Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 520
“With the heart man believes unto righteousness. And with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:10.
THIS morning, according to my promise, I discourse upon the second part of this verse—“With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” I feel a measure of regret that all my hearers of this morning were not present last Sunday, since you may wrongly imagine that I exaggerate the importance of outward confession. Whereas had you been present when we were considering the first sentence, you would have seen that I magnified the “believing with the heart.” I declared it to be the all-important, the essential thing without which confession with the mouth would be a sin, a falsehood, and a grievous insult to the Most High. One circumstance greatly mitigates my fears—you may all read both sermons at your leisure, and so see for yourselves how earnestly I have labored to put the two duties in their proper place, not unduly exalting the less, nor depreciating the greater.
“With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” There must be no confession with the mouth where there is not a believing with the heart. To profess a faith which you have not is to make yourself a deceptive trader who pretends to be carrying on a very large business, while he has no stock, no capital, and is only obtaining credit on false pretences, and so, is a thief. To make a profession, without having a possession, is to be a cloud without rain—a riverbed choked up with dry stones—utterly without water. It is to be a mere play-actor, strutting about for an hour with the name and garments of a king, to be exchanged, behind the scenes, for the garb of poverty and the character of shame.
Without believing with the heart, confession is as a rotten tree, green on the outside, but inwardly, as John Bunyan pithily puts it, “only fit to be tinder for the devil’s tinder box.” Be you warned against fair pretensions where there is nothing to back them up. Above all things, avoid hypocrisy! Stand aside from all mere pretense. Profess not to be what you are not, lest in that day when God comes to search the secrets of all hearts you shall be condemned as reprobate silver and consumed like dross.
True faith, wherever it exists, produces works. And, among the best works, a bold, constant, consistent confession of Christ. That man has no faith at all who is not led to confess with his mouth unto salvation, in the sense intended in the text. Faith without works is a dead root, sending forth no bud and yielding no fruit. It is a well yielding no water, but filled with deadly vapor. It is a tree twice dead, plucked up by the roots—like some of those forest monsters which block up the navigation of the Mississippi and form dangerous snags—upon which many a goodly vessel has been wrecked.
Faith without works is one of the most damnable things out of Hell. Flee from it, for remember if you profess to have a faith in Christ, and your conduct is not holy, you bring disgrace upon the Church of Christ! You crucify the Lord of Glory afresh. You turn the Truth of God into a lie. And you do, as far as lies in your power, make God the panderer to your lusts. As you are to flee from profession without faith, so equally flee from a faith which does not bring forth a good profession which may be manifested before many witnesses.
I believe that the confession mentioned in the text embraces the whole of Christian life. I do not think it means the mere saying, “I am a disciple of Christ,” or submission to the God-ordained rite of Baptism. The Apostle includes, under the term, confession with the mouth, the whole life of the Christian—which is, in fact, the working out of that which God has worked in. It is the confession, both by act, deed and word, of that Divine Grace which God, by His Holy Spirit, has put into the soul. We say, in a common proverb, that, “One swallow does not make a summer.” So the merely confessing Christ once with the mouth does not make the confession here intended. One tree is not a forest, and one avowal of Christ is not the confession of Christ unto salvation. There is something more intended than one act, however distinct, or however excellent it may be considered in itself.
I shall endeavor this morning, if God shall help me, to illustrate the meaning of confessing with the mouth unto salvation. And then I shall occupy a few minutes in enforcing this confession—urging those who love the Lord and have believed with their heart, to see to it that they confess with their mouths.
I. TO CONFESS CHRIST WITH THE MOUTH, I have said, embraces the whole lifework of the Christian. I think you will see this before I have done. Different cases demand of men different forms of confession. Some may have to confess the Lord in one way—some in another. Every Christian is called upon to confess Him with his mouth according to that way which his own state, abilities, and position in Providence may demand at his hands.