I Must Confess

I am a Catholic. But, I am not a Roman one. Maybe you are too…

The word, “Catholic,” has a fascinating etymology, traveling through multiple languages and absorbing layers of meaning along the way. Here’s the journey:

• Ancient Greek: It all starts with the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning, “universal,” “general,” or, “whole.” This word came from the phrase καθ’ όλου (kath’ holou), literally, “according to the whole.”
• Latin: The Greek term was adopted into Latin as catholicus, retaining its meaning of, “universal.” This was used not only for Christians, but also for other things considered universal, like Roman law.
• Old English: Early English adopted the word from Latin as ‘eallgeleaflic’, which combined the words eall (“all”) and geleaflic (“believing”). This directly conveyed the sense of a, “universal church.”
• Old French: French borrowed the Latin word ‘catholique.’ Interestingly, in Old French, “catholique,” and, “chrétien,” (“Christian”) were practically synonymous, highlighting the link between universality and Christian faith.
• Modern English: By the mid-14th century, English reabsorbed the French word as catholic, initially referring to doctrines of the early Church before the East-West schism. Over time, it took on the specific meaning of the Roman Catholic Church, contrasting with Protestant denominations.

After that brief learning session, maybe you will also agree that you are Catholic (part of the Universal Church of the believers in Jesus Christ). If that is true about you, then you may have a confession to make… something like, “I am a valuable part of the Body of Christ.” First, you admit you are Catholic, and then you confess?! What is going on here?

I am using this little exercise to stretch us all out of our little box where we try to smash the Spirit of God into. The specific area I am tugging at is that mostly rejected and/or misunderstood idea of ‘confession.’

“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven.”
Matthew 10:32-33 BSB

I pray that the gravity of these words has a noticeable force on your heart. This is no small matter to foolishly ignore, nor is it something to incorrectly interpret if we are confidently believing to have Jesus as our defender on that inevitable, ‘Day of the Lord,’ where all flesh will be judged in righteousness. This proves that ‘confession’ is of grave importance to the authentic Christian life. So what is ‘confession’?

To begin with, let us remove logically the things that cannot be the definition, based on Jesus’ exhortation. It cannot mean simply acknowledging the historical truths about Jesus being of divine conception to a virgin, living a sinless life, dying on a Roman cross, and being resurrected three days later. These are verifiable facts that are more proven than George Washington’s existence… I mean that. There is more historical evidence of Jesus than George. This means that confessing Jesus cannot refer to agreeing with historical truth. We can reiterate that point with the VERY sarcastic statement by James: “You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.” (James 2:19 NLT)

There are few, if any, modern church-i-anity folks who tremble in their ‘belief’ of Jesus being Who He said He was. Which insinuates that the demons are more believing than some ‘confessing’ peeps.

It also cannot be defined as making robotic platitudes about Him as being the definition of confessing. Anyone can state: Jesus is loving, Jesus is good, Jesus is kind, Jesus is smart, etc. Again, these are truisms that anyone of any belief could utter with limited amounts of research. Most Islamic adherents would agree with these statements and they are confirmed or inferred through the Koran as fact. So Jesus could not be saying that a Muslim was someone He would ‘confess’ before the Father.

In context, we can extrapolate that whatever Jesus was saying about confession had its antithesis in the term, “deny,” in the later part of His statement. A short definition of deny (arneomai) is, “contradict or refuse to affirm or to confess (identify with).” Notice the, ‘identify with,’ aspect. This should make sense because when Peter famously ‘denied’ the Lord at His arrest, Peter was not rejecting the existence or reality of Jesus being real. No, Peter was refusing to personally identify with the Master.

The word for ‘confess’ is, “homologeó.” Likely, you can see some entemology in this word being a compound of (1) homo and (2) logos. Homo means ‘the same’ in short (homosapien, homosexual, homophone). We have also spent time unpacking ‘logos’ over the many years I have been ministering to you, which is a much bigger matrix of ideas that we can simply and quickly define. But when it is joined to ‘homo’ the application is a bit reduced to something like: “a declared system of logical belief.” Together it would be something like: “To declare the same thing from a personal logical belief”. Jesus was teaching that we need to believe the same thing, live the same thing, and speak the same thing about Him as He did, AND we need to do that as a matter of personal association with His identity. The word confession therefore has deep roots in speaking and living truthfully, sincerely, genuinely, and transparently.

