Are You Confessing?

 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven”. Do you think your confession stops at the baptistry? Scriptures paint a much bigger picture of confession than just the one that is done before one is baptized. Look at some of these scriptures.

            John 4:28,29, “ so the woman left her water jars and went away into town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ”? She walked into a town full of people who did not like the Jews. She walked into this town and told them about a Jewish man whom she had met at the well. When confronted with her own sins and the promise of eternal life, the woman boldly confessed to everyone that she believed Jesus to be the Christ.

            In John 9, you have a story of a man blind. Those around this man view him as a sinner. Jesus, however, healed this blind man, and the Pharisees begin to question him for what he had done. They begin to falsely accuse Jesus, stating, “this man is not from God” (vs. 16). They begin to intimate the blind man and trying to discredit him by saying he was never blind. (Vs 18). They threatened him and cast him out of the temple. (Vs. 34). But through all this, the healed blind man confess, “if this man were not from God, he could do nothing”. (Vs.33)

            In John 6:66-69, many of those disciples who once follow Jesus walked away and followed him no more. Jesus turned to his Apostles and asked, “do you want to go away as well”? Peter confesses, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”. With these words, Peter and the other Apostles showed that they believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

            In Acts 4:18-20, the rulers of the people, including the High Priest, called Peter and John to them and charged them not to speak or preach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak what we have seen and heard”. Despite facing persecutions, Peter and the other Apostles confessed to the world that they believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

            We know what to confess, but sometimes this is not as easy as it seems. In John 12:42,43, we have an example of a group of believers who were not will to confess, and the reason is there stated. “nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. For they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

            Why do people not confess that they believed that Jesus is the Son of God? They loved the glory of man more than the glory of God. They focus on what man can do to them more than what God has done for them. They are not willing to suffer persecutions for the cause of Christ. We may not be facing the physical persecutions as the believers in John’s day did, but the fear is still as very real.

- CL Bruner