Confessing the Faith
Confessing?
Confessing literally means to ‘say the same thing.’
In the New Testament, the Greek verb, homologeo is used when a solemn public declaration is made of what Christians believe [John 1:20; 9:22; 12:42; Romans 10:9-10; 1 Timothy 6:12; 1 John 2:23; 4:2, 3, 15; 2 John 7]. The noun, homologia, denotes either an act of confession of the gospel, or a liturgical form of confession in the community [2 Corinthians 9:12-13, 1 Timothy 6:12, 13; Hebrews 3:1; 4:14; 10:23].
Scripture calls us to confess our faith in Christ, which includes all of Scripture’s witness concerning Him [Matthew 10:32-33].
The English word, confession, comes from Latin, confessio [I confess], which can mean the admission, acknowledgment, or public declaration of something. On one hand it is used in the sense of a confession of sins [e.g. Psalm 32:5; James 5:16; 1 John 1:9]
On the other hand, it is used in the sense of a confession of faith, a confident declaration [Acts 4:13, 31] of what a person believes and stands for [Romans 10:9, 10; Matthew 10:32-33; Luke 12:8, 9; Philippians 2:11]. Confession in this sense means ‘to state what you believe’ (what God says). The Lutheran Confessions are statements of faith that Lutherans use to declare to the world, ‘This is what we believe, teach and confess.’
The Christian church has then been confessing its faith from the very beginning. Jesus confesses and teaches the truth all through his ministry. The Apostles confessed the faith in their ministries, many of them losing their lives as a result.
Confession and Salvation in Scripture
Romans 10:9-10 tells us
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is LORD and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
This does not mean we will be saved words we say (by our own works). It does not mean that publicly confessing your faith qualifies you for salvation. It is a parallel Greek construction that shows the close connection between what we truly believe and what we say, not a causal connection between confessing and being saved.
We are saved by trusting and believing in Christ, and this manifests outwardly by our confession of him. Confessing (speaking) our faith inevitably arises from sincerely believing in Jesus.
An evil person produces evil things out of an evil heart, just as a good person produces good things from a good heart. For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Matthew 12:34
When we believe something, it always affects what we say (and what we do). When we encounter people whose confessions and actions are at odds with one another, clearly there is something wrong there.
Confessions or the Bible?
But why do we need confessions when we have the Bible?
The Bible is after all the norm and rule for all we believe and do. The Bible has confessions or statements of faith in it. The Early Church in the time of the apostles had already started to use shared statements to confess their faith in Jesus Christ:
1 Corinthians 12:3: Jesus is Lord (Christos Kyrios)
1 Peter 3:18: Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. He was put to death in the flesh but was made alive in the Spirit.
Philippians 2:6-11:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The Bible is written in many different literary forms: history, poetry, sayings, prophecy, letters etc. Scripture is partly narrative – stories that carry the truth of God’s actions in history and in the lives of human beings. These stories reach out into the lives of people – think of Jesus’ parables. But stories are open to various interpretations because they invite us to have our own ‘take’ on what they mean for our lives. They are relational in nature.
The Bible also contains teachings (doctrine) from God which are not open to our own individual ‘take’ on them. These teachings are true in a more definite and exclusive sense. Jesus teaches in this doctrinal way all through his ministry too. The Epistles of the New Testament also teach us in this way. They put forward the important truths of the Christian faith so that the church can clearly see and believe them and not be confused by false and mistaken teachers.
All through the history of the church questions about doctrine come up:
What does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God?
What is the resurrection of the dead? Is it spiritual or physical, or both?
What does baptism do?
What role do good works play in the Christian life?
What does it mean that we are predestined to salvation?
How do Christians relate to the covenants of the Old Testament?
In the apostolic and early church, and in every age since, the church has gone on teaching and confessing the doctrines of the Bible on these and other matters using the three ecumenical creeds:
The Apostles Creed
Nicene Creed
Athanasian Creed
In all of these confessions of the faith, the church has been obedient to Christ’s call to confess him before the world –
Whoever confesses me before others, I will also confess before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
Matt 10:32-33.
The Lutheran Confessions
The Lutheran Reformation of the 16th century was an extraordinary period in which God’s hand moved in history to bring the Christian Church back to Scripture, to Christ and to its mission. As in the early church, it needed to clearly confess what Scripture teaches to distinguish this from false or mistaken teaching.
The Lutheran confessions are the deposit and legacy of that faithful testimony. They clearly express the whole witness of Scripture which is the rule and norm for our teaching and practice. They have proved their fidelity to the Bible and their usefulness in guiding the Church over 500 years.
In the words of the Conclusion to the Formula of Concord (the last and most important document of the Lutheran Confessions):
In the sight of God and all Christendom, we want to testify to those now living and those who will come after us. This declaration presented here, about all the controverted articles mentioned and explained above – and no other – is our faith, doctrine and confession.
By God’s grace, with intrepid hearts, we are willing to appear before the judgement seat of Christ with this confession, and give an account of it. We will not speak or write anything contrary to this Confession, either publicly or privately. By the strength of God’s grace we intend to abide by it.
(Concordia, The Lutheran Confessions, p 618)
by Rev. Dr. Stephen Pietsch
Article based on Session 1 of ‘he ‘Before Christ and the World’ Seminar