We are always confessing something. Whatever we do, whatever we say, we confess. Perhaps that seems like an exaggeration, because when we hear the word confess, we usually limit that to our sins or, perhaps, to our faith.
In Latin, the noun confessio and the verb confiteor both have implications of confessing in the typical sense (e.g., of sins) or acknowledging something. There is also a nuance of revealing something true. In Greek, homologeō shares one aspect of its meaning with the Latin: “to concede that something is factual or true” (BDAG, 708). But in the combination of the two parts, homo- and logos, “the same mind or word,” there is a significant corporate sense to the word. In this sense, it is impossible to confess alone. When we confess something, we are speaking the same as someone else. The question is, the same as whom?
What We Do When We Confess
When we confess our sins, we are not saying only how we feel or expressing our guilt. That does not go far enough. Part of our sinful nature is never being able to see, on our own, the true depth or nature of our sin. We might get caught and feel bad. Or we might be sorry that someone else took offense and got mad. In the Smalcald Articles, Luther calls this “active contrition,” or a “manufactured repentance.” In order to truly confess, the Law of God, wielded by the Holy Spirit as a hammer, must produce in us “passive contrition,” or “true sorrow of the heart, suffering, and the sensation of death” (The Smalcald Articles, Part 3, Article III, paragraph 2). Only then, when we are saying the same thing that God says about our sin, are we truly confessing.
Likewise, when we confess our faith, we are not speaking the same thing as ourselves. It is not our faith in the sense that it comes from us, or that we figured out what might be good to believe and then believed it. In order to confess, we can only confess with someone else. Before we confess with other Christians, we must first confess to God. This is why the Ecumenical Creeds are necessary. When we abandon them, we are abandoning a faith outside ourselves.
Confessing with the Creeds
We might think we can stick with just the Bible, but in the last month, I saw an online conversation where one person was using Bible verses in a way that would have made Arius shed tears of joy. Some used other Scriptures to convince him of his error, but it made no difference. Certainly, the scriptural words are necessary, but one may tell the story of God by configuring the words in different ways. Different configurations of the narrative make the difference between Arius and Athanasius. The creeds outline the correct story and put the words in the order proper to the story God tells in Jesus. Only a conversion to the true story will allow us to read the Scriptures correctly.
When we confess a creed, then, we are saying the same thing God says about Himself in the Scriptures. We are telling the same story because God has written us into that story in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When that story becomes the story of more than one person (and “a great multitude that no one could number” has been written in by Jesus [Revelation 7:9]), then we also say the same thing as all of them. The Ecumenical Creeds mark the true story, setting the boundaries and outline of the scriptural narrative. But they also open up the only true ecumenism, by which we may begin the conversation and prayer for true unity. Without the creedal beginning, there is no agreement to be had and so no common confession. Hermann Sasse put it this way in 1935: “We will not cease to pray and work so that the torn church of Christ may again become one. We are prepared to wrestle for the truth of the Gospel with all confessions, whether Catholic or Protestant, so long as they confess the Nicene Creed” (The Lonely Way, vol. I, p. 256).
Confessing Through Worship and Praise
But our confessing does not stop with saying the same thing God says about our sin and saying the same thing God says about Himself. A close relative of homologeō is exomologeō, which Jesus uses in Matthew 11:25: “I confess (ESV uses “thank”)You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (emphasis added). This word can also be used in the context of confessing sins (e.g., Matthew 3:6), but it is a word that became more general for “praising,” in the sense of acknowledging what God has done. Thus, Luther, interestingly, names the three creeds or symbols as the Apostles’, the Athanasian, and the Te Deum. True worship is true confessing, and vice versa, because we are speaking truly the same things that God has revealed to us, the things He has done and said. To seek the forgiveness of sins from Christ is the highest worship and true faith (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article V(III), paragraph 33/154), and the chief service of God is to preach the Gospel (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XV(VII), paragraph 42). So, in the Athanasian Creed, “the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity,” and “the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshiped” (emphasis added). When we gather with other Christians in true unity, we confess what God has done and how He continues to do that same, saving work in Christ today. We bear witness that we, His people, must be where Jesus is and where He’s promised to be for our forgiveness and salvation.
Confessing Through our Good Works
But there’s more. Everywhere we go, we bear the name that brought us into baptismal communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit, and with all who bear the same name (1 John 1:1–4). We go out into the vocational web of relationships into which God has put us, and we confess. We say the same thing with our speaking and living and acting as God has said about us: You are My dear child, made new in Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. In this way, our good works for the sake of our neighbors confess the love of Christ. The people around us may or may not recognize it. Doing good works is not the same as preaching the Gospel or speaking of the mighty works of God in Jesus’ death and resurrection, but it is confessing nonetheless.
Confessing with Examination
Of course, there are a lot of other speakers and words in our world. People are always “saying the same thing” as someone. We can easily be drawn to confess what the world, the devil, or our own sinful flesh might be saying. As Paul says, we must not be “conformed to this world,” to say the same thing as the world, but “be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). Part of our self-examination, and so part of our confession according to God’s Word, is to see clearly what God says about all those other speakers and words—and about our false and sinful confession with them—so that He will renew our minds by His absolution, by the preaching, and by the communion in the Lord’s body and blood.
Whether we are acknowledging our sins in the light of God’s Law, believing His forgiveness in the Gospel, speaking together the creeds that are the summary of God’s revelation of who He is for us, giving Him true worship in faith, or carrying out our God-given vocations, we confess at all times the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and who He has remade us to be in Christ.
Scripture: ESV®.
Quotation marked BDAG is from Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, third edition, edited by Frederick William Danker © 2000 University of Chicago Press. Used by permission.
The quotations from the Lutheran Confessions in this blog are from Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, second edition © 2006 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Quotation from Hermann Sasse, The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Letters, vol. 1, trans. Matthew C. Harrison, is © 2002 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Want to read more about how confession and the Nicene Creed go together? Order Timothy J. Winterstein’s book Worshiped and Glorified: A Study of the Nicene Creed.
