Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 20:21
Then said Jesus to them again, Peace [be] unto you: as [my] Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
21. Then said Jesus ] Jesus therefore said; because now they were ready to receive it. Their alarm was dispelled and they knew that He was the Lord. He repeats His message of ‘Peace.’
as my Father, &c.] Better, As the Father hath sent Me. Christ’s mission is sometimes spoken of in the aorist tense, as having taken place at a definite point in history (Joh 3:17; Joh 3:34, Joh 5:38, Joh 6:29; Joh 6:57, Joh 7:29, Joh 8:42, Joh 10:36, Joh 11:42, Joh 17:3; Joh 17:8; Joh 17:18; Joh 17:21; Joh 17:23; Joh 17:25), in which case the fact of the Incarnation is the prominent idea. Sometimes, though much less often, it is spoken of, as here, in the perfect tense, as a fact which continues in its results ( Joh 5:36 ; 1Jn 4:9; 1Jn 4:14), in which case the present and permanent effects of the mission are the prominent idea. Christ’s mission is henceforth to be carried on by His disciples.
The Greek for ‘send’ is not the same in both clauses; in the first, ‘hath sent,’ it is apostellein; in the second, ‘send,’ it is pempein. The latter is the most general word for ‘send,’ implying no special relation between sender and sent; the former adds the notion of a delegated authority constituting the person sent the envoy or representative of the Sender. Both verbs are used both of the mission of Christ and of the mission of the disciples. Apostellein is used of the mission of Christ in all the passages quoted above: it is used of the mission of the disciples, Joh 4:38, Joh 17:18. (Comp. Joh 1:6; Joh 1:19; Joh 1:24, Joh 3:28, Joh 5:33, Joh 7:32, Joh 11:3.) Pempein is used of Christ’s mission only in the aorist participle (Joh 4:34, Joh 5:23-24; Joh 5:30; Joh 5:37, Joh 6:38-40; Joh 6:44, Joh 7:16; Joh 7:18; Joh 7:28; Joh 7:33, Joh 8:16; Joh 8:18; Joh 8:26; Joh 8:29, Joh 9:4; and in all the passages in chaps. 12 16); the aorist participle of apostellein is not used by S. John, although the Synoptists use it in this very sense (Mat 10:40; Mar 9:37; Luk 9:48; Luk 10:16). Pempein is used of disciples here and in Joh 13:20 (of the Spirit, Joh 14:26, Joh 16:7).
“The general result seems to be, that in this charge the Lord presents His own Mission as the one abiding Mission of the Father; this He fulfils through His Church. His disciples receive no new commission, but carry out His.” Westcott in loco.
send I you ] Or, am I sending you; their mission has already begun (comp. Joh 20:17, Joh 17:9); and the first and main part of it was to be the proclamation of the truth just brought home to themselves the Resurrection (Act 1:22; Act 2:24; Act 4:2; Act 4:33, &c.).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
As my Father hath sent me – As God sent me to preach, to be persecuted, and to suffer; to make known his will, and to offer pardon to men, so I send you. This is the design and the extent of the commission of the ministers of the Lord Jesus. He is their model; and they will be successful only as they study his character and imitate his example. This commission he proceeds to confirm by endowing them all with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Joh 20:21-23
Then saith Jesus unto them as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you
The correspondence between the two missions
Christ is the Arch-Missionary and the Arch-Apostle (Heb 3:1), at once both the Author and the first Bearer of the office; and the apostles are His successors.
