Christianity in Three Circles
Revelation, acceptance and confession. This is how you were saved, and it’s how you’ll receive everything else God has for you.
If I had to summarize the Christian life on a single whiteboard, I would draw three circles.
The first is revelation of the truth. The second is acceptance of the truth. The third is confession of the truth.
These three things happen the moment you receive Jesus into your heart, and they keep happening all through your journey with Him. Salvation, healing, provision, a renewed mind, even the way you read your Bible: every other thing you’ll experience in Christ revolves around these three circles.
Let me walk you through each one.
The First Circle: Revelation of the Truth
Revelation of the truth simply means understanding what the truth is about a subject.
For someone who is just getting to know Jesus Christ, that starts with understanding who He is.
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6, KJV)
To receive eternal life, you need to understand the truth. You need to understand who Jesus is and what He did for you. He died for us. He was buried. And after three days, He rose again. That revelation has to come to you. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus, and you can’t come to Jesus unless He is revealed to you.
That’s the very first step in Christianity, and everything else you’ll walk in begins the same way.
Do you need healing? Start by finding out what the Word of God says about healing. Jesus went to the cross and bore our sins, along with the consequences of sin, and “for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8, KJV).
Do you want to walk in abundance as a Christian? The first step is the same: what has God said about your finances?
And where do you find what He has said? In the whole of Scripture. Jesus isn’t someone who only started existing two thousand years ago. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58, KJV). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, KJV). The same Word inspired Moses, David, Peter and John. So whether it’s in the red letters of the Gospels or anywhere else in the Bible, it is the truth about the matter.
The Second Circle: Acceptance of the Truth
When the truth comes to you, you can do one of two things. You can reject it, or you can accept it. And what you do with the truth decides what happens to you.
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, KJV)
Think about it this way. If someone has handcuffs on their wrists, whoever sets them free has to make contact first. They have to get hold of those handcuffs to loosen them. In the same way, the truth sets you free when it gets a hold of you. That happens when you accept it.
This is how we share the gospel. We tell people the truth: Jesus, the Son of God, came to die for the sins of all men. That’s the revelation. Then comes the question: will you accept Him? We don’t force it on anyone. God never takes away the free will He gave to man.
But even after we’re saved, this pattern doesn’t change. Many Christians know that by the name of Jesus they can be healed, yet they’ve never really accepted it for themselves. The Word says you are Abraham’s seed. The Word says you are one with Christ, seated with Him in heavenly places, far above principalities and powers. That is revelation. The question is whether you’ll accept it, or keep living like a mere man, scared of the same things that frighten everyone who hasn’t received this truth.
This is where faith comes in. The Israelites heard the word, but “the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it” (Hebrews 4:2, KJV). They didn’t accept it.
Grace Reaches Down, Faith Reaches Up
“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17, KJV). The revelation came to us by grace. We had no right to know it. It could have been kept from us. But because God loves us, He brought the truth to us.
Get Michael Adegoke’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Here’s the picture I love. Grace is God’s hand stretched out toward us with the truth. Faith is our hand stretched out toward God to receive what He has given.
And thankfully, even the hand we stretch out is His gift:
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8, KJV)
Still, there’s a place for your will. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13, KJV). And He “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20, KJV). How much of that power do you allow to work in you? That’s what determines how open your heart is to receive.
The Third Circle: Confession of the Truth
Confession isn’t only saying something out loud, although it includes that. The word comes from the Greek homologeo, which means to acknowledge, to agree with. If you’ve accepted something as truth, the next thing is to act in line with it.
Paul puts all three circles into two verses:
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9–10, KJV)
The truth was revealed. You believed it in your heart. Then you confessed it with your mouth. That’s salvation.
Confession also means acting out your faith. “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20, KJV). If the Word tells you that Jesus became poor so that through His poverty you might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), and you accept it, you start acting like someone who is rich in Christ. How does that person act? They give. They pay their tithe, give their offerings, partner with their church and help the people around them. That’s the bare minimum, and it’s how you demonstrate what you believe.
You may have heard the story of the people who gathered to pray for rain. One of them came holding an umbrella. The truth had been revealed: when you pray, God answers. They had accepted it. And the umbrella was their confession. They were acting on what they believed before the first drop fell.
The Circles Keep Turning
This isn’t something you do once. It’s how you receive salvation, healing, the gift of the Holy Spirit and your inheritance as Abraham’s seed. It’s how you receive anything at all in Christ.
It’s even how we’ll be caught up when Jesus returns. We’ve received the revelation. We accept it. And because we accept it, we live like people who believe it, with hearts prepared and looking forward to that day, not living carelessly.
It’s there in your daily Bible reading too. You open the Scriptures because you’ve received the truth that God’s Word is in them. You accept that He’ll speak to you and help you understand. And the very act of reading is your confession.
The three circles just keep going on and on.
Your Takeaway
Pick one area of your life this week, whether it’s your health, your finances, your peace of mind or your walk with God, and take it through the three circles:
- Revelation. Search the Scriptures and write down what God says about that area.
- Acceptance. Decide to believe it over what you feel or what you’ve been told. Stretch out your hand of faith.
- Confession. Say it out loud, and then do one concrete thing this week that agrees with it.
Then do it again. That’s the Christian life.
Watch the full teaching: Christianity Explained in 3 Circles on my YouTube channel.
Want a short word from Scripture every day? Join my WhatsApp community at michaeladegoke.net/whatsapp
Which circle do you find hardest right now: seeing the truth, accepting it, or acting on it? Tell me in the comments, and leave any questions you have there too. I’ll answer them.
