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lak611
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It’s God doing the forgiving. The priest is acting on behalf of Jesus.
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djrakowski
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John 20:21-23 (NIV) - Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
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LilyM
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Well, were you baptised in the name of Reverend Whoseamabob who did the actual dunking or pouring? It sure wasn’t Christ physically doing that. He gave the Apostles - and their successors - power to baptise, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper - AND to forgive sins - in His name, His memory, as His agents.
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mercygate
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Yeah. It’s the idea of authorized agency. I don’t know why people have so much trouble with that when they can sing “We Are Your Hands” without blinking.
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myfavoritmartin
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Authorized agency? the priest is taking away some of Christ suffering then? THAT is bold!
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mercygate
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Exactly. And although Christ is the primary “forgiver”, he clearly imparted the proximal authority to the Apostles by the words, “whose sins you forgive.”
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myfavoritmartin
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Not that it matters in your church, BUT nowhere in scripture can you prove absolution of sin by a priest.
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mercygate
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Why do you say things like this? You know the Catholic Church does not make this stuff up just to annoy you, and that NOTHING the Church teaches is without Scriptural warrant if not specific ordinance. The gift of forgiving sins in Confession is clearly given in John 20:20-23 and demonstrated in 2 Cor. 2:10 where Paul declares that “I have forgiven” referring to the incestuous man. See also Jas 5:16.
You often cry “context” but for us “context” is not just the book but the actual practice of the early Church where confession in the presence of the priest was a universal practice.
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djrakowski
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Right - and it would be foolish to think that the power to forgive sins (as well as baptize and celebrate the Lord’s Supper) died with the apostles.
Remember, Martin, that the verses I quoted from John 20 were spoken by Jesus after He had been put to death on the cross. He conferred the power to forgive (and retain) after His death, indicating that sins would still need to be forgiven, and that they were not simply covered by His death with no further action required on the part of the penitent.
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myfavoritmartin
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Context and scriptural interpretation is best analyzed by comparing scripture…
Lets compare scripture to see what Jesus was saying here…Joh 3:11"Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony.
Joh 3:12"If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Joh 3:13"No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man.
Joh 3:14"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
Joh 3:15so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
Joh 3:16"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Joh 3:17"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Joh 3:18"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God****.
Joh 3:19"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20"For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
Joh 3:21"**But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."/**COLOR]Now we see that Jesus was sent to preach that if all believe in Him they are forgiven and have eternal life here. This is why the Father sent Him. Now lets look at the scripture you gave me…
Joh 20:21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
Joh 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and *said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
Joh 20:23"If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”
Now we see here as the Father sent Jesus He sends the Apostles to do what? Preach Jesus… That all who believe in Him their sins are forgiven… Now this authority is given to the Apostles but lets look closely at it… What does Jesus say?
Joh 3:18"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
This is the authority that Christ gave the Disciples… If they do not believe their testimony of Christ then they have the authority to say you are not forgiven. If they do believe their testimony they have the authority to say your sins are forgiven you…
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mercygate
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Wait! did you say Jesus is sending the Apostles as the Father sent Jesus? Then there is the ongoing need for concrete, incarnational, personal forgiveness of sins. Not just preaching the news of it. The idea that this speech limited to preaching the gospel is simply ludicrous. Even when I was Protestant I couldn’t swallow it. There are too many holes in the argument. It’s as if whoever says this is hoping that whoever is listening will just ignore what Jesus actually said.
When I go to confession, ask for absolution, and kneel before my confessor to receive it, he touches my head with his violet stole to pronounce those precioius words of peace:
God, the Father of mercies,
through the death and the resurrection of his Son
has reconciled the world to himself
and sent the Holy Spirit among us
for the forgiveness of sins;
through the ministry of the Church
may God give you pardon and peace,
and I absolve you from your sins
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
At that moment, I am keenly aware that the man whose hand is on my head received his authority to pronounce those words from the bishop(s) who ordained him. And they received in from bishops before them, and they before them . . . all the way back to that locked room and Jesus Christ himself. If you have not experienced the human touch of Jesus in the person of one of his ministers, you have missed one of the most beautiful experiences in the life of a Christian.
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myfavoritmartin
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SPH1
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Joh 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and *said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
Joh 20:23"If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”
Christ gave His Church the authority to forgive sin by the breath of the Holy Spirit. But that’s not all. Christ also gave his Church the authority to retain sin, in which case, they will also be retained in Heaven. Once one has been unforgiven by the Holy Church, one cannot simply go “direct” to Christ for forgiveness.
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mercygate
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I read it again. We cannot claim to “believe” if we do not accept Jesus’ gifts. Absolution, through the Body of Christ, in the person of Christ represented by the Priest is Jesus’ own commission.
Sacramental confession does not nullify faith. It is one way in which we embrace our faith.
Again: one of the things Jesus actually did was to forgive sins (e.g., the healing of the paralytic). Since the Apostles are sent as Jesus was sent – do duh math. Thay are to preach, baptize, forgive sins. “Whose sins you forgive” is a clarification of the preaching that faith saves. Who, coming to confession, does not have faith in Jesus? You can’t come to this sacrament without faith in Jesus and in his redemptive work.
As for Christ not judging – he WILL judge on the last day but has come to save us from the dread of it. When we come to confession, we become our own judge – and in so doing enter his great Mercy.
If you have never experienced this as a mature penitent (and by the grace of God, even a nine-year-old can be mature enough to “get it”), then I say to you, my earnest brother, that however you play with John 20:23 and Mt. 16:18-19 and James 5:16, you are simply evading the plain face of Scripture and you are depriving yourself of one of the great, majestic benefits of Our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary.
I pray that you will one day find yourself in the presence of a priest: a humble penitent before the mercy of God. And I pray that you may experience the indescribable rush of grace in the living presence of Christ through his Body, the Church, and that with the crowds in Capernaum you might ‘glorifiy God, who has given such authorityto men.’
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myfavoritmartin
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hosemonkey
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Myfavoritemartin just does not get it, folks. He chooses to throw away one of Christ’s most precious gifts to us, the certainty of forgiveness. He would rather have the uncertainty of hoping that Jesus hears his prayer and truly forgives him. Christ gave us the gift of the Sacrament of Penance because He knew that even though redeemed, that our imperfect nature would lead us to sin again and again. I think that it chaps his cheeks simply because of the fact that it is a gift given to the Catholic Church, and to no other (Orthodox excepted.)
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mercygate
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What is your game? How does the transmission of authority to forgive sins in any way detract from the sacrifice of the cross?
If I ever need a definition of “contumacious” I’ll just tell people to read your posts.
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mercygate
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You’re welcome. What does NM mean?
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Church_Militant
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Yep. I see no reason scriptural or otherwise not to, and I have looked.
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Church_Militant
Guest
It is because Christ died and because he specifically told them to do that in John 20:19: On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
20: When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
21: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
22: And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
23: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” N-Cs can say what they want, but this passage is definitive in my opinion. That and James 5:16.
The thing that you have wrong is that just as an exorcist deal with devils by the authority of Christ and His shed blood, then, per the command of Christ in John 20, the very same is true for confession.
What does the passage say Simon?
There’s never a question that absolution is administered by Christ Himself through the (scripturally based) ministry of the priest.
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