Christ came in His Fathers name (Joh 5:43), and they came in Christs name. Christ was sent that He might speak, not of Himself, but what fie had heard of the Father (Joh 8:27; Joh 14:10; Joh 15:15); and His servants are sent, not to preach dreams of human wisdom, but the Word of God (Jer 23:16; 1Pe 4:11). Christ was sent not to destroy but to save souls (Luk 9:56; Joh 3:17); and His ministers are sent with power to build up, and not to destroy (2Co 13:10). The Father worked with Christ, and left not the Son Joh 5:17; Joh 5:19; Joh 16:32); and Christ works with us so that our labour is not in vain. Finally, as Christ was sent, that through suffering He might enter into His glory; so also has He bequeathed His shame Mat 10:22), and His cross (Joh 21:18), but after that His glory also (Luk 22:29; comp. 1Pe 5:1). Now, if we should all honour the Son even as we honour the Father, so to the servants of Christ also the honour is due, that in them we honour the Lord who has sent them; as He Himself says, He that heareth you heareth Me, &c. (R. Besser, D. D.)
Christs mission one with ours:
His mission and their mission were one. The purpose that fired His heart as He came from the glory to the Cross, and was returning from the grave to the throne, was to be their purpose. There was to be the same aim and the same grand consummation in view. The subaltern, the common soldier, the drummer in the campaign, may feel that they are taking part in the same cause that is keeping the anxious general awake at night, and taxing all his ingenuity and energy. And so the humblest servant in His house who can do nothing more than talk to a few children, or carry a cup of cold water to a fainting one, or place a few flowers on the table in the sick room, or read a few verses from a psalm or sing a few stanzas of a hymn to an aged Christian, may rejoice in the consciousness that his little work is finding a place in the grand plan that has its sweep through the centuries; that the little ripple of his love is helping the flow of the tide that is to cover the world with glory; that his feeble heart-beats are in unison with the pulses of the eternal God. As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. It is the voice of authority; it is the voice that rolls the stars along; but it speaks to a human will, a human heart; and He has confidence that His word will be obeyed. (James Owen.)
The true Spirit of missions
I. THE RISEN LORD MANIFESTING HIMSELF TO THE CHURCH.
1. He did not manifest Himself first of all to the collective disciples, but to Mary Magdalene, &c. This is Gods way. His blessings are not for the Church apart from its individual members. No Church will have collective manifestations whose members do not find Him in the garden, in the closet, in the way, sitting at meat, &c.
2. He manifested Himself while they were talking about Him. Mary declaring that she had seen Him, others that He had opened the scriptures, others were doubting; then someone said, There He is in the midst of us.
3. He bestowed His benediction. With a reminiscence of Let not your hearts be troubled, i.e., agitated, He said, Peace, &c.
4. He demonstrated the reality of His resurrection, and made the disciples glad. What makes the heart of Gods people glad is the revelation of Christ, not as here, but as on the way to Damascus to Paul, God revealed
His Son in me, that I might preach Him. He to whom Christ has never manifested Himself is in no condition to preach Him.
5. Now, how did He come? There were there, as there are here, persons wondering how Christ could manifest Himself. Are there not closed doors, impenetrable walls, and one difficulty after another in this nineteenth century to prevent this? No, the only barrier which can keep Christ out is unbelief. Oh, you say, there is unworthiness. No! look at the people in that room! We know little, even in natural things, of what is likely and unlikely, except by experience. For instance, if we knew that there was outside these walls trying to get in some sunlight, sound or electricity, and we were asked how it was to get in, and we knew nothing about iron, and glass, and stone, and air, we should say that sound, e.g., would get in much easier through air than through iron–and yet we know it will go much faster through iron. And when God makes a thing to pass through, it will pass through, and when He is in the question, no barriers can keep Him out. Where two or three are gathered in My name, &c.
