"Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:12).
The Apostle Paul is in the middle of some last-minute instructions to the young preacher Timothy when he describes one of the actions Timothy took to lay hold on eternal life: he made the good confession and he did it before witnesses.
Interestingly, he uses the term “good confession” not only in this verse but also in the one that follows. This is the confession Paul describes in Romans 10, requiring that it be made with the mouth and mandating that it be made as one goes toward salvation.
As well, it is the same confession Jesus ties to a promise in Matthew 10 where He makes it a requirement if we want Him to confess our name to the Father. The verbal confession of Jesus as the Son of God, then, is necessary for our salvation.