Bible Verses About Confirmation help explain what happens when a young person or adult stands before the church to affirm the faith into which they were baptized. Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit’s gift, of the laying on of hands, and of believers being established and strengthened in Christ. These passages show why the church has long treated this step as a meaningful moment of commitment.
Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
Acts 8:14-17 (KJV)
Peter and John laid hands on baptized believers in Samaria, and they received the Holy Spirit, a key passage behind confirmation.
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.
Acts 19:5-6 (KJV)
At Ephesus, Paul laid hands on newly baptized disciples and the Holy Spirit came on them.
Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
Hebrews 6:1-2 (KJV)
The laying on of hands is listed among the foundational teachings of the Christian faith.
When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.
2 Timothy 1:5-6 (KJV)
Timothy’s faith came through his grandmother and mother, and Paul urges him to stir up the gift received through laying on of hands.
Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 (KJV)
Paul says it is God who establishes believers in Christ, anoints them and gives the Spirit as a pledge.
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:13-14 (KJV)
Those who believe are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, the guarantee of their inheritance.
Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.
Acts 2:38-39 (KJV)
Peter links baptism with the gift of the Holy Spirit and says the promise is for believers and their children.
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)
Confessing Jesus as Lord with the mouth and believing in the heart is at the centre of what confirmation affirms.
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
1 Timothy 6:12 (KJV)
Paul reminds Timothy of the good profession he made before many witnesses, much like a public confirmation.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 10:32 (KJV)
Jesus promises to confess before the Father those who confess Him before others.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Colossians 2:6-7 (KJV)
Believers who have received Christ are urged to be rooted, built up and established in the faith they were taught.
But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.
1 Peter 5:10 (KJV)
God promises to perfect, establish, strengthen and settle His people, the very meaning behind the word confirm.
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;
Isaiah 11:2 (KJV)
This prophecy names the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord, often linked with confirmation.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
John 14:26 (KJV)
Jesus promises the Holy Spirit as Comforter and teacher who will bring His words to remembrance.
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Acts 1:8 (KJV)
Believers receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on them, sending them out as witnesses.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 (KJV)
Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit, the kind of life that should grow after confirmation.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Philippians 1:6 (KJV)
God, who began a good work in a believer, will carry it on to completion.
Churches practise confirmation in different ways, and Scripture does not name it as a rite, but the practice grows out of several New Testament themes. In Acts 8:14-17, Peter and John came to baptized believers in Samaria, prayed for them, and laid hands on them so they received the Holy Spirit. Paul did something similar at Ephesus in Acts 19:5-6, and Hebrews 6:1-2 lists the laying on of hands among the church’s foundational teachings.
Scripture also speaks of God establishing believers. Paul writes that it is God who establishes us in Christ and gives the Spirit in our hearts (2 Corinthians 1:21-22), and he urges the Colossians to be rooted, built up and established in the faith (Colossians 2:6-7). Confirmation expresses this: the faith received in baptism is owned, strengthened and confessed.
Timothy offers a helpful example. He learned faith from his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and Paul reminded him to stir up the gift of God he received by the laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:5-6). Like Timothy, those being confirmed make a good profession before many witnesses (1 Timothy 6:12) and are sent out to live it.
1 Corinthians 15:58s be ye stedfast, unmoveable fits the specific affirmation a confirmation represents.
The earliest Christians did not run a confirmation class. People heard the gospel, believed, and were baptized, often within days. But very quickly a second moment shows up alongside baptism: an older believer or an apostle prays over the new disciple and lays hands on them. By the third and fourth centuries, churches in both East and West had folded that prayer into a rite connected with baptism, and bishops were closely tied to it.
Later, as infant baptism became the norm, the two moments drifted apart in time. A child was baptized as a baby, and years afterward came a day when the young person, now old enough to understand, made the faith their own. The Reformers kept that second step but changed its meaning, treating it as a season of teaching ending in a public statement of belief. So when people search for Bible verses about confirmation, they are really asking how a church tradition many centuries old connects back to a handful of New Testament scenes.
Those scenes matter more than the tradition does. Whatever your church calls it, the root is simple: someone who belongs to Christ gets taught, prayed over, and publicly welcomed. The passages gathered on this page show that root from several angles.
Take the account in Acts 8. Philip had preached in Samaria and many people believed and were baptized. Then the apostles in Jerusalem heard about it and sent Peter and John down. Luke tells us they prayed for the new believers, that they might receive the Holy Ghost, and then laid their hands on them. The detail that stands out is that the apostles came at all. Samaritans and Jews had despised each other for centuries, and the church wanted to be sure these new disciples were received as full family.