II. COMMUNICATING HIS SPIRIT TO THE CHURCH. This is more than the manifestation of Himself. We are particular to think of our seeking Christ and the Spirit; bat here are both waiting to communicate themselves. Here is Christ not waiting for them to breathe out a prayer for the Spirit, but breathing the Spirit upon them. There is one word with reference to the Spirit which is very expressive–influence. This means nothing more than a flowing in just as water will flow in upon a meadow until the meadow is completely under it. And we talk of being under the influence if any man with that idea in our mind. But the Bible never represents the Spirit as inert water coming in by gravitation, but as being poured in with a will and hand that has power to send it. And so when we come to the word inspiration, it is not a mere gliding in of a gale of air, but the breathing in from a living being warm with feeling and earnest with will. So here. And thus Christ calls to mind some Old Testament records. The disciples would feel that the world in a moral sense was without form and void, &c., and that the Spirit was coming forth to make the chaos and the darkness feel His power, and each of them might have said, We are all dead men; but there was the Second Adam, the quickening Spirit, to breathe into their nostrils the breath of life to make His dead disciples living souls. They would think, too, of the valley of dry bones, and the command, Breathe upon them. He had told them that it was expedient for them that He should go away so that He might send the Spirit; and now, on the very first day of His reappearing, the first thing He does is to show them He that is just as near as the breath that is breathing upon them. Go, He says in effect; but before you go, take the breath to travel with. Go; but before you spread the sails of your ship, the Lord of the winds shall make the winds blow for you. Go to convert the world; but before you try to raise the dead, let it be seen that the Lord has raised you. Christ is breathing now, and saying, Receive ye, &c.
III. LAYING HER COMMISSION TO WORK UPON THE CHURCH.
1. As the Father, &c. This has been interpreted to mean, With the authority which the Father sent Me, I send you. Now, the authority with which Christ came was to restore all things to make atonement, &c. So it cannot mean that. No; the disciples were under, not in, authority. He sent them forth to preach, love, labour, pray, as He preached, &c. Never a man of them could play the king as He did. They were to go representing Him; they were to go in love and self-sacrifice as He had gone.
2. Then He says, Whosoever sins ye remit, &c. Who are the ye? Those present–not Peter or John, or the ten collectively. We are expressly told that other disciples were there–Mary, &c.
and not the slightest difference was made. What the Lord meant He meant for all. There are two ways of interpreting what He did mean–the one the way in which the Church of Rome interprets it, and the other the way in which the Church of St. Peter interprets it,. Rome tells a man He must go and confess to and get absolution from a priest. But take the first case in which a man cries out in the presence of Peter for remission (Act 2:1-47.). Does Peter ever say, come aside and confess? or John, or Paul? Is there a hint of any such transaction? No, you will find that every one demands repentance and faith in Christ, and promises forgiveness upon that. That was the use which Peter understood was to be made of this. And the remission was not a transaction somewhere above the clouds, but actually carried into the mans soul so as to transform him. The remission was conscious, real and immediate. Now in the Church of Rome there are five ways of remission.
(1) By baptism.
(2) By confirmation.
(3) By penance.
(4) By indulgence.
(5) By extreme unction.
Of course, after all that they ought to be remitted. But supposing a man has received all these remissions from the pope himself; why, you will find masses offered for his sins in purgatory! Such is not the remission of Christ. When Christ remits all sin is at once cast away, gone for ever into the depths of Gods forgiving love. And the Churchs mission is to testify to every man that there is remission without price, priest, sacrifice. Show His hands and His side and there is the proclamation of remission of sins. (W. Arthur, M. A.)
Receive ye the Holy Ghost
The gift of the Spirit
The Christian dispensation is remarkable for two unspeakable gifts–Gods gift of His Son and Gods gift of His Spirit. And it were hard to say which gift is of the greater practical value; for without the gift of the Spirit we perish under the very shadow of the cross, while with it we possess all that the Cross promises. Consider
I. IN WHAT THIS GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST CONSISTS.
1. Not in an empty sound, but in a veritable and substantial gift. When God says I will pour out My Spirit upon you, He does not mock us with a sound of words; for the gift is larger than the word that speaks it.
2. Not in the gift of a number of good things figuratively represented as a gift of the Holy Ghost. If there is a literal expression anywhere in Gods Word, then the gift of the Holy Ghost is the gift of the Holy Ghost; and to suppose it to be anything else is to reduce the Scriptures to a shadowy phantasm of figures with no fixed meaning.
