Preparing to Confess

Seven words. That’s it. The point is: we need to be prepared. Being prepared is not my idea. It comes from God: “Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have.” In Lent, we’re preparing for Holy Week by preparing to confess the hope we have in Christ. Confessing the gospel begins, in many ways, by acknowledging who we are as confessors. Fragile, yes. Fallen, indeed. Failing, everyday. Sinful, to put it simply. Until people see and understand and believe there is something wrong in us, the idea that Jesus saves won’t mean much. So, the first step in crafting our descriptions of the gospel in seven words is to think about how to convey our universal need for a Savior. That doesn’t have to be the first thing we say, but it needs to be clear. After we’ve communicated the problem, the next step is simple (and joyful)! We preach: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:17–19). “God was in Christ, reconciling the world”... that’s a seven-word summary right there!