Acts 19 gives a second picture. Paul met about a dozen men in Ephesus who knew only the baptism of John. He explained Jesus to them, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid his hands on them the Holy Ghost came, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Here again the laying on of hands comes as a sort of welcome and strengthening after belief.
Be careful not to squeeze these stories into one pattern. In Acts 2 the Spirit arrives with baptism and no hands at all, and in Acts 10 the Spirit falls before anyone is baptized. Luke is not giving a procedure. He is showing that God receives people in more than one way, and the church answers with prayer and a hand on the shoulder.
English readers hear confirm and think of an appointment being approved. The Greek word behind many of these passages, bebaioo, leans toward making something firm, like setting a post deeper so it stops leaning. In Acts 14:22 Paul and Barnabas went back through the towns they had just been driven out of, confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith. Notice who they strengthened: people who had already believed and were already nervous about trouble ahead.
That is the working definition behind the Bible verses about confirmation people choose for the day. It is a firming up. Acts 15:32 and 15:41 use similar language when Judas, Silas and Paul visited churches to encourage them. Nobody in those chapters is being approved by a committee. They are being steadied by older believers who showed up in person.
A thirteen-year-old at a church altar may not be thinking about Greek verbs, and nobody needs them to. But a pastor who explains that confirmation is about being made firm, not about passing an exam, usually takes a lot of pressure off the room. The young person is not proving they are good enough. They are being strengthened in something they have already begun.
Paul reminded Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5 of the unfeigned faith that dwelt first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Then in verse 6 he told Timothy to stir up the gift of God that was in him by the putting on of Paul’s hands. Two things are tied together in a single breath: a faith handed down in a household, and a gift received through prayer and the laying on of hands.
Later in the same letter, 2 Timothy 3:14-15, Paul told him to continue in the things he had learned and been assured of, knowing from whom he learned them, and that from a child he had known the holy scriptures. Timothy’s faith had a kitchen-table beginning. No one had made a grand announcement. Somebody read to him, year after year, until it became his own.
Many families see themselves in that picture. A grandmother who prays by name, a mother who drives to church every week, a father who is quieter but present. Confirmation is often the day those years get acknowledged. It does not replace them, and it does not mean the child owes anyone a performance. It is the moment the young person can say, quietly, that what they were handed is now something they are holding on to themselves.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 that God which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. The word earnest is old English for a down payment, the first installment that guarantees the rest is coming. A seal in Paul’s day was a mark of ownership pressed into wax, something a merchant used so a package was known to be his.
Ephesians 1:13-14 uses the same two ideas. After you believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance. In both places the one doing the sealing and the stablishing is God. That matters for anyone nervous about standing up in front of a congregation. The firmness does not rest on how well a teenager recites a creed.
Among the Bible verses about confirmation, these may be the most freeing. A rite in a church can feel like the one moment when everything depends on you. These two passages quietly say the opposite. The ownership mark was placed by God, and the deposit has already been given. What the young person does on the day is a response to that, not the thing that makes it true.
Faith in the New Testament is never only private. Romans 10:9-10 says 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. The heart and the mouth work together. Jesus said in Matthew 10:32 that whosoever shall confess him before men, he would confess before his Father which is in heaven.
Paul reminded Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:12 to lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. Scholars debate whether Paul had Timothy’s baptism or his ordination in mind, and it could be either. What is clear is that there were witnesses. People were in the room, and what was said was heard.
That is why churches ask confirmation candidates to answer questions aloud. It can feel awkward, and some teenagers dread it for weeks. Still, there is something real about hearing your own voice say what you believe with people listening who love you. A promise made only in your head is easy to quietly revise. One made in front of family and friends has a way of staying with you, especially on the days you wish it did not.
Many confirmation services pray over the candidate with words drawn from Isaiah 11:2. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. Isaiah was describing the coming Messiah, and Christians have long borrowed the language to pray for those who follow Him. It is a prayer for what we hope God will give, not a checklist we claim a teenager has completed.
John 14:26 adds that the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance. Jesus said that to anxious disciples who feared losing Him. Acts 1:8 says ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. The power described there is the strength to be a witness, and the book of Acts shows that often meant quiet courage more than anything dramatic.
Then there is the fruit. Galatians 5:22-23 lists love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Fruit takes seasons. No one is handed it on the day of a service, and the Bible verses about confirmation that speak of fruit are better read as a direction of growth than as a report card. Parents can be patient about that.