3. Not in the gift of the Spirit on our behalf, merely to prepare the economy of saving grace. The Spirit was given not only to inspire the Word, to anoint Christ, to qualify the apostles, and to fill all the organisation of Christianity with light and life; but is also given as a direct and immediate gift to the believer, blot only as a gift of germinating and fructifying efficiency to the soil and atmosphere in which the seed-corn is placed, but also as a gift of life and growth-power to the seed-corn itself. The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
4. It consists in the grant of His abiding presence. There is a necessary presence of the Spirit, by reason of His nature–Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? But this is a presence in which He is caringly, lovingly, helpingly, savingly with us. God was always in the world; but when He came m Christ, He was God with us in a very special manner. So with His Spirit in this gift.
5. It consists in a gracious affluence and influence of the Spirit upon our spirits. A patriot orator addresses his countrymen. Like a subtle, invisible fire, the fervour of his spirit flows out in his words, gestures, and looks, and flows in upon the spirits of the crowd, till all are moved and roused to action. And shall not the spirit of God–by the words of God, the wounds of Christ–move us to grief or joy, to hope or zeal? Believe in the life and energy of the Spirit.
6. It consists in the production of fruits of the Spirit. The Spirits movings would be a small gift without their effects; as the warmth and refreshing of sun and rain would be without the following harvest, or as the sound of Davids harp on Sauls troubled spirit without the ejection of the evil spirit. And we are liable to be deceived by false, or human and merely natural emotions. Trust no emotion that does not hallow the heart; but do not distrust the Spirits influence because many false spirits are gone out.
II. THIS GIFT IS A GIFT FOR ALL BELIEVERS IN COMMON. For the ordinary work of a common salvation. Not only to enable men to speak with tongues, but to enable men of blasphemous tongues to speak the praises of God; not for gifts of healing only, but to heal the sin-sick souls of penitents to all time; not for prophecies merely, but to enable glad-hearted believers to foretell and foretaste the joys of heaven. Is a man to be born again–to belong to Christ, to be assured of adoption, to be sanctified? For all these, and all the gracious round of gospel purposes the Spirit worketh. And the promise is to as many as the Lord our God shall call.
III. THE STANDING NECESSITY FOR THIS GIFT. No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Men can read the Bible, but cannot make it as a hammer, or as a fire; can build sanctuaries, but cannot make them temples of God; can organize churches, but cannot make them habitations of God except through the Spirit; can make sermons, but cannot convert souls; can arrange and marshall attacks upon vice and sin, but cannot make them mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. Even the Lord Jesus Himself was anointed with the Holy Ghost, to go about doing good; while not a captain was ever sent against the Philistines, or an Aholiah or a Bezaleel employed upon the tabernacle without a measure of Gods Spirit. Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
IV. HOW IS THE GIFT TO BE OBTAINED?
1. Believe in the Holy Ghost. All baptized into His name; part of the Christian benediction from above is His communion. Believe in His power and gift.
2. Confess your dependence on this gift. This blessed shower will slide away from the mountain side of self-sufficiency, to rest richly in the valleys beneath. The Spirit is promised when the city shall be low in a low place.
3. Be ready to receive the gift. The Spirit comes to work a holy work. If you reject His work you reject Him. Submit to all His working, and He will come.
4. Ask the gift of the Father in Christs name. While Christ prayed the heavens were opened, and the Spirit descended upon Him. While the apostles prayed the place was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.
5. Rely upon the gift, and venture on Gods work in expectation of it. Stretch forth the withered hand. Like the priest who bore the ark, put your foot into the waters of your swelling Jordan; sound your trumpet against your frowning Jericho, and expect the help you need. (Lay Preacher.)
Receiving the Holy Ghost
I. THIS BREATHING WAS MORE THAN A SYMBOLIC ACT, CONFIRMING THE PREVIOUS PROMISE; it was more than an assurance–Ye shall receive. It was an actual, though partial, impartation of the Holy Spirit.
