Text: John 18:28-38
Facebook live: Following Jesus in a good confession
36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Following Jesus in a good confession
When the apostle Paul was calling Timothy to a life of Christian faithfulness, he told him to
“Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
Paul solemnly directed him to do this, continuing,
“I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Tim. 6:12-14
Just as Christ Jesus had testified the good confession, openly declaring who He is and what He came to do, so Timothy had made the good confession of Christ.
And now he wants to keep on fighting the good fight of the faith, which necessarily included abiding in that good confession of Christ.
This, friends, is what our Lord desires and expects us all to do:
To follow Jesus in the good confession!
Paul said Jesus testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate.
This identifies our Savior's testimony before the Roman governor as an important Christian confession. And, naturally, this good confession was about Jesus Himself.
And what did our Lord say about Himself? Jesus plainly confessed He is a king. He repeatedly spoke of His kingdom, clearly implying He is a king.
And when Pilate responded, “So then You are a king?”
Jesus affirmed it by answering, “You say that I am a king.”
That was an idiomatic way of saying, “That's right; I am a king.”
Yet Jesus also made it clear He is no ordinary king.
My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But now My kingdom is not from here.
So, he is not a worldly king with worldly servants who fight with worldly weapons for worldly purposes. King Jesus does not engage in conventional battles to defend Himself
Our Lord continued:
For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.
Our King Jesus was indeed born; He is a real man, born of His mother Mary. Yet He is also the King who “came into the world” - who existed from eternity outside the world, but then came down from heaven and entered into the world.
In other words, King Jesus is the eternal Son of God!
As such, our King exercises His reign not by the power of the sword, but by the power of his word – by speaking the truth.
“For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”
So, our Savior's royal weapon is His word – His testimony is truth!
In the divine message, which Jesus spoke. He also identified Himself as the truth (14:6), The way the truth and the life!
Jesus is not only the Messenger but also the subject matter of the Father's word.
When we listen to Jesus, we hear that the centerpiece and summary of the truth is this:
Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and by faith in his name we have everlasting life.
That is Jesus' testimony of himself!
You see, in Jesus' reign, His servants don't fight to keep Him from being arrested and killed. Rather, Jesus willingly fought and died to save His servants!
In this way, by dying on the cross, Jesus forgave all our sins, nullifying the devil's accusations against us, and casting him out of power.
The devil cannot condemn us for our sins and drag us down to hell with him. Jesus fought and defeated him, so that we are not delivered to everlasting death and damnation.
As a result, instead losing our life to the enemy, all of us who believe in Jesus, have eternal life!
For Jesus will come again in glory, raise our bodies from the dead, and transform them to an immortal and imperishable body very much like His own glorious body!
That's the victory Jesus promises and has won for all of us who believe in Him, the victory of everlasting life!
So, this is the heart and core of Christ’s witness to the truth – the chief article of the good confession.
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who gives His believers everlasting life. And now He calls us to follow Him in this good confession.
By His work, we are “of the truth.” We have and we believe the good confession. It is our confession too!
So, Jesus wants us to be good stewards of this gift.
Paul calls dear Timothy to remember this as well when he writes:
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. 1 Tim. 6:20
This “deposit” is the good confession, the truth of Christ!
And what the Lord said to Timothy goes for us all.
We Christians are all to guard the confession entrusted to us.
To maintain the truth as Jesus has handed it over to us.
This requires us first to learn and know the good confession well.
We must be firmly grounded in the truth of Christ so that we can detect any deviation from it.
Then we must hold it fast, and carefully watch out for anything that adds to it, subtracts from it, distorts it, or otherwise alters the truth as we have received it from Jesus.
That is good stewardship of the Christian confession.
To be faithful stewards of the good confession we must also speak it also!
For the truth of Christ is not for our ears alone, but for everyone.
The good confession is to be a public confession – one for anyone and everyone to hear.
Jesus said,
Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. Matt. 10:32
Peter is a great example for us. He openly confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.
On Pentecost he confessed Him as Lord and Christ.
Peter confessed Him before the Jewish rulers as the one and only Savior of the world.
At Cornelius' house he confessed Jesus as Lord of all, the Judge of the living and the dead, the One in whom His believers receive the forgiveness of sins.
Like Peter, every one of us can follow Jesus in openly speaking the good confession. That salvation is found in his name alone.
We can speak the truth of Christ to family members and friends, coworkers, and others as opportunities arise – and they will!
What may seem hard, God makes ready as we rest in and study his word.
You can speak that confession of Christ in a very simple way to others who need to hear it.
You can invite and bring those people here to church with you, so they can listen to the truth of Christ read and proclaimed publicly.
This, too, is good stewardship of the good confession
For our Lord’s intention for this good confession is to serve for the salvation of sinners!
Some will not listen to the truth.
Others will listen and believe, and receive salvation!
As the Scripture says,
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Rom. 10:9-10
And that's what Our Lord desires most of all for everyone!
So, let's continue to follow Him in the good confession, for our salvation, and the salvation of many more – all to the praise and honor of his Name!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit!
