Worship as Dialogue: Confession of Faith

Our worship service is a conversation between God and us. God speaks to us by his Word in Scripture and moves upon us by his Holy Spirit in inwardly apply the grace of the gospel. He engages us not just in our minds, but in all of our senses to confirm that we are not our own, but we belong to Him and that He is for us. And we are reoriented to see our lives in light of God’s redeeming work. 

In the previous three posts we’ve looked at how God gets the first word in the Call to Worship, how this call pulls us out from ourselves to sing—not perform—with one voice to his glory and our good, and how God continues to assure us of his love for us as we confess our sin. That leads us to the next aspect of our worship service: Confession of Faith.

God doesn’t just forgive us of sin or even just declare us righteous in his sight by faith, not works. He’s also at work renewing every part of us—our intellects, our affections, and our wills/actions. One of the ways we experience this in worship is that we use our words to confess our faith. In our worship service we use the words of Scripture and faithful words from church history to guide us in this. 

When we confess our faith, we aren’t simply stating facts. We don’t confess that 2+2=4, or that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Those things are true, of course. But confessing our faith is deeper than saying things that are true. It is us, in a sense, being taught how to speak in the same way that infants and toddlers learn how to speak: by copying the words and wisdom of those in our family who have gone before us.

In our world, so marked by words used for deceit, slander, and violence we are being formed into people who use our words for truth, beauty, and goodness. 

Our denomination’s official confession of faith is the Westminster Confession of Faith, along with the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms—written in the 1640s by a collection of pastors and theologians to help outline the contours of the Christian faith. But our Confession of Faith in worship is not limited to these. We affirm and confess the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and a number of other historic creeds from church history—as well as more recent creeds/catechisms such as the Belhar Confession and the New City Catechism.

So next time we confess our faith together in worship, let’s lean in on copying the wisdom of the global and historic church, recognizing that we are not the first, last, or only followers of Jesus.