1. In this connection, in Luke, we read that their understandings were opened, that they might understand the Scriptures. They receive now from Him a pledge and an earnest of the greater fulness that would come on the Day of Pentecost. This was a breath, heralding the rushing mighty wind; a little cloud, the size of a mans hand, the precursor of the clouds that would soon pour out a flood upon the parched ground. God often gives earnests of His blessings. A John the Baptist comes to prepare the way for Christ. The morning star heralds the sun.
2. This was the pledge of the Pentecost, when they were filled with the Spirit. And after that we read that in a prayer meeting they were again filled with the Spirit. There was a greater fulness, because there was greater room, because their natures were enlarged. Sometimes a father has to say to his spendthrift son: My boy, when I have given you this, I shall have no more that I can throw away. God will never say that to as; every gift is a seed from which a larger gift will grow. All natures are not the same, and there comes a larger measure of spiritual influence to some than others. The large tree, with its spreading branches and broad leaves, is drinking in from the air and sun and rain that which would suffice for three or four smaller trees.
II. THE NATURE OF THIS SPIRITUAL POWER AS BESTOWED BY CHRIST.
1. The words breath and life and spirit are used synonymously. The Lord God breathed into mans nostrils the breath of lives. Come from the four winds, O breath! and the breath came into the dry bones and they lived. But the physical is a symbol of a higher life, and the Spirit of God is the life of this higher nature. The question asked by scientific men is, How came life at first? From God. In regard to spiritual life, it is the testimony of all, from those early disciples downwards, Not I, O Lord, but Thy Spirit in me.
2. This is a real thing. Just as the breath of Jesus, falling warm on the disciples faces, and the word of hope or courage whispered to a brother in darkness, and lifting him up to the light, and the battle-cry of freedom, arousing a nation from dogged despair, are real things; so this breath from heaven is real, a new, vital force coming into the man. He is a new man. The old things are passed away; behold they are become new.
3. The question of inspiration has been much discussed of late. The word is literally inbreathing. And I believe that the writers of this book were divinely inspired, that the prophets and apostles, with their varied powers and attainments, were harps along which the breath of God swept, and discoursed sweet and immortal strains to the world. But I believe that every Christian is divinely inspired for the work God means him to do, that the Spirit which came upon Bezaleel, the builder of the tabernacle, comes to the Christian in his humblest service to guide and teach him. He is not required to write a Bible, to be an apostle to the Africans or Chinese, to lead a crusade against slavery, or to usher in a great reformation; and, therefore, he has no inspiration for all this. But for the service required of him there is adequate power, and the five barley loaves in a lads basket may be multiplied into a feast for five thousand men.
III. THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS THE DISCIPLES EQUIPMENT FOR THEIR GREAT MISSION–a mission that has to do with sin. Whose soever sins, &c. There were many evils afflicting the world at that time, as there are to-day; they were the sores on the surface, but Christ went to the root of the disease. It is possible to change the circumstances and yet not change the man. Laws may be improved, social and national customs may be reformed, wrongs may be redressed, abuses may be corrected; but, after all, this is only like giving a new coat to the leper or putting a new tombstone on the grave. But Christ came to deal with the evil thing itself, to work at the centre, and from that to the circumference, to put the leaven in the midst of the meal, to take away sin, and destroy the work of the devil. But do these words appear, you may say, to delegate the power which the priests assume? In reply, consider that these words were not addressed to all the apostles. Thomas was absent. And the words were not addressed to the ten apostles alone.