Roman Catholics have, as a rigorously held tradition, the practice of ‘confession.’ This tradition is rooted in the Biblical truths associated with the power and healing that can come from speaking the truth, in the same way, as the truth really is. It is usually associated with calling our sin as sin as specifically done with a priest. Yet, the concept is much older and wider than that.

The woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5) found a massive level of healing that went deep into the roots of her sickness through interacting with this divine opportunity. Look at this breakdown:

• Her story of faith had foundations in her self-speak that became a confessional statement. “For she kept saying, ‘If only I touch His garments, I will be healed.‘” (verse 28)
• This confession led to faith-filled actions that compelled her to ‘do the hard thing’ and make her way to Jesus through a chaotic crowd.
• Her authentic and faithful confession added to her actions bore the fruit of divine benefits, “Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she sensed in her body that she was healed of her affliction.” (verse 29)
• The conjunction ‘and’ here delineates there were two different activities that took place. (1) the bleeding stopped AND (2) she ‘sensed’ (‘ginóskó’ a deep intimate knowing) that she was healed. The symptoms were gone AND the cause of the symptoms was healed.
• After the Lord had her identify herself she did a radical thing… she confessed ‘the whole truth’ about her journey to that moment. “Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him trembling in fear, and she told Him the whole truth.” (verse 33)

I need to unpack that a smidge. This is much more intense than it seems at face value. What likely happened here was that this humbled and healed woman exposed her soul, unflatteringly, to this whole crowd (possibly hundreds). It is possible that she had failed at marriage and/or morally failed, became a social outcast, was declared ‘unclean’ by Levitical Law, lost everything in pursuit of medical relief, was infinitely lonely as an ostracized lower-class woman, maybe even became offended at God for her twelve-year oppressive situation. I am taking some speculative liberties here, but we do know for sure that whatever she ‘confessed’ was the ‘whole truth’ and it was public. Additionally, this heroic action placed her into a category of rare membership where Jesus praised her faith. Her faith was so well wielded that Jesus actually said that her healing was done by HER and HER faith… almost removing Himself from the miracle. “Daughter,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” (verse 34a) Whoa… right?

This radically humble and transparent confession blew open a whole new realm of divine access for her. Not only was this woman healed of a twelve-year torturous malady, BUT additionally she also received redemption, restoration, and liberation in the depths of her soul. This was like a bonus healing on top of her famously biblical record of an already incredible Jesus encounter. The root cause, the place that started the entire downward spiral, her soul, was also touched by the Great Physician through His confession. “Go in peace and be free of your affliction.” (verse 34b)

Do you see the ‘and’ again? The Prince of Peace declared peace to her. Peace is something that affects the mind and soul, not something physical. This declaration saturated and baptized her internal identity creating the conjunction (and) that fully liberated her from the root of the whole devestating decade-plus of misery. True confession has a massive and mostly untapped advantage that very few modern Christians will ever make contact with. This woman was doing scripture before James wrote it. I wonder if James was thinking about her when he wrote it…

“Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.”

James 5:14-16 BSB

Sick = physical; forgiven-sins = soul, and both together equate to ‘healing’. Catholic Christians should embrace James’ teaching here and value the strength of confession. Just because we are protestants does not mean that we should reject Biblical truth because those ‘other people’ do it in their non-protestant building. Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater…

If you desire a deeper dive into this teaching, I spent over an hour expounding some amazing points in my regular Thursday Zoom study HERE. Feel free to watch and share.

Our arrogant, narcissistic, and pride-filled society today pressures us all to hide, fake-it-till-you-make-it, be plastic, embrace disingenuousness, sew fig leaves together (Genesis 3:7), bury the Epstein flight logs, professionally photoshop our social media profile picture, redact the jab adverse effects data, call good evil and evil good, coin the term ‘husky’ in place of ‘fat’, deny election malfeasance, color our gray hair, whitewash history so it says what we want it to say, ignore the moral depravity of our popular icons, malign inconvenient truth as conspiracy to discredit it, and deceive everyone around us in hopes that the real-you is never exposed. This is how a society stays sick and the soul roots remain deep and strong.

Let us lead the way in this Great Awakening for our culture to experience miraculous healings AND have the identity of their souls liberated by the Prince of Peace. We can show them the way, Beloved.

I confess… I love you,
Steve