John 20:23

“Of whoever you forgive the sins they have been and are forgiven, and of whoever you retain them they have been and are retained.”

Few words have been more misrepresented than these. These words reveal that forgiveness of sin is the essential purpose of what Christ has accomplished, that He has come in order that men's sins may be forgiven. That is why He has given His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The task of the Apostles was to be to mediate that forgiveness to men. But they are spoken to the Apostles and there are no grounds of applying them specifically to those who followed them

Again this is in its primary sense a unique gift to the Apostles. In these days at the beginning a special discernment was necessary to preserve the infant church. The idea here was that the disciples would be able to ‘see through' men in a unique way. This gift comes out for example in Acts 5:1 where Peter discerned the thoughts of Ananias and Sapphira. In some ways it was a terrible gift, the right to be able to discern whether men have been forgiven and thus to be able to include and exclude people from flock of God. Thus, just as Jesus had been able to, they too would be able to discern whether men were genuine or not and whether they had been truly forgiven.

It was not a gift generally given to the church. The Apostles were promised that they would be able to discern the reality of men's response to Christ, and pronounce accordingly. The church has rashly appropriated this statement to itself, but there is no indication that, (in the same way as with the promises of special ability to remember and interpret the words of Jesus and the Old Testament - John 14:25; John 16:13), it applied outside the Apostles. To them and to them alone was given the ability to provide the full revelation of God, and to them, and to them alone, was given the fullness of discernment that would protect the infant church. They alone were given the authority to interpret men's responses, and pronounce accordingly, so that even Paul submitted his teaching to their examination (Galatians 2:2) and his claim to have his teaching recognised was on the basis that he had become an Apostle.

An examination of the life of Jesus will bring out the significance of what they were being empowered to do here. He declares people's sins forgiven on two occasions.

In Luke 7:36 we have the story of the ‘sinful' woman who came to Jesus and washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Jesus told the doubting Simon the Pharisee that her sins, which were many, “are forgiven her for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little”. But the latter phrase tells us that the forgiveness is seen as preceding the loving. She had already been forgiven. Thus Jesus could now tell her that her sins “are forgiven” because she has demonstrated that she already has an awareness of forgiveness through the offering of her love. Jesus was declaring a forgiveness that had already taken place.

Through listening to His words earlier the woman must have become conscious of sin and cried to God for forgiveness, and her actions were now those of a woman aware of forgiveness, filled with love and gratitude. His words were a confirmation to her that her experience was genuine. His declaration “your sins are forgiven you” (literally ‘have been and therefore are forgiven') means “I declare that God has already forgiven you”. He was not dispensing forgiveness. He used the passive tense, which was a characteristic of His ministry when He was speaking of an action of God without mentioning Him (compare Matthew 5:3, where the question ‘by whom' can only be answered ‘by God'). He was emphasising that God had already forgiven her

A second example is found in Luke 5:18. A man was lowered through to the feet of Jesus because he was paralysed. Jesus said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you” (perfect passive tense - ‘have been and therefore are forgiven'). We may ask, why did Jesus say this to a man who had been brought for healing? And the answer is surely because He could see the man's inner thoughts, and the cry of his heart. This was no arbitrary declaration. Rather He could discern the man's deepest need, a solution that the man was crying out for. He knew this and assured him that God had forgiven him. This led on to the statement that the Son of Man had authority on earth ‘to forgive sins' (John 20:24).

This incident again links the forgiving of sins with sins having been forgiven by God. Jesus had not said “I forgive you”, but basically “God has forgiven you”, again using the indirect passive tense, and He did it because He had discerned what had already taken place in their hearts.

Both these incidents demonstrate that Jesus was able to discern men's inner thoughts, and that it was on that basis that He was able to declare God's forgiveness. This was also the gift He was giving to His apostles, the ability to discern men's thoughts and declare God's forgiveness or otherwise. This is illustrated in Acts 5:1; Acts 8:21, both cases where Peter showed that he had special awareness. In the latter case, however, Peter made clear that any forgiveness must be between Simon and God (v. 22). Even he did not see himself as having some great authority to deal with sin apart from that.

These examples illustrate the tenses in John 20:23. ‘Of whoever you forgive the sins they have been and are forgiven.' Here also the forgiveness by God was to precede the declaration of forgiveness.

An examination of the history of the early church in Acts will demonstrate that this was not something that was used lightly. How differently Acts would have been written if the Apostles had held the views often later read in to this verse. As it is we find only the rare references mentioned above. No one saw themselves as having some great authority to forgive sins.