It is not graduation. Teenagers sometimes quit attending the year after, as if the class were a course they had passed, and a good many congregations have watched that happen. Colossians 2:6-7 pushes against that thinking. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. The verbs are all ongoing: walk, rooted, built up. Nothing there suggests a finish line.
It does not earn salvation either. Churches that treat it as a sacrament and churches that treat it as a public affirmation disagree about what happens in the rite, and a short page cannot settle a debate that has lasted centuries. But on this, all of them can agree: Ephesians 2:8-9 says salvation is by grace, through faith, and not of works. No ceremony adds to what Christ finished.
And it is not a test of whether a young person has all their doubts resolved. Some of the most honest confirmands are the ones who say, I still have questions. A church that welcomes those questions is doing what Acts 14:22 describes, firming people up where they stand. The Bible verses about confirmation work best when they are read with that humility, by families who are comfortable saying we are still learning.
The best classes I have seen were ones where the pastor sat on the same side of the table as the students. They read a passage, talked about it, and let a fourteen-year-old say that Hebrews 6:1-2 confused them. That passage mentions the doctrine of baptisms and laying on of hands among the first principles of Christ, and it urges readers to go on toward maturity. It is a good verse to read aloud, because it frames the whole season as a beginning.
A few ordinary habits help more than special programs. Pick one verse together and let the student choose it themselves from this page. Pair them with an adult in the congregation, not a relative, who can pray for them by name. Ask them to write a few sentences about why they want to be confirmed, and treat what they write kindly even if it is short. Read Acts 1:8 and Galatians 5:22-23 at the dinner table once, and then leave the conversation alone.
Pressure backfires. A young person who feels pushed through a rite for the family’s sake can come out resentful. A young person who is allowed to wait a year, ask hard questions, and come in willingly usually ends up with something sturdier. Time spent on that is rarely wasted.
The cake gets eaten and the white robes get folded. Then ordinary life returns, with its tests and cliques and tired Sunday mornings, and the promise made at the altar can feel very far away by October. That is normal. 1 Peter 5:10 was written to Christians who were suffering. After that ye have suffered a while, it says, the God of all grace make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. The same family of words appears again, and it promises settling over time.
Philippians 1:6 is worth keeping on a card in a wallet or a school bag. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Paul was writing from prison and he was not worried. The work was God’s, and so was the finishing of it. The young person who stumbles in the spring is not outside that promise.
So for the one who was confirmed last week or last decade, here is a prayer in plain words. Lord, I said I would follow You, and some days I forget. Keep holding on to me when my grip is weak. Show me one small step today, and send someone older and kinder than I am to walk alongside. If you pick from the Bible verses about confirmation above, let it be one that you can say when you are tired.
Picture the scene in a small sanctuary. A boy in a borrowed jacket waits his turn. His grandfather, who has not said much about faith in thirty years, is sitting three rows back with his hands folded very tight. When the pastor lays a hand on the boy’s head and prays, nobody in the room is thinking about doctrine. They are thinking, quietly, about how long they have prayed for this exact moment.
Isaiah 41:10 was written to a worn-out people and it fits that room well. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee. Families who read Bible Verses About Confirmation together often find that this one speaks to the parents as much as the child, since the parents are the ones who feel the weight of letting go.
Whatever your tradition, give the day room to be simple. Take a photograph, share a meal, write a short note to the young person that says what you saw in them this year. Then let the verses on this page do their slow work over the following months. God has a long memory for promises made in a small church on an ordinary Sunday.
Readers interested in confirmation often continue with Bible Verses For Blessings, Bible Verses About Answered Prayer, Bible Verses For Prayer and Protection, Bible Verses About Fathers, Bible Verses About Peace in the Storm, Bible Verses About Loving Your Enemies, Bible Verses About God's Healing, Bible Verses About Sin and Forgiveness, Bible Verses For Healing the Sick, Bible Verses About Wisdom and Bible Verses For Seeking God.
Free tools for studying these passages further: Blue Letter Bible, Bible Gateway and Bible Hub.
Churches practise confirmation in different ways, and Scripture does not name it as a rite, but the practice grows out of several New Testament themes.
This page brings together 8 King James Version references about confirmation, drawn from 7 different books of the Bible.
Beyond the references highlighted on this page, confirmation appears throughout Scripture in books such as Acts, Hebrews, 2 Corinthians, Colossians, 2 Timothy; this collection focuses on some of the clearest examples.
These confirmation verses are drawn from books including Acts, Hebrews, 2 Corinthians, Colossians, 2 Timothy, among others.
The verses about confirmation on this page are drawn from the New Testament, including passages such as Acts 8:14.