Amen
36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Following Jesus in a good confession
When the apostle Paul was calling Timothy to a life of Christian faithfulness, he told him to
“Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
Paul solemnly directed him to do this, continuing,
“I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Tim. 6:12-14
Just as Christ Jesus had testified the good confession, openly declaring who He is and what He came to do, so Timothy had made the good confession of Christ.
And now he wants to keep on fighting the good fight of the faith, which necessarily included abiding in that good confession of Christ.
This, friends, is what our Lord desires and expects us all to do:
To follow Jesus in the good confession!
Paul said Jesus testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate.
This identifies our Savior's testimony before the Roman governor as an important Christian confession. And, naturally, this good confession was about Jesus Himself.
And what did our Lord say about Himself? Jesus plainly confessed He is a king. He repeatedly spoke of His kingdom, clearly implying He is a king.
And when Pilate responded, “So then You are a king?”
Jesus affirmed it by answering, “You say that I am a king.”
That was an idiomatic way of saying, “That's right; I am a king.”
Yet Jesus also made it clear He is no ordinary king.
My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But now My kingdom is not from here.
So, he is not a worldly king with worldly servants who fight with worldly weapons for worldly purposes. King Jesus does not engage in conventional battles to defend Himself
Our Lord continued:
For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.
Our King Jesus was indeed born; He is a real man, born of His mother Mary. Yet He is also the King who “came into the world” - who existed from eternity outside the world, but then came down from heaven and entered into the world.
In other words, King Jesus is the eternal Son of God!
As such, our King exercises His reign not by the power of the sword, but by the power of his word – by speaking the truth.
“For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.”
So, our Savior's royal weapon is His word – His testimony is truth!
In the divine message, which Jesus spoke. He also identified Himself as the truth (14:6), The way the truth and the life!
Jesus is not only the Messenger but also the subject matter of the Father's word.
When we listen to Jesus, we hear that the centerpiece and summary of the truth is this:
Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and by faith in his name we have everlasting life.
That is Jesus' testimony of himself!
You see, in Jesus' reign, His servants don't fight to keep Him from being arrested and killed. Rather, Jesus willingly fought and died to save His servants!
In this way, by dying on the cross, Jesus forgave all our sins, nullifying the devil's accusations against us, and casting him out of power.
The devil cannot condemn us for our sins and drag us down to hell with him. Jesus fought and defeated him, so that we are not delivered to everlasting death and damnation.
As a result, instead losing our life to the enemy, all of us who believe in Jesus, have eternal life!
For Jesus will come again in glory, raise our bodies from the dead, and transform them to an immortal and imperishable body very much like His own glorious body!
That's the victory Jesus promises and has won for all of us who believe in Him, the victory of everlasting life!
So, this is the heart and core of Christ’s witness to the truth – the chief article of the good confession.
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who gives His believers everlasting life. And now He calls us to follow Him in this good confession.
By His work, we are “of the truth.” We have and we believe the good confession. It is our confession too!
So, Jesus wants us to be good stewards of this gift.
Paul calls dear Timothy to remember this as well when he writes:
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. 1 Tim. 6:20
This “deposit” is the good confession, the truth of Christ!
And what the Lord said to Timothy goes for us all.
We Christians are all to guard the confession entrusted to us.
To maintain the truth as Jesus has handed it over to us.
This requires us first to learn and know the good confession well.
We must be firmly grounded in the truth of Christ so that we can detect any deviation from it.
Then we must hold it fast, and carefully watch out for anything that adds to it, subtracts from it, distorts it, or otherwise alters the truth as we have received it from Jesus.
That is good stewardship of the Christian confession.
To be faithful stewards of the good confession we must also speak it also!
For the truth of Christ is not for our ears alone, but for everyone.
The good confession is to be a public confession – one for anyone and everyone to hear.
Jesus said,
Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. Matt. 10:32
Peter is a great example for us. He openly confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.
On Pentecost he confessed Him as Lord and Christ.
Peter confessed Him before the Jewish rulers as the one and only Savior of the world.
At Cornelius' house he confessed Jesus as Lord of all, the Judge of the living and the dead, the One in whom His believers receive the forgiveness of sins.
Like Peter, every one of us can follow Jesus in openly speaking the good confession. That salvation is found in his name alone.
We can speak the truth of Christ to family members and friends, coworkers, and others as opportunities arise – and they will!
What may seem hard, God makes ready as we rest in and study his word.
You can speak that confession of Christ in a very simple way to others who need to hear it.
You can invite and bring those people here to church with you, so they can listen to the truth of Christ read and proclaimed publicly.
This, too, is good stewardship of the good confession
For our Lord’s intention for this good confession is to serve for the salvation of sinners!
Some will not listen to the truth.
Others will listen and believe, and receive salvation!
As the Scripture says,
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Rom. 10:9-10
And that's what Our Lord desires most of all for everyone!
So, let's continue to follow Him in the good confession, for our salvation, and the salvation of many more – all to the praise and honor of his Name!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit!
Amen
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