Can you give me a scriptural example of them doing this???
Whats meant here is that when one by faith accepts Christ as his/her Savior and Lord…Their sins are washed by Christ blood shed on the cross…Get it? it ministerial…Otherwise you’d see scriptural examples cuz this would be a biggy…Christ wouldn’t necessarily had to die he could have just passed this authority to HIS apostles.
Martin, I don’t see where you get this.
“When one by faith accepts Christ” is not even remotely in this verse’s context.
Jesus says, “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” That is, the very mission of forgiveness and redemption which Jesus was sent on by the Father, and in which he triumped gloriously in the Cross and Resurrection, that very mission he hands on to the apostles.
And what authority does he give them?
Receive the Holy Spirit.
He breathes the life of the Holy Spirit into the apostles. Can’t you see the picture the sacred author is painting? The last time the Divine breathed into man, it was in the creation (Genesis). This time he breathes the Life Giving Holy Spirit into the Apostles, highly symbolic of the power he was giving them.
And what does he connect to this?
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.
Quite literally he says that when you forgive people, they are forgiven.
Remember the uproar the Pharisees caused everytime Jesus forgave the sins of sinners? Well, that same mission which Jesus was sent by the Father, Jesus is now sending the apostles on, and with the authority to forgive sins in person, just as Jesus did to countless sinners. Jesus says in person to sinners, “your sins are forgiven you.” It only makes sense that He would send the apostles in this same way.
And, “all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation,” (2 Cor 5:18).
Really. Just as Jesus walked around forgiving people of their sins, so could the apostles. That’s just how awesome the power of God is.
If these apostles were given the power to forgive people of their sin then Christ whom died for ALL sin didn’t really die for ALL sin then did he?
Remember, “all this is from God who has… given us the ministry of reconciliation.”
Christ died for all sins, but no one is saved simply because He died on the Cross-- the merit of the cross has to be applied to individuals. If by dying on the cross the merits were automatically communicated to all men, then all men would be saved, infallibly, because Christ paid the price for all men’s sins, and God would not demand payment unjustly on what has already been paid.
It is the case that the overflowing, superabundant merit of the Cross must be applied subjectively to each man. The question, then, is how? You know very well that the Catholic answer is that this is done through the instrumentality of the sacraments-- through Baptism and Penance.
Yes, He died for all sin, but the very power God gives these apostles is not to forgive
of their own power but of the power that God Himself gives them. “All of this is from God who has… given us the ministry of reconciliation.” They only forgive people with Christ’s own authority, not their own.
-Rob
