<p>12:8 <i>And I say to you, every one who shall confess me before men- </i>Confessing Christ before men can also be an allusion to baptism, not just bucking up the courage to give someone a tract at work (Rom. 10:9,10). This allusion is confirmed when we realize that &ldquo;confess&rdquo; translates two Greek words, &lsquo;to confess in&rsquo;. We confess in Christ by baptism into Him. In another sense, our witness is because we are in Christ, we are Him to the world, and therefore His fearlessness unto death in witness should be ours. The Lord spoke of how if we confess Him before men, He will confess knowledge of us before the Father; and if we deny Him, He will deny us. This language is applied by John to John the Baptist- for he comments that John the Baptist &quot;confessed and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ&quot; (Jn. 1:20). In this sense, John Baptist is being set up as our example in preaching- and again, John comments that we too are to confess the Son and not deny Him (1 Jn. 2:23), after the pattern of John the Baptist. And yet note what John's 'confession' was- it was a profession of his unworthiness, that although he was the herald of the Christ, he was not Jesus. Again, we see here a pattern for our witness to the Lord. Eph. 6:15 speaks of our each being 'sandaled' with the preparation of the Gospel. Who prepared the way of the Lord by preaching, wearing sandals? John the Baptist. It seems Paul is alluding to John here, setting him up as the preacher's example. The reference to &quot;loins girt&quot; (Eph. 6:14) would also be a John allusion- the record twice (in Mt. 3:4; Mk. 1:6) stresses how John had his 'loins girded'.</p><p><i>Him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God</i>- See on Mt. 10:32; Lk. 13:8; 1 Tim. 5:21. So close are the Lord and the Angels and such His respect and love for them, that it seems that Jesus will even feel ashamed or embarrassed before them when He comes to consider one of the unworthy at the day of judgement- Luke 12:8 implies that the same feeling of embarrassment and shame which the unworthy have now when backing out of preaching will be felt by Jesus when He looks on them at the judgement. And it is quite possible that one of the things which motivated our Lord to continue hanging on the cross was the thought of praising God in the midst of the Angels at His ascension: &quot;My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation (of Angels?): I will pay my vows before them that fear Him&quot;.</p><p>But in the same way as the Angels minister condemnation, they&nbsp;also joyfully&nbsp;give&nbsp;eternal&nbsp;life to their faithful charges, on Christ's command at the judgement- &quot;him shall the Son of man also confess before the Angels of God&quot; (Luke 12:8). This is perhaps the fact alluded to in 2 Cor. 10:18: &quot;not he that commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends (at the judgement)&quot;. To be commended implies&nbsp;to be commended <i>to</i> somebody- the Angels?</p><p>When He says He will confess&nbsp;<i>us</i>&nbsp;before the Father, He means He will confess&nbsp;<i>our name</i>&nbsp;before God (Rev. 3:5); He knows us according to our names / characters. He speaks of ecclesial members as &quot;names&quot; in Rev. 3:4; He calls His own sheep by name, and they each know His voice, responding to His word&nbsp;<i>individually</i>. The call to one sheep will only be recognized by that sheep; the others won't respond (Jn. 10:3). He will take individual note of each sheep, treating them accordingly, as the shepherd leads more gently those that are with young (Is. 40:11). It seems that even now, we each have our own individual name with the Father and Son, encompassing their understanding of our essential character. It may even be that in the record of Scripture, God inspired the writers to record the names of individuals according to His judgment of them (or at least, how the faithful viewed them at the time), rather than by the names they actually went under. What mother would have named her child Nabal (fool), or Ahira (brother of evil, Num. 1:15), or 'sickness' or 'wasting' (Mahlon and Chilion)? These names were either given to them by others and the use adopted by God, or simply God in the record assigned them such names.