What it means to "confess faith in Jesus Christ"

When you have faith in the ability of a particular seat to bear your full weight towards giving you rest from your struggles and the heavy loads that you are carrying, you'll sit with confidence, without first trying to lose some weight and plop all of your luggage on it too, especially if your life depended on your doing so.

But when you're not quite sure that the seat can bear your weight and that of your luggage, you try to divest yourself of some weight and reduce your luggage so that you can be the "right" weight before you sit down to rest in this seat that your life depends on. How do these analogies relate to Christians?

Believers, our Abba Father has provided a place of rest from all of our labours and heavy loads in our Saviour Jesus Christ, the real Mercy Seat. In Old Testament, the greek word for “mercy-seat” is hilasterion, the same word for “propitiation.” In the New Testament Christ is described as our “propitiation” in Romans 3:24-25-

"24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness,..."

Christ is our Mercy Seat; He says in Matthew 11:28- 

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Jesus did not say "Drop your heavy loads (the demands of the law and all that worry you) first and then come and I will give you rest." If we could drop our burdens (keep the law and live right) on our own, we won't need His rest. Only in Him can those struggles, sins, addictions and burdens that we try to manage on our own be lifted from our shoulders. He makes righteous. Remember Romans 3:20 says-

"For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are."

No amount of trying to divest ourselves from the struggles and sins that weigh us down (law-keeping) can make us the right weight for entering Christ's rest. In fact, trying to divest yourself of your struggles and burdens (the demands of the law, sin, oppression, stress, sicknesses, all that weigh you down) by your own effort in order to be the "right" weight (be righteous in the sight of God) is how to get disqualified/cut off from Christ our Mercy Seat and subsequently the rest that only He can give. Galatians 5:4 says-

"For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace."

His rest is for people who are struggling and burdened by the demands of the law and can't help themselves, not people who know how to be righteous on their own. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us how we are made righteous in the sight of God:

"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

Anyone who preaches any other path to attaining righteousness is a false preacher.

Believers, believe right. Unbelief is expressed in the lives of Christians who reason that they need to "play their part" towards attaining righteousness by doing their best to keep the law when the bible says that it is by "one Man's obedience" that we are made righteous. Romans 5:19.

Unbelief is running helter-skelter from one deliverance service to another in search of freedom from generational curses when "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law..." Galatians 3:13.

Unbelief is to think that there are terms and conditions for a believer to receive from God when His word says "He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

Believers, Christ did a perfect work of setting us free from sin and death. Trying to deserve His rest with our efforts at keeping the law is refusing to confess faith in Him; refusing to sit in the place of rest that He died that we might have. This is unbelief: feeling that unless you by yourself do certain things to right yourself, you cannot enter the rest that Christ our Mercy Seat provides; not having faith in the Mercy Seat's power to give rest.

Believers, let's not be found here. If we could save ourselves from sin and death, Jesus would not have needed to come and save us from them.

He loves us so. Come to Him as you are, sins and all. He will love you into wholeness. You will not continue to sin. It is under grace that sin will not have dominion over you. Under law, trying to get right with God by your own effort, sin will have dominion. 1 Corinthians 15:56 says "...the strength of sin is the law." The more you try to keep the Ten Commandments and do good things in order to get from God, the stronger the grip of sin will be. But Grace sets free from sin. It is Christ's "Neither do I condemn you" that makes us "go and sin no more."

By His grace, believe His finished work of making all who believe eternally righteous and enter His rest.

The Holy Spirit will teach you all things.

Believe Right and you will Live Right