22nd of October, 2023 

THEME: UNDERSTANDING FAITH:  
LESSON: Seven 
TOPIC: 
TEXT:  Mark 11:23-25, Romans 10:8-10 
MEMORY TRACK 

In our last lesson, we learnt that faith is of the heart, and it means total reliance on God’s word despite physically present evidence. We also learnt that fear and anxiety disappear when faith arrives in the heart and the heart is filled with thanksgiving. 

CONFESSION IS MADE UNTO SALVATION 

We leant by the grace of God in our previous lesson that, salvation means deliverance, provision etc. All the provision of God in the New Testament is a form of salvation to man (from milk to strong meat of God’s word). So, what activates salvation is confession. The cycle of faith is not completed without confessing what we believe in our heart.  

Believing plus Confessing equals activated Faith. Notice the latter part of Romans 10:10: “. . . with the mouth confession is made UNTO….”. The text says that with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. But that is not only true concerning salvation. It is true concerning anything else a man can receive from God. Everything you receive from God comes the same way – through believing in the heart and confessing what we believe.  

For example, it is with the heart that man believes, but when it comes to receiving healing, it is with the mouth that confession is made unto healing etc. Faith is activated by believing with your heart and confessing with your mouth. SO WHAT IS CONFESSION? (Col 2:1-3) 

The dictionary says that “to confess” means to acknowledge or to own up to, acknowledge faith in a thing or God. To confess something opposite faith means that salvation will not come. Christianity, actually, is called “The Great Confession”. Confessing is three things: 

  1. Confession is stating something we believe. 
  2. Confession is declaring something we know to be true. 
  3. Confession is proclaiming a truth we’ve accepted wholeheartedly. 

In other words, your confession is a proclamation of what you know to be true. Your confession states what you believe. Your confession declares something you know. And your confession proclaims a truth you have accepted wholeheartedly. 

WHAT ARE WE TO CONFESS? 

The major problem for us in this area is to know what we are to confess. Our confession needs to be centered around these principal truths revealed in God’s word.  

  1. What God has done for us through Christ in His plan of salvation. 
  2. What God has done in us by the Word and the Holy Ghost in the new birth and the infilling of the Holy Ghost. 
  3. Who we are to God the Father in Christ Jesus. 
  4. What Jesus is presently doing for us at the right hand of the Father where He ever lives to make intercession for us. 
  5. What God can accomplish through us, or what His Word will accomplish through us as we proclaim it. 
NEW CREATURES IN CHRIST (2Cor 5:17) 

We are new creatures in Christ Jesus! We are not just forgiven sinners. We are not poor, weak, staggering, sinning, 

barely-getting-along church members. That is not who we are. We are new creatures, created by God in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10).

Therefore, we are new creatures created in Christ Jesus with the life of God, the life and nature of God in us (our spirit).  

In Whom We Have Redemption (Eph 1:7-8)  

Thank God, we are not trying to get redemption; we have it! We are not going to have it sometime in the future; we have it now – present tense. What is it that we have now in Him or in Christ? Redemption. That means that Satan’s dominion over our lives has been broken and the power of sin and death had been destroyed! Satan lost his dominion over your life the moment you became a new creature. 

Something about our redemption to note. 

  1. Redemption from the power of darkness (Col. 1:13, 2:15): Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan and his cohort has been destroyed. 
  2. Redemption from curses even the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13): The Lord removed the curse of the law by the virtue of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, we are not under any curse in the New Testament. Rather we are blessed (Eph 1:3). 
  3. Redemption from poverty (Deut. 28:1-56): Adam sold all what God gave to us for our physical life to Satan by disobedience. Jesus by the love of the Father took all the powers in heaven and earth and declare all power in heaven and in earth after His resurrection (Matthew 28:18).  
  4. Redemption from death (1Cor 15:54-57): We have been redeemed from eternal death and physical death. We are kept by the power of God through faith (1Pet 1:5)! 
  5. Redemption from sicknesses and diseases (Isaiah 53:5, 1Peter 2:24): The Lord made it such that both sin and sicknesses are dealt with on the cross! 
CONCLUSION 

God has unlimited resources in the New Covenant for all His children. The reason for the difference is because it has been given and we have not received it because of our inability to claim it in Jesus’ name.