“Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
And they can be sure of one further thing, and that is that if they confess (acknowledge their oneness with, and bear witness to) Him before men, they can be sure that He will confess (acknowledge positively) them before His Father in Heaven. The ‘I' is emphatic. He will not only own up to them as His own but will positively stand with all His authority as their guarantor. The assumption here is clearly that they are to see that confession of them by Him as having eternal significance, demonstrating therefore that Jesus Himself has eternal significance. Note also His powerful distinction between ‘My Father' and ‘your Father' (Matthew 10:30). As ‘their Father' He watches over them, but it is only because He is Jesus' Father that He can finally accept them. For their acceptance is through Him.
Note how in the chiasmus this is paralleled with Matthew 10:23. Thus their being confessed before His Father in Heaven will connect in some way with the coming of the Son of Man. But that is not conclusive of the meaning of Matthew 10:23, for this confession of them might be in the near future after His resurrection, or after death (Matthew 10:28) or in the far future at His second coming, or indeed all three.
It should be noted that when in Mark 8:38 (compare Luke 12:8-9) we have a similar statement to this, but in terms of ‘the Son of Man', the words were being spoken to the crowds, not specifically to the disciples alone. This tends to confirm that when speaking to the crowds Jesus was not quite as openly outspoken as He was with His disciples. Before the crowds He spoke of Himself as the Son of Man.
The whole concept is similar to that found in 1 Samuel 2:30 where it is God Who says, ‘those who honour Me I will honour, and those who despise Me will be lightly esteemed'. Thus Jesus is aligning Himself on the divine side of reality.