Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Jesus said in Matthew 10:32, “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”
This seems like a pretty big deal. If you want Jesus to confess you, you need to confess him. Of course, that’s from a translation that was completed in 1611, so it’s not surprising that the key word there, “confess,” may not mean to our ears what it meant to theirs.
We tend to think of admitting to our sins, when we talk about confession. That’s certainly what it means legally and in major religious traditions. You need to come clean about your sins.
The New Testament, however, uses this word 17 times, and it only has something to do with admitting your crimes on two occasions. The other times, it’s not about that at all.
The Greek word translated as “confess” or “acknowledge” in your English Bible literally means “same word” or “same speech.”
To confess our sins should mean that we’re saying the same thing about them that God says. As in, yes, I told a lie, and God says lying is evil. We’re agreeing with God, saying the same thing.
However, in the passage above, its meaning is a little different. Confessing Christ before men has the sense of publicly identifying with him. His subsequent confession of us is something like, “Father, this one is mine.”
I believe the Good News, or Gospel, of Christ. I say the same thing about him that the Bible says.
In other places, confession means functioning as a witness, saying with your mouth the same things that your mind and heart believe.
Well, pastor, that was a biblical word-study of low-to-moderate interest. You got anything else for me?
Just this: What if the confession in Matthew 10:32, which gets you acknowledged by Christ, means more than agreeing with a bunch of Christians on Sunday morning that Jesus is Lord? What if it means confessing him in someplace other than our tightly controlled ceremonies, in which everyone knows what you’re supposed to say? (There were no Christian churches when he said that. It couldn’t be about something you do in church.)
What if confessing Christ “before men” means saying what God says in a more hostile environment?
If I could assign homework here, I’d have you read the essay, “Live Not by Lies” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974. It’s free all over the internet. He was a Christian dissident in Soviet Russia, who spent time in the gulag for his unapproved speech.
One of his points is that the antichrist system is a giant superstructure that has its foundation in simple, little lies: lies that start out so small, they might be considered benign. But, as soon as people are willing to confess them, to say the same things, they’ve got you. One little falsehood, now accepted by everyone as truth, is built upon with a steady stream of baloney.
What if confessing Christ means you have to be one to say, in front of everyone, that the emperor has no clothes, and the entire narrative that’s being drummed into us is a vicious lie?
I pray for the courage to confess Christ in this way.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:
