The impulse to share, to impart, normally accompanies any true encounter with God and spiritual things. The woman at the well, after her soul-inspiring meeting with Jesus, left her water pots, hurried into the city and tried to persuade her friends to come out and meet Him. Come, see a man, she said, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Her spiritual excitement could not be contained within her own heart. She had to tell someone. Is it not possible that our Lord had this in mind when He spoke about the impossibility of secret discipleship? Have we misunderstood the true relationship between faith and testimony? Christ made it clear that there could be no such thing as secret discipleship and Paul said, With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This is usually understood to mean that God has laid upon us an arbitrary requirement to open our mouth in confession before salvation can become effective within us. Maybe that is the correct meaning of these verses. Or could it be that the confession is an evidence of the salvation which has come by faith to the heart, and where there is no impulse to impart, no outrushing of words in joyous testimony, there has been no true inward experience of saving grace?