1. Whose soever sins ye remit, or forgive. What does this mean? That a man is to take the place of the Saviour, and undertake to forgive sins? No; but he bears a gospel from Christ which is a message of forgiveness; and when that gospel is received, forgiveness is received, and we are warranted in saying, You are forgiven; and what we say on earth, the angels, in their songs over the returning prodigal, say in heaven. Sin begets despondency, and a man says, I shall never get rid of it; the load is tied on too fast; like the Nessus shirt, it clings to me–it will be with me for ever. You, as a Christian, have to reply: No; the load may be removed, the devil driven out, the sins washed away. It is a great thing to help a man to realize this. Think of how Paul dealt with a man who had fallen in Corinth. Did he ask the man to confess to him and receive absolution? No; but he requested the Church to forgive him, and by their forgiveness to help him to believe in the forgiveness which abounds beyond the abounding sin.
2. And whose soever sins ye retain, &c. That is, the message of forgiveness may be rejected. If not only the load of guilt remains, but, by reason of that rejection, is made heavier. The preaching of Christ cannot leave men as it finds them. The gospel of life may become a savour of death unto death. Where there is a rejection of Christ, we are authorized to say, Your sins remain. There is no other way. And as the decisions of our colonies, are generally confirmed by the government at home; so the decisions of a divinely-directed society, whether in Church discipline or teaching, are ratified in heaven. Conclusion: For good service to the Church and the world, what do you need? Mental powers? knowledge? training? books? Yes. But, above all, you need the Spirit of God. Sunday-school teachers, if you would do your work well, you must have the Spirit.
Witnesses for Christ in daily life, if you have the Spirit, there will be a right emphasis, a consistency, and courage in your testimony. (James Owen.)
Whose soever sins ye remit
The remission of sins
I believe that nothing more than the authority to declare can be got out of these words, and I entirely reject the strange notion that our Lord meant to depute to the apostles the power of absolutely absolving or not absolving any ones soul. My reasons for maintaining this view of the text are as follows:
1. The power of forgiving sins, in Scripture, is always spoken of as the special prerogative of God. The Jews themselves admitted this (Mark Luk 5:21). It is monstrous to suppose that our Lord meant to overthrow this great principle.
2. The language of the old Testament Scripture shows conclusively that the prophets were said to do things, when they declared them about to be done. Thus Jeremiahs commission (Jer 1:10) can only mean to declare the rooting out and pulling down, &c. So also Ezekiel says, I came to destroy the city (Eze 43:3); where the marginal reading is, I came to prophecy the city should be destroyed. The apostles were doubtless well acquainted with prophetical language, and I believe they interpreted our Lords words in this place accordingly.
3. There is not a single instance in the Acts or Epistles of an apostle taking on himself to absolve any one. The preachers of the New Testament declare in the plainest language whose sin is pardoned, but they never take on themselves to pardon. When Peter said to Cornelius and his friends, Whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins (Act 10:43); when Paul said at Antioch, in Pisidia, We declare unto you glad tidings; Through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins Act 13:32; Act 13:38); and when Paul said to the Philippian jailor, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved (Act 15:31); in each case they fulfilled the commission of the text before us. They declared whose sins were remitted, and whose were retained.
4. There is not a single word in the three pastoral Epistles to show that the Apostle regarded absolution as part of the ministerial office. If it was he would surely have mentioned it, and urged the practice of it on young ministers, for the relief of burdened souls.
5. The weakness of human nature is so great, that it is grossly improbable that such a tremendous power would ever be committed to any mortal man. It would be highly injurious to any man, and a continued temptation to him to usurp the office of a Mediator between God and man.
6. The experience of the Romish Church affords the strongest indirect evidence that our Lords words can only have been meant to bear a declarative sense. Anything worse or more mischievous, both to minister and people, than the results of the Romish system of penance and absolution it is impossible to conceive. It is a system which has practically degraded the laity, damaged the clergy, and turned people away from Christ. (Bp. Ryle.)
