Introduction
Several months ago I shared with you about the critical importance our Lord Jesus places upon confessing our sins. Guilt and shame get in the way of a close relationship with God, and – when we do confess – the Lord promises to take our guilt and shame and put it to death on the cross, giving us His righteousness so we can live our lives according to His Word and Holy Spirit within us.
That message lifted up the Lord Jesus’ concern for us to know His forgiveness and release from death and guilt and shame. This morning we see the Lord Jesus’ concern for the forgiveness and release of those around us…
John 20:19-31 [NLTse]
19 That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” He said. 20 As He spoke, He showed them the wounds in His hands and His side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! 21 Again He said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24 One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. 25 They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in His hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in His side.”
26 Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” He said. 27 Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at My hands. Put your hand into the wound in My side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
28 “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.
29 Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen Me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing Me.”
30 The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him you will have life by the power of His name.
Sermon
Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
This is a difficult teaching.
Every time I have ever had a discussion about this with someone they have – without exception – told me, “Only God has the power to confess sins.” And, of course, I know that. Yet the Bible tells us that “Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’” I didn’t do and say this. Jesus did and said this.
It gets me thinking about Jesus’ Own trouble with forgiving sins. Do you remember? He’d been teaching and healing, casting out demons and calling people to repentance and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He was attracting a lot of attention, and so various representatives from the Jewish religious leadership joined the crowds following Him, watching and listening to find out if He was faithful to the Law and Covenant of Moses or if He was a heretic and leading the people astray.
Do you remember when, one day, some people brought to Him a man from the community who couldn’t walk because his legs were paralyzed? And how, when Jesus saw their faith that, He told the paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven”? And do you remember that some of those religious leaders decided then that He was a blasphemer and that He must be trouble because everyone know that only God can forgive sins? But, then, knowing what they were thinking, Jesus told them they were evil for thinking such things, and then healed He the man – who then got up and walked! – as proof to them that He had God’s authority to forgive sins? Do you remember that? Well, here – it’s several years later – and Jesus has been sacrificed for our sins and has overcome death, And Jesus is sharing that authority with us.
Maybe you’re thinking (as I believe many people do when they read this passage): “So, I can forgive people’s sins? And if I do then God will forgive them and they’ll go to Heaven? And if I don’t forgive them then they can never be forgiven and they’ll go to Hell?” And, of course, the answer is more complicated than that.
Let’s open our Bibles to 2 Corinthians 5:18c-20… Paul writes:
14 …Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. 15 He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, Who died and was raised for them.
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know Him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
18 …God has given us this task of reconciling people to Him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making His appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
Do you see? In giving us the authority to forgive others or to keep them in their sins, Jesus is merely giving us specific details about our roles as His ambassadors here. But what is an ambassador?
An ambassador, generally speaking, is a respected official acting as a representative of a nation. Sent to a foreign land, the ambassador’s role is to reflect the official position of the sovereign body that gave him or her authority. What that means for us is that we Christians are God’s ambassadors in that, according to 1 Thessalonians (2:4), “We speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News.” So as we go through this world, we represent another Kingdom – Jesus’ Kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36) – and it is our responsibility to reflect the “official position” of that Kingdom, the official position of Heaven. You and I are in this world, but not of it, Jesus tells us (John 17:16). And empowered by God the Holy Spirit, we must take the message of our King to the “ends of the Earth” (Acts 1:8), imploring men and women everywhere to be reconciled to God, and helping reconcile them to Him.
So just as the Lord Jesus can say to a paralyzed man, and to you and to me, “Your sins are forgiven,” likewise, led by the Spirit of Christ (that is, the Holy Spirit) we, in the Lord Jesus’ name and as the Lord Jesus’ ambassadors, we can tell each other and others, “Your sins are forgiven!” As Paul wrote, “God is making His appeal through us. We are speaking for Christ.”
