In the Roman Catholic church, they have a practice of people confessing their sins to the priest. Some Protestant churches also encourage believers to confess their sins to one another and teach that every believer must have an "accountability partner" to whom he confesses all his sins regularly, as a way to overcome sin. Such a teaching is never found anywhere in the New Testament . It is the teaching of human psychology and not of the Holy Spirit. Yet, many believers have blindly accepted this false teaching and practice it.

The Bible never speaks anywhere of having an accountability partner. That way of avoiding sin is actually pursuing holiness through the fear of man - avoiding sin because of the shame of having to confess it to one's "accountability partner". But the Bible commands us to perfect holiness in the fear of God - not in the fear of man (2 Cor.7:1). We are accountable to God - "He is the only One with Whom we have to do" (Heb.4:13).

We must confess our sins only to the Lord. The command in James 5:16 "Confess your sins to one another" has often been taken out of context. In its context, it is clear that it is referring to a sick believer who is being prayed for by the elders of his church. Since sickness at times is caused by sin (as we see in John 5:14 ), the sick person is told there to confess his sins (which may be the cause of his sickness) "so that he can be healed". That is NOT teaching believers to confess their sins to other believers. It is very dangerous when any verse is taken out of its context. A verse taken out of context often becomes a pretext for false teaching. So be careful that you study all verses in their immediate context and compare them with other verses on the same subject in the Bible.

The only sin that we must confess to a human being is the sin that we committed against him- for example, if we have cheated him or hurt him in any way, etc., (Matt.5:23,24). Remember this always.

We should never talk about our past sins in detail, to anyone, because that glorifies Satan (who made us commit those sins) and also pollutes the minds of those who hear our confessions. We glorify God now by declaring that we are cleansed and justified (justas if I'd never sinned)by Christ's blood.You must remember this all your life. We must of course, always acknowledge that we are sinners saved by God's grace . But we must never confess the details of our sins to anyone but God. This is the new covenant way.

All believers when they give their testimony should always glorify God for the work He has done in them (the positive part), and never glorify Satan by mentioning details of what all he made them do in their unconverted past. It is enough if we say that we were sinners, backsliders or rebellious etc.

I have been personally encouraged to see that Peter spoke about the mount of transfiguration experience in his letters and not about his denying the Lord (2 Pet.1:17,18). Likewise, when Paul gives his testimony to the Jews (Acts 22) and to Agrippa (Acts 26), he speaks in great detail about his encounter with the Lord and only a little bit about his persecuting the Christians. Confessing specific sins is a Roman Catholic and heathen idea, which unfortunately some Protestant writers are also encouraging nowadays. This has "the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement, but actually is of no value" (Col.2:23). Self-abasement is not humility - and it is not wisdom either. Wisdom is our greatest need.