(Once the church can physically heal all who come to it, or even if one man in it could do so, as Jesus and the Apostles could, they may claim to have taken the first step towards claiming this power. But they cannot. They may have the silver and gold, but they do not have the power granted to Peter and the other Apostles. Nor can they make any claim to special spiritual discernment like Peter demonstrated in Acts 5, for it would too easily be proved false. We must remember that it was Jesus Himself Who said that His power to declare the forgiveness of sins was demonstrated by His power to make men physically whole. The closeness to God that could accomplish the one enabled the other. When we have the one to the full extent we can claim the other).

So these words of John 20:23 are a promise that their new reception of the Holy Spirit, which had been to the Apostles alone, had given them the unique discernment to fathom men's hearts and discern the genuineness of their repentance. On this basis they would be able to declare that men had been and therefore were forgiven. Or alternatively that they were not forgiven as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1). And this declaration would be made when they saw through their unique discernment that God had already forgiven them. Acts suggests that it was a gift that they felt unable to use except in rare circumstances.

It should be recognised that this gift was vital to a new-born church when a false profession by an imposing person could have caused so much harm. There is no indication that it was ever passed on, nor later on would be needed. By then the church had grown sufficiently so that it was able to cope with false confessions. It is true that a gift of ‘discernment of spirits' was given as a spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 12:10; 1 Corinthians 14:29), something very necessary to discern true prophecy from false when there was no New Testament to go by, but it was not the same as here.

As always God's people generally would experience partially what the Apostles had in full. Some miracles would be known among them, they would be able to declare God's general forgiveness on those who believed, they would have discernment enabling them to understand the Scriptures, but only in part. They did not have the full-orbed gifts granted to the Apostles.

So having received the Spirit of truth and discernment the apostles were now ready to go into the future with power and confidence.

Detached Note.

We can compare two further places where Jesus spoke in similar terms to His disciples. The first is in Matthew 16:18. Here, once Peter had had the discernment to declare Him to be the Christ, Jesus told him, ‘You are Peter (petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the kingship of Heaven and whatever you will bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you will loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.'

There was clearly here a pun on the name of Peter, but of seventy nine early church ‘fathers' who commented on these words forty four stated that the ‘petra' was the words of Peter, eighteen said that it was Peter himself, and seventeen that it was Christ. The first mentioned were clearly correct, for the whole emphasis of the passage is not on Peter (only Matthew mentions him) but on the statement, ‘You are the Christ' (emphasised in all three Synoptic Gospels).

Jesus, speaking directly to Peter, contrasts ‘Peter' with ‘this rock'. ‘This' basically excludes reference to Peter. It contrasts him with the rock. The meaning is clear. As the rock-man Peter has made the rock-like declaration on which the faith of the church will be built. But the rock (petra) was the statement ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God', as the majority of the early fathers recognised. Nor was there any hint here or anywhere in the passage that there was something here, apart from the truth about Christ, that would be passed on to anyone else.

‘I will build my church'. The word for ‘church' was used constantly in the Septuagint of the ‘congregation' of Israel. Jesus was thus here referring to the ‘new Israel' who would come together in response to His Messiahship, founded on the rock-like statement ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God', against whom all the powers of Hell would not prevail.

‘I will give to you the keys of the Kingly Rule of Heaven'. Keys are for opening things up (see Isaiah 22:22). It was in fact Peter who first opened up the new Gospel of the reign of Christ to the Jews (Acts 2) and to the Gentiles (Acts 10). He was to be an opener up of the truth, just as his words ‘You are the Christ' demonstrated his discernment of truth.

This tied in with the special promises of Jesus in John 14-16, given to all the Apostles, that they would receive the Spirit of truth Who would enable them to have a full and right understanding of that truth so as to open it up to others. But it was Jesus alone Who had the keys to death and the grave (Revelation 1:18).

‘Whatever you will bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.' The power of binding and loosing was one which was originally applied to the Rabbis. They were being described (by men) as having the power to so declare the meaning of God's law that they could impose restrictions (bind) or make relaxations (loose) in their practical application. It was a power now given by Christ to all the Apostles (Matthew 18:18) where it more specifically applied to guiding the behaviour of God's people in response to the word of God. Thus Peter and the rest of the Apostles were to have a discernment and understanding of the truth which would lay the foundation of His new people. It would come with the special and unique gifts promised in John 14-16, but was demonstrated in embryo in Peter's recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. It is the same gift of discernment which is spoken of in John 20:23.

(End of Note).