James 5:16 comes to my mind, where we are called to “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” But let’s not just read that, let’s picture that together:
Here we have one Christian is telling another Christian – or perhaps several – how sorry they are for their sins. So, do the other Christians respond by asking God to forgive them? Yes. And yet at the same time, we know that 1 John 1:9 commits to us that when we confess our sins to the Lord that “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” So our fellow Christians need to pray for God to forgive us, and yet we’ve also already asked God’s forgiveness ourselves? So what I think James is describing here is the listening Christians not only joining the confessor in asking the Father for His forgiveness, but also speaking to the confessor in Christ’s name the assurance of God’s forgiveness. (Perhaps something like, “Ben, in the name of Jesus Christ, know your sins are forgiven, be healed and know Christ’s peace.”)
After all, isn’t that what I say after you and I have confessed our sins together during various Worship Services? (Of course, sometimes we confess our sins silently, which clearly is not as effective, but many of you confess your sins aloud.) And afterward I tend to say something like, “My brothers and sisters, according to your lives of faith in Jesus Christ, know your sins are forgiven and be at peace.” And isn’t it a blessing to hear it spoken aloud?
That’s being an ambassador. And Christ is sending each of us, not just me but each of us, out to be His ambassadors of forgiveness and reconciliation to our fellow believers, but also to others, it seems, as well.
Because the Lord Jesus does, here, clearly seem to be conveying upon His disciples some level of authority to forgive the sins of even unbelievers, or at least of those who are not yet believers (though there’s no way we can know for sure who such folks are, around us). So it’s a great mystery, and it requires much humility and much faith.
But it’s also clearly true that the sins and guilt and shame of many people weigh them down with a crushing load. King David sang of such things in Psalm 32:
“When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night Your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.
“Finally, I confessed all my sins to You and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.’ And You forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”
God is calling people to Himself, and sometimes that call comes through the weight and weariness of sin and fear and guilt and shame. Just like it used to be for us, we are surrounded by neighbors who are wearing out: Being crushed; dying under the load of darkness and death and regret and remorse. And in trying to escape such burdens, oftentimes these folks who are beloved of God only end of sinning all the more and multiplying their weariness and misery.
When we forgive the sins of others we both introduce them to God’s forgiveness in Christ (as we explain to them the authority with which we speak), but we also lighten the person’s load, as David sang about and, as they experience the lighter load, by the Holy Spirit’s work upon them, they get drawn to Christ!
I picture it working something like this: I’ve stayed after school for some activity and I say, “Hi” to a friend, or perhaps it’s just an acquaintance, in the hall. We get chit-chatting, and he or she shares something that they’ve recently done. Somehow the Holy Spirit makes me aware that they are not happy about what they’ve done, so I ask, “Are you happy about that?” And they respond, “No, I can’t believe I did it!” And here I am, Christ’s ambassador, and I say, “Are you sorry for it? I mean, really sorry? Sorry to God?” And here, perhaps, I start to sense some tension between us. Maybe it’s because of where I’ve taken the conversation and I’m feeling self-conscious, or maybe it’s because the devil is feeling threatened and is trying to get me to back off. But I picture my friend then responding, “Yes, I am so sorry!”
So then, trusting that the Holy Spirit has orchestrated this whole beautiful situation, I say, “Well, I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. And I tell you, in the name of Jesus Christ, that your sins are forgiven: Be healed! and be at peace with God.” And maybe the conversation continues or maybe it ends there and I walk away, but I trust the Lord to use what I’ve said to draw them to Himself, and I offer myself to let Him use me by keeping in touch with them as the days go by, as well.
I know this requires boldness: Speaking for Jesus; trusting that He has indeed made us His ambassadors; and, trusting that He does indeed give us His authority, at least to the extent that we accurately represent Him. But I see in our reading today Jesus giving us a soap bucket and scrub brush and calling us to get dirty cleaning people up with Him in His name!
The unrepentant, those who aren’t really sorry for their wickedness need to remain unforgiven and in their sins until they come to repentance, desperate for Christ and His sacrifice. But for all those who are repentant, our brothers and sisters here and across the Tri-States area and to the ends of the Earth, and to all those the Lord Jesus seems to be drawing to repentance and drawing to the Father, let’s forgive them their sins. Jesus promises us and their sins will have been forgiven for His glory and all of our good…