Sermon - Confession of St. Peter, 2026 - Mark 8:27-9:1

St. Peter Preaching in the Presence of St. Mark, Fra Angelico, 1433

Boldness to Confess Jesus and His Word

1. What does it mean to confess?

2. What is at stake?

3. Boldness to confess the truth in my daily life.

“Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered Him, “You are the Christ.”” That is a confession of faith! Today we commemorate St. Peter’s bold confession of the truth that Jesus is the Christ. In remembering his confession, we are also encouraged to have that same boldness to confess Jesus and His Word before this adulterous and sinful generation. Regardless of whether or not the world asks for your confession of faith, Jesus does, and just as Jesus asked the disciples so does Jesus ask you today: Who do you say that I am?

The question has been asked of you, the command to make the confession has been made, but what does that mean? What does it mean to confess your faith? I suspect the task of confession seems a bit daunting because you would assume it requires some great mind to figure out the answer. Maybe you assume that you need to be very smart or very well educated to come up with a profound enough confession worthy of Christ. 

I hear this regularly enough when Christians use the excuse that they’re not smart enough to evangelize, and they think someone might ask them a question they’re not prepared to answer, and so they’ll sound stupid. They don’t want to be a bad evangelist and turn people away from Jesus, so they say nothing. Instead of defending the faith when opportunity arises, they keep their mouth shut so as not to say something wrong. So they expect the pastor to do all of the talking because they consider him the expert on the subject.

God save us from the cult of the experts! You don’t need a Masters or Batcheller’s degree to talk about Jesus! The idea that only “experts” can talk about a given subject is ridiculous, whether we’re talking about religion or politics or law or medicine or whatever. This idea that only experts can talk just silences conversations and furthers ignorance, we often learn by talking, so we shouldn’t be afraid to express our beliefs with the humility that we may be wrong and need correction. So you don’t have to be some sort of expert in religion to talk about it.

Case in point, Peter himself was not some sort of genius. Did you notice it in Acts where it says they perceived that Peter and John “were uneducated, common men”? Now that’s a polite translation. The word for “common” in the Greek is Idiotes, it’s the word idiot! All these supposed smart guys looked at Peter and determined that he was actually an uneducated idiot! I don’t say this to mock St. Peter, one of the apostles closest to our Lord, but to say that if Peter, who made bold confessions of the faith and wrote books of the Bible, is an idiot, then that means I can’t claim I’m too stupid or too big of an idiot to confess Jesus.

Because confessing the faith is not about how smart we are. If Peter was an uneducated ignoramus, then I’m definitely whatever is more stupid than that. That’s just fine, because it’s not about how smart I, or you, or Peter, or anyone is! To confess the faith is simply to repeat God’s Word. How did Peter know to say that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God? Because He was at Jesus’ baptism and heard the Father speak from heaven, saying “This is My beloved Son.” Peter is not being profoundly original, he’s just repeating what he had already heard God say. That’s all it is to confess your faith; it’s just the boldness to repeat what God has already said to you.

So it’s typically the boldness that is actually the hard part of confessing our faith. They didn’t just notice that Peter and John were uneducated idiots, but they noticed their boldness. Like the Psalmist says “I will speak of Your testimony before kings, O Lord, and shall not be put to shame.” It’s simple enough to know the truth. You have memorized a number of Bible verses, you know the Commandments and the Creeds, it’s easy to do that. This is why we have children and new Christians memorize the catechism, and this is why I will regularly admonish you to make sure you have these memorized, because that’s the easy part. The more challenging part is repeating those simple things out loud before other people; the hard part is boldness.

It’s difficult to be bold and confess the truth, but just consider what is at stake here if you refuse to confess. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 

What is at stake here? Your eternal life and your immortal soul. These are the things at stake here! St. Peter, even though he made that great confession, didn’t yet really understand what was all at play here. So when Jesus told him that He was going to be crucified and killed, Peter couldn’t stand it! He didn’t realize that the name of Christ meant earthly suffering. So Jesus corrected him: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” There is more than the temporal at stake here. 

If you would be willing to gain everlasting life, then you must be willing to lose temporal life. Confessing Jesus and His Word is not optional. To be a follower of Christ means that we must speak the truth of God’s Word. Not just the words that other people like, but also and especially the words that they don’t like but that they need to hear. Because the warfare we are fighting is not primarily according to the flesh. So the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but they still have the holy power to destroy earthly strongholds! Therefore, St. Paul says: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Every thought is captive to Christ. Every word is captive to Christ. Our minds and our lips and hearts belong to Him, and it is our prayer that these would submit to His will and confess His Word. “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise!”

So, given all of that, what does the Confession of St. Peter and Jesus’ admonition to not be ashamed of Him and His Word have to do with us today? What lessons ought we to take away from this? I think the lessons are perhaps obvious, and you probably know and feel in your heart what it is that you have to do, even if you don’t want to, so let me encourage you in these things.

God has established you in the truth and has entrusted to you the responsibility of speaking the truth. Yes, that means speaking the truth in love of course, but in order to speak the truth in love you must speak the truth, because the truth is always loving. So we live in an age that demands us to lie, and yet we must be bold enough not to lie in love for our neighbor.

For example, transgenderism demands that you lie, and claims that it is loving to do so. But dear Christian, God has not authorized you to lie about these things and lead others into further sin. God has given you the truth, and that you must speak. When the world demands that you must call a man a woman, God hasn’t given you permission to lie. When the world demands that you call two men living together married, God hasn’t given you permission to lie like that. 

Yes, I understand sometimes wisdom dictates you don’t tell everyone the whole truth at one time. For example, your niece now identifies as a man, you’re not obligated to spend five hours at the next birthday party explaining why what she’s doing is sinful and destructive, maybe that conversation happens over the course of some months, fair enough. But God doesn’t give you permission to lie nonetheless. This is a basic principle that we don’t have to tell everyone every single bit of truth in every conversation we ever have, because that would be impractical and impossible because there’s just too much. But that principle doesn’t excuse us from never speaking the truth.

Just consider what is at stake here. First, your soul and the soul of another person who is living in darkness. If you lie to them and encourage them to live in darkness according to satanic lies, their own soul may be lost because you were not bold enough to speak the truth to them when they needed to hear it. Additionally, because you were ashamed of God’s Word, because you were too ashamed to speak the truth, because you wanted to gain the world instead of Christ, then Jesus will be ashamed of you and you will lose your very life.

But what do you have to gain by speaking the truth? Everything! The soul of that person living in darkness may very well be brought out of death and into the light of Christ through the truth which you have spoken. Your lips may be the very means by which God has ordained to rescue that lost soul from the pit of hell. That eternal soul which is nigh unto being lost could be saved by the grace of God through your bold lips. Even if this adulterous and sinful generation doesn’t listen to you, even if they fire you, or uninvite you to their parties, or ridicule you, or even arrest you, the Son of God will boldly acknowledge you before the Father in heaven, and you will dwell with God the almighty in His unapproachable light for all eternity. Who cares if the world thinks we are uneducated idiots, if the Son of God acknowledges us as bold confessors of the divine mysteries that have the power to conquer death and impart life without end.