John 20:23

John 20:23. If ye shall have remitted the sins of any, they have been remitted unto them; if ye retain the sins of any, they have been retained. We regard two points as established from what has been already said. 1. The words of this verse are not addressed to apostles alone. 2. Though conjoined with a present impartation of the Holy Spirit, they belong really to the days when the disciples shall have fully entered on their work as representatives of their Lord and His witnesses in the world. This verse and the last stand in the closest possible connection: only when the Holy Spirit has been received can such a commission as this be executed. Without unduly entering on controverted ground, let us seek to collect the meaning which the words (which we have thought it desirable to render with unusual closeness) must necessarily bear. It is clear that two remissions of sin are spoken of, two which agree in one. Where Christ's servants ‘have remitted the sins of any,' these sins ‘have been remitted unto them,' remitted absolutely, i.e. remitted by God, for ‘who can forgive sins but God only?' (Mark 2:7). But as we know that the Divine forgiveness is suspended on certain conditions, penitence and faith, it follows that the remission granted by Christ's disciples must (since it agrees with the Divine remission) be suspended on the same conditions. Either, therefore, the disciples must possess unfailing insight into man's heart (such as in certain cases was granted to an apostle, see Acts 5:3), or the remission which they proclaim must be conditionally proclaimed. No one can maintain the former alternative. It follows, then, that what our Lord here commits to His disciples, to His Church, is the right authoritatively to declare, in His name, that there is forgiveness for man's sin, and on what conditions the sin will be forgiven. Nor does there seem to be ground for thinking that we have here a special application by one individual, whether minister or not, to another of the remission (or retention) of sin spoken of. The use of ‘any' in the plural number appears to be inconsistent with such a view. It is not a direct address by one person to another that is thought of, ‘I declare that thy sins are thus authoritatively remitted or retained.' It is a proclamation from one collective body to another, from the Church to the world. The mission of the Church is to announce to the world her own existence in her Lord, as a company of forgiven men, and to invite the world to join her. Let the world comply with the invitation, it shall enjoy forgiveness in the company of the forgiven: let it refuse the invitation, it can only have its sins retained in the company of those who have been ‘judged already' (comp. chap. John 3:18). Here, as in all else, the Church only witnesses to what her Lord does. But as it is by her life, even more than by words, that she witnesses, so it is by accepting or rejecting her life that her witness is accepted or rejected; and thus it is that by communion with her the blessing is enjoyed, that by separation from her it is forfeited. It ought particularly to be noticed that of the two remissions or retentions of sin spoken of in the words before us, the Divine act, although the last to be mentioned, is the first in thought ‘have been remitted,' ‘have been retained.'