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1. We deny Christ when we advocate opinions which tend to lessen the authority of His religious teachings.

2. It is denying Christ to represent Him as a mere man. He Himself said, "I and My Father are one. He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." And He commended Thomas for addressing Him as " my Lord and my God." How can any one affirm that He was only a man without the guilt of denying Him?

3. We may often deny Christ by silence. No doubt some well-meaning people at times do harm by introducing religion into conversation under unsuitable circumstances, or by harsh polemical replies to what some unbeliever has said. But most of us are in far greater danger of a culpable silence when Christ's truth ought to be vindicated, and Christ's own claim to reverence and trust ought to be earnestly and lovingly declared.

4. We may deny Christ by appearing at places and engaging in pursuits which irreligious people themselves recognize as unsuitable for an earnest Christian.

5. We deny Christ by neglecting efforts to spread the saving knowledge of Him at home and abroad. The Confederate general, Albert Sidney Johnston, in the last letter he wrote before he fell at Shiloh, said, "The popular test of a military man's merit is success. It is a hard test, but it is the true one." We do not believe that success is always the true test of merit, but beyond question it is the popular test. Now, many irreligious people consider that Christianity is upon the whole a comparative failure. Large portions of the world it has never even nominally conquered. Some countries in which it once existed, including the Holy Land, have long been Mohammedan. And in the countries called Christian, a large proportion of the people are not really the subjects of Christ's spiritual reign, The hasty observer is wrong in concluding that Christ's work in the world is a failure; but must we not feel grief and shame at the thought that he has right plausible ground for such a conclusion? Just in proportion as we fail of any effort to spread Christ's spiritual reign, we give men an excuse for rejecting His authority and neglecting His salvation. And thus to act is in a distressing manner to deny Christ.

6. In fact, a Christian is always and everywhere either confessing Christ or denying Him. Every wrong act performed, every duty disregarded or imperfectly discharged, every indication of a character not conformed to His will and likened to His image, is, by the very necessity of the case, a denial of our Lord and Saviour.

(J. A. Broadus, D. D.)

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KJV: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.

WEB: but he who denies me in the presence of men will be denied in the presence of the angels of God.