CONFESSION. Confession, Biblically, possesses a richness of meaning which goes far beyond its secular usage. To promise, admit, concede, declare, attest, or witness are all Eng. equivalents of Biblical confession, with varying shades of signification. Biblical confession, however, involves one or more of three elements: God is praised, or sin is acknowledged, or faith is declared. To understand this multi-dimensional concept scripturally one must view it from a number of perspectives.

To start with, confession can be viewed antithetically. As a testimony, an affirmative word or act, it negates denial. It is the believing “Yes” which stands over against every unbelieving “No.” John argues in his first epistle that the denial of Jesus as the Christ is incompatible with the confession of the Gospel (2:19, 20; 4:1-3). Again, in Matthew 10:32, 33 the Lord asserts that confession is the negation of denial, an assertion which He repeats in Luke 12:8. Since confession is an attestation verbally or liturgically or existentially (cf. the equation of terms in John 1:7, 15, 19, 20), we grasp its import by considering it as the opposite of denial, whether denial is silent or vociferous.

Confession may also be viewed doxologically, as a testimony to God’s goodness and mercy, an expression of thanksgiving for His deliverance or help, a celebration of unmerited faithfulness. For instance, the word tr. as “praise” in Psalm 42:4 and the word tr. as “thanksgiving” in Psalm 100:4 are the same word which in Joshua 7:19 and Ezra 10:11 is tr. as “confession.” The relationship between confession and adoring gratitude appears likewise in 2 Chronicles 30:21, 22; Romans 15:9; and in the Gr. text of Matthew 11:25. Confession, therefore, may include a doxological component.

Confession, moreover, can be viewed soteriologically, in conjunction with the experience of sin and forgiveness. In the OT the confession of sin frequently occurs—e.g. Joshua 7:20; 1 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 8:33; Daniel 9:3-20, esp. vv. 4 and 20. In Psalm 32:5 the conjunction of sin and forgiveness is strikingly brought out; note vv. 1, 2, and 11 the praise which follows—and all this gratefully proclaimed. The soteriological substratum thus supports any doxological superstructure.

In the NT, similarly, the confession of sin is regarded as the indispensable prelude to an experience of God’s forgiveness. Notice the conjunction of confession and forgiveness as repentant Jews responded to the message of our Lord’s forerunner (Matt 3:6), and the explicit teaching of 1 John 1:9. Understandably, therefore, Jesus made open acknowledgment of personal disobedience and failure the condition for restoration to the Father’s fellowship (Luke 15:7). In the NT, however, soteriology is never viewed apart from Christology. That is why the Lord’s atoning death forms the heart of evangelical confession. He Himself is portrayed as the supreme Confessor who, in Paul’s words, “before Pontius Pilate made the good confession” (1 Tim 6:13), attesting perfect obedience to and dependence on His Father in heaven, and so becoming our Model of conviction, commitment, and confidence, the Pattern of courageous allegiance to the invisible King (cf. Heb 3:1, 2). As His disciples, consequently, we join in Simon Peter’s confession of our Master’s messiahship and deity (Matt 16:13-20). We confess Him before men, assured that He will confess us before His Father as believing and obedient confessors (Matt 10:32). In addition, we confess the efficacy of His cross, the reality of His Resurrection, and the universality of His Lordship, for in Him alone is our hope of salvation (Rom 10:9, 10; Phil 2:11). As members of the New Israel, Christians too utter their Shema, except that in the NT confession the name of Jehovah has rightly been metamorphosed into the name of Jesus.

Confession, still further, can be viewed pneumatologically. It is the Spirit who reveals Jesus Christ and produces faith in His Person and Work. It is the Spirit who really elicits the confession of all that the Savior is and has done (1 John 4:2). The Johannine emphasis is identical with that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:3. Both apostles attribute the acknowledgment of Jesus as Messiah and Lord to the Spirit’s inner witness.

Confession can also be viewed eschatologically, from the perspective of the future, the standpoint of eternity and its unending issues. On the one hand, the Savior promised to confess believing confessors, and, on the other hand, warned that disobedient deniers will be denied (Matt 10:32). That promise is reasserted in Revelation 3:5. Paul re-echoed that warning in 2 Timothy 2:12b, a warning which Jesus Christ personally highlighted in two great discourses (Matt 7:23; 25:12). Failure to profess Him today in the loving obedience which faith generates will compel Him in that day to render a negative verdict: “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.”

Confession, once more, can be viewed ecclesiologically. It is the corporate and public attestation of the Christian community. It may be borne in kerygmatic proclamation as doctrine is expounded and the evangel preached. Confession in the Church is inseparable from an affirmation of and adherence to crystallized teaching, the sum of saving doctrine, centering, to be sure, in Jesus Christ (Heb 4:14; 10:23; cf. Acts 23:8). Confession may be made in the Church by baptism as the central truths of dogma are dramatically acted out (Acts 8:36, 37; 10:44-48; cf. Matt 3:16, 17). Or perhaps as, in 1 Timothy 6:12 (the allusion here is quite problematical), ecclesiastical confession is made as a man is ordained to the ministry. In any event, the community unitedly attests that its faith is not a matter of idiosyncratic opinion but historic deposit and shared conviction. At this junction one ought to observe that the Church may employ confession defensively as a criterion of belief and a protection against the inroad of heresy (1 John 4:1-4; 2:18-23).

But confession, Biblically, is not merely intellectual assent to and verbal affirmation of doctrine. It is that, of course (2 John 7); but it is not merely that. On the contrary, NT confession involves self-commitment and must be viewed existentially. It necessitates agreement between profession and practice, assertion and action, conduct and creed (Titus 1:16). It demands far more than consistency: it necessitates identification and cross-bearing with the Christ who is confessed (John 9:22; 12:42).

Finally, confession can also be viewed therapeutically. Healing is a fruit of verbalizing our sins to fellow-believers (James 5:16). No specific instructions are given; care and caution are, accordingly, imperative. Protestants, for example, find no Biblical warrant for the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, that complicated system which requires a would-be communicant to divulge his transgressions in detail to a priest. Protestants ought to bear in mind that John Calvin had this to say in his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion: “Let every believer remember that, if he be privately troubled and afflicted with a sense of sins, so that without outside help he is unable to free himself from them, it is a part of his duty not to neglect what the Lord has offered him by way of remedy. Namely, that, for his relief, he should use private confession to his own pastor; and for his solace, he should beg the private help of him whose duty it is, both publicly and privately to comfort the people of God by gospel teaching” (Bk. III, ch. IV, Sections 12, 13). In the light of what the Holy Spirit has written through James, Protestants ought not be surprised at Paul Tournier’s testimony: “What astonishes me...is the prodigious effect a real confession can have. Very often it is not only the decisive religious experience of freedom from guilt, but...the sudden cure of the physical or psychological illness. Sometimes in less than an hour there occurs in a patient I am seeing for the first time and to whom I have spoken but a few words, a release from psychological tension which I should have been proud to obtain after months of therapy” (Guilt and Grace, New York [1962], p. 203). It may be that, when confession is audibly made to God with a fellow-believer as witness, there occurs a retreat from sinful isolation and, in Bonhoeffer’s phrase, “a break-through to community.” It occurs because God has sovereignly so ordained. See also Repentance.

Bibliography G. W. Bowman III, The Dynamics of Confession (1969); E. Jabay, The God-Players (1969).