What Is Confirmation?

Confirmation is a rite in which a young person (or an adult convert), having been instructed in the Christian faith, publicly confesses that faith before the congregation and is prayed for as they take up the responsibilities of communicant membership. It usually caps a period of catechism instruction—working through the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments, typically using Luther’s Small Catechism.

It’s important to be clear about what confirmation is not, because it is easily misunderstood. It is not a sacrament—Lutherans reject the medieval notion that confirmation is a sacrament instituted by Christ. It does not “complete” or “finish” Baptism, as though Baptism were somehow deficient until confirmation topped it off. Baptism is complete in itself; God did the whole saving work there, and a baptized infant is already fully a Christian. Confirmation adds nothing to what Baptism gave. And it is emphatically not a graduation from church, though sadly it sometimes functions that way in practice—the moment a young person “finishes” and drifts off. That is a misuse; confirmation is a beginning, not an end.

So what is it, positively? Confirmation is essentially two good things joined together. It is the fruit of catechesis—the Church’s obligation to teach the faith to the young, so they know what they believe and can “make a defense… for the hope that is in [them]” (1 Peter 3:15). This flows straight from Christ’s command to make disciples by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded” (Matthew 28:20), and from the ancient charge to teach God’s Word to children “when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7). And it is a public confession and prayer—the confirmand claiming for himself the faith into which he was baptized, and the congregation praying God’s continued grace upon him.

Rightly understood, then, confirmation is not a diploma but a doorway: an instructed young Christian standing up to say, “the faith my Baptism gave me, I now confess as my own”—and then walking through into a lifetime of receiving Christ’s gifts at his Table.