Sent To Forgive

Introduction

Main Text

John 20:21–23 ESV

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Jesus Was Sent To With A Message

• Jesus’s message was one of repentance and forgiveness. This is the post-resurrection message. Prior to the resurrection, you see Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom of God is near, repent because it is at hand. After the resurrection, after his death on the cross purchased our forgiveness, he empowers his disciples to preach this message.

Luke 24:45–47 ESV

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

• Repentance For Forgiveness. This message of forgiveness is to be proclaimed to all nations. This is the Great Commission. This is the message you, as a disciple of Christ, is called to proclaim. This is the message you will get killed for, this is the message you will be persecuted for, but this is the message that brings life to the world. This is the mandate. This is the calling.

Forgiveness of sins is the very heart of Christianity, and yet it is a very dangerous thing to preach.

Martin Luther

• Defining Types Of Forgiveness

• Positional Forgiveness - This is our legal standing before God. Simply put, everyone in the world, you included, have sinned. You have messed up in thought, deed or action. It’s not just the actions you’ve committed, but the good things you were suppposed to do, that you haven’t done. You have missed the mark.

This means you have broken God’s law. The punishment for breaking his law is death. You deserve death for breaking his holy commands. God made a way for us to receive forgiveness though - By putting our trust in Jesus Christ and repenting of our sins, we are forgiven forever. This is positional forgiveness. The death of Jesus on the cross satisfies the legal need for forgiveness and all who trust in him receive this forgiveness. Amen.

• Relational Forgiveness - This is about the health of your relationship with God currently. In other words, you may be legally justified before God because of Christ’s blood, but your relationship with God may still be unhealthy because you have unconfessed sin in your life.

• Father and Son analogy - I’m a father. If my kids sin, they mess up. Say it’s really serious. They do something to harm myself or Autumn. Now, just because they have sinned doesn’t change the “positional” status of their relationship with me - they are still my kids. They still have my last name. They are still in my family. But, there is a problem in our relationship. They have sinned against me, they haven’t confessed it and they haven’t repented of it. This has put a wedge between us.

• This is idea will help us understand our passage. This passage can be a bit difficult. Is Jesus giving his disciples power to forgive sins between God and man or is he sending them out with the message of forgiveness or what? How are we to understand what is happening here?

• The Power To Forgive Sin Is Found In His Name - Here’s what we see through the New Testament, the apostles never proclaimed this as a message of them forgiving the sins of others. They do not force people to come confess to them, in a Roman Catholic type of teaching. Instead they proclaim the forgiveness of sins found through Jesus.

Acts 10:43 ESV

To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

• Peter proclaims forgiveness through Jesus, not through Peter. He would have been standing there in John 20, receiving this instruction, so this is a great way to determine what Peter believed about this. Peter did not take what Jesus meant by this as that everyone needed to come to Pope Peter to receive forgiveness.

• What does this mean? So if Jesus isn’t giving his disciples power to give and withhold forgiveness between God and man, what is he saying? I believe he is talking about relational forgiveness.

It’s what we might call experiential forgiveness, because there is a difference between “being” forgiven and “feeling” forgiven. And if you’ve ever carried around shame as a Christian, you can know how powerful it is to feel forgiven.

God wants his people to not only be legally justified to stand in His presence, He also wants you to experience the feeling of being free from guilt and shame.

We Are To Proclaim Forgiveness

The message of forgiveness is our message. Jesus sent his disciples out with the message of his forgiveness. It’s the gospel. We are to share this gospel to every person every where. This is good news. This is hope.

This is a truly a message of hope. Our world is

Should We Withhold Forgiveness?

Application

Decision