The gospel of absolution
(Text, and Mat 16:19; Mat 18:18):–Let us inquire
I. WHAT IS ABSOLUTION? And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. If we refer to another occasion upon which Christ used this metaphor of the keys, we shall find that Christ was accustomed to associate with the expression knowledge and the specific power that comes from knowledge (Luk 11:52). The reference here can only be to the knowledge that unlocks the gates leading into the kingdom of heaven. That was Christs future gift to Peter. Putting this side by side with the fact that Christ had just been speaking of a knowledge of His own Person and character that had been given to Peter, what can the knowledge that Christ would by and by give be but the knowledge of the Father, of which He was the only one spring and channel amongst men? It was through that knowledge that Peter was to open the way for men into the kingdom of heaven. To bind and to loose was to teach and to rule in the kingdom of heaven, in harmony with the knowledge received from the Father. You will observe that the promise deals more immediately with things, not persons, with truths and duties, and not with human souls. And then we turn over two chapters in Matthews Gospel that are separated from each other by a few months of time, and we find practically the same language, with the metaphor of the keys dropped from it, addressed to a much wider circle of disciples. In the later version of the same words, you will find that the binding and loosing refers to that which is impersonal. What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. No unconditional infallibility is ascribed in the passage either to the Church or its ministers. It declares its infallibility with special safeguards. Go into an observatory, and watch some astronomer as he is following the transit of a star. His telescope is so adjusted, that an ingenious arrangement of clockwork is made to shift it with the transit of the star. His instrument is moving in obedience to the movement of the star in the heavens. But the clock-work does not move the star. The astronomer has made his faultless calculations; the mechanic has adjusted his cranks and pendulums and wheels and springs with unerring nicety, and every movement in the telescope answers to the movement of the star in the far-off heavens. The correspondence rests on knowledge. And so when the things that are bound on earth are bound in heaven. Every legislative counsel and decree and movement in a truly apostolic and inspired Church answers to some counsel and decree and movement in the heavens. But then the power of discerning and forecasting the movements of the Divine will and government rests upon the power of interpreting the Divine character and applying its principles of action, as that character is communicated to us by Jesus Christ. You are giving a boy his first lesson in astronomy. You show him an orrery. You tell him that the central disc represents the sun, and the third from the centre the earth, and so on. And then you ask him to turn the handle which puts all these metallic balls representing things in the heavens in motion. You say that every movement here is a counterpart of every movement in the skies. But unless the boy is very dull indeed he does not suppose he is actually turning the planetary system with this little handle. And yet if the machine be faultless in construction, whatever is done on earth is done in heaven. Whatever is bound here is bound yonder likewise. The words addressed to the apostles by Jesus Christ on the evening of His resurrection from the dead approach more nearly to what has been understood by the term absolution than the earlier utterances. Here the apostles are spoken of as dealing with the souls of men in direct judgment. In the preceding instances they have been viewed as dealing with souls through the instrumentality of the truth. Here the instrumentality falls more or less into the background, and the witnesses to Jesus Christ are viewed as justifying or condemning, saving or destroying men by the power of their word. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. And yet, after all, this is but a more solemn and impressive form of the earlier statement. As the doctor takes the key of his drug-store and selects from the specifics that are arranged around him, he kills or makes alive. His key means a power of absolution. When it is first put into his hand he is entrusted with as solemn a responsibility as the judge who pronounces death-sentences or the Home Secretary who presents a death-warrant to the sovereign for signature or recommends a reprieve. When he selects this drug, or looks upon that as hopeless to apply under the conditions into which the patient has fallen, he is dealing with questions of life and death. And so Christ in His closing admonitions to the disciples teaches that they are not dealing with speculative truth only. They are commissioned to deal with grave, spiritual destinies. