanism Christ ordained in John 20:23.