Grace tidings: The power of confession

By The Southern Eye | Feb. 27, 2022

When we say “confession,” we do not mean confession of sin. We mean the confession of our faith. We confess what we have believed.

By Doug Mamvura

Believing is utterly dependent upon confession. Believing is action. It is the verb of the life of faith. Believing is acting on the Word that God has spoken. There isn’t any believing without action. There may be an assent to the fact, but scriptural belief demands action; it demands that we act before God acts. It is not believing to act after God acts to confirm His Word.

To believe and act before God has acted is the scriptural meaning of belief. The relation of believing and faith to confession is fully realised. When we say “confession,” we do not mean confession of sin. We mean the confession of our faith. We confess what we have believed. Faith, then, is not faith until confession comes from the lips and we act on the Word. It is mental assent, but mental assent becomes faith by action, or confession. Most of what we call “faith” is mental assent to the great fundamentals of the Word.

Real faith is a living, moving force. To confess Christ as Saviour and Lord is believing. To confess before the world that He is able to supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus — that is believing (Philippians 4:19.) You can see that there is no believing on Christ as Saviour and Lord without lip confession (Romans 10:10) There is no God-accepted faith that does not manifest itself in confession.

Our spiritual lives depend upon our constant affirmation of what God has declared, what God is in Christ, and what we are to the Father in Christ. Confession is faith’s confirmation. To constantly affirm the things that God is to you and you are to God, and the things you are in Christ and what Christ is in you, is to give faith the wings to reach higher altitudes in the spiritual experiences.

In Colossians 2:10, Paul said, “you are complete in him”. Your heart repeats this refrain. “I am complete in my spirit. I have partaken of His fullness, of His completeness; His completeness makes it possible for me to stand in His presence uncondemned and unafraid. His completeness makes me equal to any situation that may come upon me. I stand complete in His resurrection life. All that the Father saw in Him, He sees in me today.

I am the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus.” Say it over in your heart again: “I am complete in Him.” You might have physical weaknesses, but understand that the law of faith is that you confess to yourself that what God says about you is true. You do not need to have any feeling about it or experience any symptoms. The fact is that if you were healed before you confessed, it would not have been an affirmation; it would have been a confirmation. You would be simply confirming what God had done.

But now, before it takes place, you can say, “with his stripes [I was] healed” (1 Peter 2:24); not, “I may be” or “I am going to be,” but “I was.” That is believing; that is an act of real faith. By faith, you now stand complete in Him. What is faith to you is fact to Him. You stand there with joy. You praise Him. You adore Him for it. You are complete in Him. Your joy is complete in Him, your rest is complete in Him, and your peace is complete in Him. Say, “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). Say, “He is the strength of my body, so I can do anything that He desires done.”

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You no longer talk about your sickness and failure because He is the strength of your life. Life, in this case, means physical life. God is the health of your navel, the center of your nerves. Where fear has come with great force and held you in bondage, He has banished it and has become your strength. He is the strength of your mind, for you have the mind of Christ. He is the strength of your spirit, for your spirit is the place where courage is power, where faith arises and dominates the soul, and where peace finds its home and radiates out through the faculties of the soul. Rest, peace, faith, love, and hope find their home in the spirit, and He is the strength of your spirit.

The great Christ is seated there. That is His throne, blessed be His name. Now, you are not going to fear circumstances. You are not going to be afraid of anything, for He is the strength of your life. He is your righteousness. I wish that everyone would truly understand what this means. It is God Himself, His holiness, His eternal righteousness, His mind. He swallows us up. He absorbs us, overwhelms us. He immerses us in Himself. Just as the Holy Spirit came in that upper room on the day of Pentecost, filled it, and immersed every disciple in it with Himself, so the righteousness of God immerses us.

As the Holy Spirit went inside each of them on the day of Pentecost and made their bodies His home, so God, by the new birth, the new creation, makes us His righteousness in Christ Jesus. We can say without fear or any sense of unworthiness, “God is my righteousness.” You glory in His righteousness. You revel in His righteousness. You make your boast. You stand up and shout His righteousness. Then, your heart grows quiet. “For he made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Now you know not only that He is your righteousness, but also that you are His righteousness. He said, “That He might be the righteousness of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26.) You have faith in Jesus; He is your righteousness, and, miracle of miracles, you are His. You stand complete in Him. He is the strength of your very being. Your body has become His home. He dwells in you. As Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Faith is the creative force in God and in the new creation. Faith is the creative ability that expresses itself only by confession. God dared to say, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven…” (Genesis 1:14). And when He did, the universe came into being. Jesus dared to ask for bread when a hungry crowd of thousands surrounded Him. His disciples said, “five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9).

Jesus did not answer their unbelief based on sense knowledge. He looked up to the Father and thanked Him. The creative ability that was in Jesus is the nature of God Himself. You have the nature of God in you through Eternal Life. You are a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); that same creative ability is in you. But it must be manifested by your confession.

Jesus dominated the laws of nature, and His word was the word of faith. Had Jesus been silent, no miracles would have been performed. Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43), and in the presence of that great multitude, Lazarus obeyed. There had never been anything like this resurrection before. The man had been dead for four days, and his body was decaying. Jesus dominated every law of nature; He set each of them aside. These negative natural forces came into being when man became a subject of the devil. Jesus acted as though those laws had never been. Do you know that God has lifted each of us who is in Christ above those laws that came into being when man was made the subject of Satan? We can say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13): “I can meet every emergency.”