Romans 10:9

CONFIRMATION

‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt he saved.’

Romans 10:9

When St. Paul speaks of confession which is necessary to salvation, he means in part, and perhaps chiefly, that confession of faith which attended Adult Baptism. Now that Infant Baptism has become, and rightly become, the almost universal custom of the Church, the public confession has been transferred to a later age. It belongs to Confirmation.

I. Confirmation is an act by which a person who has come to years of discretion accepts and ratifies the covenant of his Baptism, renews the dedication of himself to God, and declares his faith in the promises and privileges into which his Baptism admitted him. This ‘confession’ then, which was once, and is still, properly, a part of Adult Baptism, now belongs to Confirmation. Till he is Confirmed, a person has never made himself a public ‘confession’ of Christ and of the Christian religion, before God and the world. Then he does it. Perhaps the only time in his life in which he ever does it before the Church. How pleasant this is in God’s sight, and how essential, appears from these words of our text—where you will observe that the outward ‘confession’ before the Church, and the inward faith, are bracketed together. This places ‘Confirmation’ in its true light, and shows its very great and paramount importance.

II. It is double Confirmation—confirming and being confirmed—you confirming the covenant of your baptism, and you are confirmed, if you come to it in faith—by the Holy Spirit, equally. Of the reason, then, and the propriety and duty of Confirmation, as the supplement of Infant Baptism, I can hardly conceive any doubt in any reasonable mind. I speak within bounds when I say that the experience of hundreds—whom I have myself known—could bear witness to the greatness and the reality of the blessing and the power which were found in Confirmation. Of course the benefit depends entirely on the truth and the earnestness with which it is done; but be it only real and done in faith, and no words can exaggerate the gain.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘I am afraid that most of us must plead guilty to the charge that we do not, in our ordinary habits of life, in our ordinary everyday conduct with one another, show “Whose we are, and Whom we serve,” by speaking of Christ and the great truths of the Christian religion. Could any common observer—would any chance listener, who came in, who met us in society, who sat with us in our family circle, discover that we are Christians? Even if we speak religiously, is it Christ of Whom we speak, and of His great salvation?’