Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CONFESSION

To confess means “to say the same thing” or “to agree to a statement.” Widely used in ancient legal contexts, in biblical texts the term and its cognates are used to express belief in God, acknowledge failure to keep God’s laws, and praise God for salvation. These meanings are evident in the individual and communal liturgical contexts of the Psalms (Pss. 9; 22; 34; 50:14; 51; 116). To confess then served as an essential part of worship, functioning to identify, set apart, and reaffirm membership in the covenant (Deut. 6:4-9).

In the NT, likewise often within liturgical contexts, confession expresses similar meanings. However, the focus is now on the centrality of Jesus and his activity in salvation. The earliest formulations are those stating that God had raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 1:3; 4:24; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; 15:15; 2 Cor. 4:13-14; 1 Thess. 1:10). This resurrection motif is linked both to God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt and to Jesus’ being raised to God’s right hand and his coming role as judge (1 Cor. 16:22; Did. 10:6).

The confession of Jesus as the Christ or Lord (Mark 8:29; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 8:6) is fundamental, both in the Pauline corpus (where it forms the basis of the kerygma, 1 Cor. 15:3) and in the Gospels (Mark 8:29 par.). In Rom. 10:9 the acclamation “Jesus is Lord” (like those in 1 Cor. 8:6; 12:3; Phil. 2:11) serves as a christological confession that links Jesus to the creative activity of God. Confession functions as a criterion of orthodoxy (1 John 2:22; 4:2-3, 15; 5:1, 5). It is associated with persecution, and modeled on the example of Jesus’ confession itself (1 Tim. 6:13; Matt. 10:17-18).

In later Christian thought, confession is often used interchangeably with creed. However, no such systematic and comprehensive statement exists in the NT. Rather, due to the genre of the material (e.g., letters), there exist only brief statements of Jesus’ lordship (Peter’s confession; Mark 8:29 par.) and others of binitarian or trinitarian character (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:13), which reflect early Christian beliefs and practices such as the confessional statements at baptism (1 Tim. 6:12; Acts 8:36-38 Western Text). From these kerygmatic, liturgical, and catechetical elements the later creeds were developed from the 2nd century onward.

Bibliography. O. Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions (London, 1949); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (London, 1976).

Iain S. Maclean

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CONFESSION

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)