INTRODUCTION
As we started our “Christianity 101” series last week, we started off by looking at faith. We learned that faith is:
Faith is whole-souled trust in God’s Word because of the sufficiency of the evidence, which leads to doing what God says.
If you go to a local church and ask what you need to do to be saved, most all of them would say that you need to have faith, although there would be some disagreement as to how and if you could come to that point.
To be saved is having faith all you need to do?
Last week I told you that in our churches we teach that in order for a person to be saved, the bible teaches that they must have faith, that they must publicly confess Jesus as Lord, that they must repent of their sins and that they must be immersed into Christ Jesus. These things are essential to our salvation.
Today, I want us to look at the step of confession.
In the passage that we will look at today concerning confession, you will notice that it says that if we confess with our mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Jesus from the dead we will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
The passage tells us that faith alone is not good enough, that God’s way of saving man includes a confession.
Today we are going to look at three things concerning confession:
1. What is a biblical confession?
2. Why it is important to make a public confession?
3. Does our confession go beyond the initial public announcement?
(Context of chapter 10. Paul is telling the people that God’s word brings salvation and that a response to that word is essential to salvation. Verse 8 is a quote from Deuteronomy 30:14.)
READ ROMANS 10:8-13
SERMON
I. WHAT IS A BIBLICAL CONFESSION? VERSE 9
A. The nature of the confession.
In the attempts that have been made to simplify and clarify the steps in the gospel plan of salvation, this step has been designated in the New Testament as “confession.” To get the full impact of this step it is important to have its full New Testament description. It is not just a confession, but it is a confession of ‘faith’ in Jesus, ‘with the mouth’ ‘before men’. This is what verse 9 tells us.
That is the confession that is a definite step and an important part of God’s way of saving man.
If Jesus is eliminated from the confession, the significance of the lost. Listen to a few verses that we will look at today.
MATTHEW 16:16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
ACTS 8:37 [And Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."]
1 John 4:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
MATTHEW 10:32 "Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.
ROM 10:9-10 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
B. The confession is a statement of belief of faith that comes from the heart.
When we make a public confession of our faith, we are telling the world that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He was crucified died and was buried and on the third day He rose from the dead.
Notice that the confession is not some empty statement of something that we think may be true, but instead it is something that we have such conviction about that we are willing to lay our life down for it.
The conviction is so strong that we are determined to live our lives for Jesus.
We are saying that we know that Jesus is the way the truth and the life.
We are saying that we know that without Jesus we are lost that without Jesus our lives have no meaning and purpose.
We are saying that we know that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father!
1Corinthians 15:14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.
C. We must boldly proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God!
In Matthew 16:16, Peter made this statement of faith and Jesus told him that upon that statement, the church would be built and the gates of Hades would not prevail over it!
In Matthew 10:32 we are told that if we confess Jesus before men, Jesus will confess us before God, but in verse 33 He tells us that if we deny Him, He will deny us also.
LUKE 9:26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
II. WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO MAKE A PUBLIC CONFESSION?
A. A public confession is one of the steps to salvation.
As we look at the New Testament, we see that making a public confession that Jesus is the Christ was a part of God’s plan of salvation.
1Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
1Timothy 6:13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate,
Hebrews 4:14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
ACTS 8:37 [And Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."] (This passage is not in the oldest manuscripts, but it was quoted by the early fathers in the early 200’s AD. Scribal note of a known practice?)
B. We make ourselves accountable to other people and to God.
When we make our statement of faith in Jesus we are telling the whole world that they need to take note of our life and how Jesus will change it to His glory.
When we make a public statement, we are making ourselves accountable to other Christians, to the lost and to God.
We cannot be secret service Christians, we cannot be undercover for God, our faith should shine through everything that we do.
This is the part of confession that is not just a one-time act; it is the part that is an everyday thing.
Titus 1:16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.
C. God is praised!
When people see that we are willing to give our lives to Jesus, God is praised.
When people see how God is working in our lives, God is praised.
When we reach out to the lost and share the Gospel with them, God is praised.
We are telling God and others that we cannot make it to heaven without God’s grace, we are saying that we cannot make it without being covered by the blood of Jesus.
God is praised because we are admitting the God was right about life and we are not.
III. DOES OUR CONFESSION GO BEYOND THE INITIAL PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT?
A. In a passage that we looked at in Hebrews 4:14 and 10:23 we are told to “hold fast” to our confession.
What does it mean to “hold fast” to our confession?
It means that we will meditate on it, that we will anchor ourselves to it in times of temptation.
If we hold fast to something, we are holding on to it for dear life.
It would be like clinging to a piece of wood that is holding you afloat in the water if you ship goes down. Hebrews 3:1 bears this thought out.
HEBREWS 3:1 Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;
The Hebrew writer was trying to encourage the Jewish Christians not to go back to their old way of life and their old system of religion. He is telling them to meditate on the initial confession of faith they made concerning Jesus and what that statement meant.
B. Our conduct reflects our true confession.
In Hebrews we are told to hold fast our confession, why?
It is because there is more to our confession than just the words out of our mouth, our conduct will reflect our true heart.
The Romans 10:10 tells us that the mouth is to confess what the heart believes, and our actions reflect what is in our heart.
1 John 2:4 The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
Titus 1:16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.
We cannot say that we believe in Jesus and then live our lives ignoring Him.
If our words were all that Jesus wants, then why in Matthew 7:21-27 does Jesus say that not everyone who says, Lord, Lord will not enter the kingdom of heaven? That passage is one that should send chills up your spine if you are not giving you life fully to Jesus.
That passage says that the ones who do the will of the Father will be the ones who get to enter the kingdom, their practice matches their confession.
MATTHEW 7:20 says, “So then, you will know them by their fruits.”
CONCLUSION
If Romans 10 stood alone in the New Testament, it might be fairly inferred that these are THE ONLY TWO conditions of salvation. It does not stand alone, there are other passages that are elementary conditions essential for salvation, as in the case of REPENTANCE and BAPTISM (Acts 2:38), and that of FAITH and BAPTISM (Mark 16:16).
There are no legitimate grounds for thinking that any one of these passages excludes the conditions mentioned in the others. Faith, repentance, confession, and baptism are all divinely imposed conditions of salvation, none of them outranking any of the others.
If you look at the chart of conversions in the book of Acts (Which is the place to go since Acts comes under the New Covenant)
Hearing the word is specifically mentioned in most of the conversions.
Faith is omitted in some of the passages and mentioned in others.
Confession is only specifically mentioned in one.
Repentance in some of the conversions, but not all
Baptism is specifically mentioned in ALL of the conversions.
All alike are commanded, all alike are necessary; and all alike are prerequisite to justification or salvation.
In the Bible we see that we are called to have faith in Jesus to save us. We are to confess Him is our Lord and Savoir before men. Our confession is to flow from our convictions about Jesus and our lives are to reflect that.
Are these the only two steps to salvation?
Next week we will look at the step of Repentance.
