A perennial challenge in the life of the member of the covenant congregation is the call to confess the faith, join full membership in the congregation and have the “church-right” to the Lord’s Supper.  The challenge is, what is being confessed – saving faith in Christ or the truths of the Christian faith, objectively understood.  The older book, God’s Yea and your Amen is helpful in this regard.  The following is a lengthy quotation:

A saved sinner, wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, learns to confess: I am conceived in sin, and born in iniquity; I am dead in trespasses and sins; I am  the greatest of sinners and a child of the father of lies.  Such confessors are standing at their own grave.  The stench of death meets us when this grave opens and we learn to know our state of death.  We learn to understand these “I am” confessions while we are still in good health.  And when we are lying on a sickbed, with death staring us in the face, we may be gripped by fear.  Spiritual wrestlings are the result. Then, even though death seems to triumph, the Lord, who is the Resurrection and the Life – that is one of His I-am pronouncements – will not put to shame the soul that signs and flees to Him.

Jesus wanted Martha, in the midst of the misery of death, to turn in faith to Christ alone.  He is the Victor of death.  Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, is  what no one else is.  Death and all its consequences always loses the battle against Him. Jesus is the destroyer of death in every respect.  Where He is, death must flee; the curse is removed; the wrath of God is silenced; and hell is closed for all His own.

Christ is also the Life, the true and full Life; He is the Fountain of life, which continues to spring up everlastingly.  Death, which He destroyed, lies behind Him.  All resurrection and life proceed from Christ.  When we are recipients of it, it is a miracle from Him, both initially and by continuation, and remains so into eternity, Simon Peter, for one, was called from death to life.  After his denial, Jesus remained for him, in his desperate misery, the Resurrection and the Life.  That is why Simon did not succumb in his misery.

Whoever steadfastly believes in Christ, and whose faith is forever anchored in Him, shall live forever, even though he were dead.  Within these believers is found a resurrection life, for they are comprehended in Christ who is the life.  He has called them from death to life and the Holy spirit has incorporated them into Christ.  Therefore He lives in them. (God’s Yea and your Amen, L.H. van der Meiden, 52-53, emphasis in the original).

I really like the way this sets Christ forth as a resolution to the subjective/objective struggle of what it is to confess faith.  To not merely know Christ’s historical accomplishment but to believe in Christ and have Him living in you is the heart of the Christian life and profession.  With this being said, we yearn for Christ to confess to His own work, living in the individual and granting them to affirm in the power of His life, “whose I am and whom I serve” (Acts 27:23).