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>The same two words for &quot;confess in&quot; are found in Rom. 10:9 &ldquo;If you shall&nbsp;<i>confess with</i>&nbsp;your mouth the Lord Jesus&hellip; you shall be saved&rdquo;. The idea of&nbsp;<i>homolegeo</i>&nbsp;seems to be of public confession; literally to&nbsp;<i>homo-logos</i>. The Lord uses the word&nbsp;<i>logos</i>&nbsp;with reference to the &ldquo;words&rdquo; of our preaching before men (Mt. 10:14).&nbsp;<i>Homo</i>&nbsp;has the sense of being together with others. It can carry the sense of &lsquo;assent&rsquo;, in that our<i> logos</i>&nbsp;comes together with the&nbsp;<i>logos</i>&nbsp;of another; but the majority of NT usage is clearly with the sense of professing, making our&nbsp;<i>logos</i>&nbsp;before others. At the day of judgment, the Lord will &ldquo;profess&rdquo; His verdict to men (Mt. 7:23) and here we learn that He will &ldquo;profess&rdquo; it to His Father too. The weight of evidence on the basis of usage is that this word refers to public profession of a&nbsp;<i>logos</i>, of our innermost thought- which is exactly in line with the themes of the Lord's teaching here: that our internal thought and position, our&nbsp;<i>logos</i>, is crucially important; but if it is a Christ-like&nbsp;<i>logos</i>&nbsp;then it will be impossible to conceal it, it must naturally become public, for a city set on a hill cannot be hid. Consider the evidence:<br />-Herod&nbsp;<i>confessed</i>&nbsp;AV &ldquo;promised&rdquo; with an oath&rdquo; in front of witnesses to give Herodias&rsquo; daughter whatever she wished (Mt. 14:7)<br />- John the Baptist&nbsp;<i>confessed</i>&nbsp;in his preaching (Jn. 1:20)<br />- If anyone&nbsp;<i>confessed&nbsp;</i>openly that Jesus was Messiah, then they would be cast out of the synagogue (Jn. 9:22; 12:42)<br />- The Pharisees&nbsp;<i>confessed</i>&nbsp;their doctrinal positions, i.e. they openly taught them (Acts 23:8)<br />- Paul&nbsp;<i>confessed</i>&nbsp;his beliefs publicly when on trial (Acts 24:14)<br />- Timothy&nbsp;<i>confessed&nbsp;</i>his confession before many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:12)<br />- Some openly&nbsp;<i>confess</i>&nbsp;their knowledge of God when their private lives don&rsquo;t match that public confession (Titus 1:16)<br />- The faithful&nbsp;<i>confessed</i>&nbsp;their faith in God&rsquo;s promises before all (Heb. 11:13)<br />- Teachers&nbsp;<i>confess</i>&nbsp;a doctrinal position about Jesus in their teaching and must be assessed by their audience accordingly (1 Jn. 2:23; 4:2,3,15; 2 Jn. 7).</p><p>According to the Lord's teaching here, he who refuses to make this public profession will not be accepted in the day of judgment; the Lord Jesus will not confess such a person before &ldquo;My Father&rdquo;. Rom. 10:9,10 likewise predicate salvation upon this public confession. And the contrast in Matthew 10:32,33 is between&nbsp;<i>confessing</i>&nbsp;Christ and&nbsp;<i>denying&nbsp;</i>Him before men, leading to being&nbsp;<i>denied</i>&nbsp;by Jesus before &ldquo;My&nbsp;<i>Father</i>&rdquo;. Without doubt, 1 Jn. 2:23 has all this in mind when teaching that &ldquo;Whosoever&nbsp;<i>denies</i>&nbsp;the Son, the same has not&nbsp;<i>the Father</i>, but he that&nbsp;<i>confesses</i>&nbsp;s.w.; AV &ldquo;acknowledges&rdquo; the Son has the Father also&rdquo;. Taken together, these usages of&nbsp;<i>confession</i>&nbsp;present a solid case- that salvation is related to public confession. That is not to say that salvation is by works, nor is it to say that evangelism is the be all and end all of the Christian life- after all, we all have different gifts, some are more pastoral than evangelical. Salvation is by grace&nbsp;<i>through faith</i>; and if we believe, then we cannot be passive, we become a city set on a hill which cannot be hid. Otherwise, as the Lord teaches several times in the Sermon on the Mount, we have not really believed in God&rsquo;s grace. The Sermon teaches that there is no such thing as a secret Christian, a candle lit which nobody else sees or gets a hint of. In this area particularly, we are faced with the temptation of sins of omission- to consider that we are believers because we have mentally assented to certain theological propositions about Christ, but not making any public commitment or confession about them. No wonder the Lord raised this theme in encouraging His preachers to go forth fearlessly.</p>