I. Confession with the mouth. Confession does not stop, though it begins, with the confession of sin, of the greatness of its guilt, and the justice of its punishment; it rapidly advances to the confession announced in our text; the confession of sin being not only involved in the confession of Christ, but issuing in that confession in the largest and least qualified sense. He who feels that sin is destroying him is in the exact position to take home the truth that Christ died to deliver him. Where there is genuine confession of sin there will equally be genuine confession of all that is vital in the system of Christianity. Why then should not the being saved follow, as it is made to follow in our text, on confessing with the mouth the Lord Jesus?
II. Faith in the heart is that which will produce confession with the mouth. It is very easy, but very unfair, to speak of faith as a mere act of the mind, which naturally follows where there is a sufficiency of evidence, over which, therefore, a man has little or no control, and which, in consequence, ought not to be made the test or criterion of moral qualities. We pronounce this unfair, because it does not take into account the influence which the affections exert over the understanding, in consequence of which a man will readily believe some things and obstinately disbelieve others, though there be no difference in the amount of furnished testimony. It should be remembered that where the things to be believed are things which a man would naturally and strongly wish to disbelieve, there is great probability that the heart will operate injuriously on the head; and if notwithstanding the assent be given, and the unwelcome facts be admitted, we have much reason to suppose that there has been a struggle in the breast, a contest between the power of truth and the power of the inclination, which makes the case widely different from the mere yielding on sufficient evidence which is all, we are told, that can be predicated of faith. Belief with the head might leave the life what it was, but belief with the heart must be a belief unto righteousness, a belief which will be evidenced by the whole tenor of the life. Faith cannot be a barren or uninfluential principle. The doctrines of Scripture are such as, if acknowledged, are of the strongest possible interest to man, so that we must be justified in concluding, as we would of any matter of common life, that all real faith must be wanting where there is manifest disregard of all which faith would enjoin.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2167.