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained. The words imply that the truth the apostles shall preach to men in the crowd, as well as present to the individual in the course of their more private ministrations, is the truth by which men shall be judged in the day of Jesus Christ, and that the impression produced here and now under their preaching shall be confirmed then. The sphere of the apostles ministry and the sphere of the final judgment shall be penetrated by the same moral laws and principles. We sometimes find that things that apply under the conditions of one age do not apply under the conditions of another. Acts done in one country may have no worth or validity if the doer of them goes to another. The principles to be set forth by the apostles in their relation to the collective or individual souls of men alike are universal, not local, of Divine and not human authority only, eternal and not temporary and terminable in their sanctions. Whose soever sins ye shall remit shall be remitted unto them. It will help us in our endeavour to reach just conclusions on this question, if we remember that the power possessed by the first messengers of the gospel was greater than the power possessed by its messengers now, and approximated more closely to the exclusive type of prerogative claimed by the modern sacerdotalist. The first possessors of a truth wield a more terrible power than their successors can expect to wield, when that truth has become widely known. The curative properties of certain drugs now used in medicine were once known only in certain families. The knowledge was kept a secret within these families for generations. The knowledge was a monopoly. Through that monopoly they had in many cases power of life and death. That knowledge diffuses itself through a hundred text-books over half the globe, and becomes accessible to any one who can read. The special power accruing to the first possessors of the secret through their monopoly has passed away. And so with the knowledge by which entrance into the kingdom of heaven was to be gained. That knowledge at first was the monopoly of the few who followed Christ. But that condition of things exists no longer. If Peter himself could come into our midst, he would find his distinctive prerogative gone. That special knowledge which made him an absolver of souls gifted with a prerogative of life and death, he would find the possession of little children in Sunday schools. It is said that when the Earl of Essex was in high favour with Queen Elizabeth, she one day gave him a ring, accompanied by the request that if he should ever find himself in circumstances of trouble in which her help could avail, he would at once send that ring as the sign of his appeal to her good offices. She would then do everything in her power to aid him. Some time after he was arrested for rebellion, and condemned to die. Elizabeth signed his death-warrant, but waited with tears and solicitude for the return of the ring, that was to be the sign of his appeal to her clemency. The ring had been entrusted by the condemned earl to the Countess of Nottingham for delivery into the hands of the queen. The Countess kept back the ring, and suffered the sentence to be carried into effect. The ring gave her the power of remitting or retaining sin. To make the illustration serve the purpose for which we want to use it just now, we must suppose the Countess was the go between for the transmission of the ring not from the condemned man to the queen, but from the queen to the condemned man, and for the ring we must substitute a password. The power of absolution in the evangelical sense is very much like that. The ring, or the password, is the truth through which the forgiveness of God must be carried home to anxious, sin-burdened multitudes. And this leads us to ask the question, Upon what conditions does this power of opening and closing the kingdom of heaven, and of retaining and remitting the sin of men, rest? You will observe, in the first case, nothing whatever was promised to Peter, except so far as he was already the subject of a teaching inspiration, and was to become so in a yet richer degree in future days. He held the keys, and could bind and loose in so far as the Son was revealed to him by the Father and the Father by the Son, and not one iota beyond. He could not open the gates of the kingdom by any private authority and apart from the possession of these truths. And then we come to the promise of this same power to the whole congregation of the disciples. There is no power of binding and loosing, you will observe, apart from Christs indwelling presence within the Church. And then we come to the last case. Christ connected the power of absolution with a symbolic act, in which He made the disciples recipients of His own life, and partakers and instruments of the Holy Ghost by that fellowship. But it will be observed that there is no valid retention or remission of sin that can be pronounced to men, except by the lips of which the Holy Ghost is the unceasing breath. Given that condition in the case of either priest or layman, and I am free to extend the province of absolution just as far as the most extreme sacerdotalist has ever sought to extend it. The ideal Church and the ideal minister may have all the power the sacerdotalists claim, but to assume that the Church and minister of to-day and every day is ideal in actual life and attainment is to make a very strong demand upon our credulity indeed. I go and look for the minister who is so filled with the Holy Ghost that he becomes infallible in moral judgment, and always speaks the exact thought of God in acquitting or condemning men And I scarcely know where to find the man who has been lifted by the inspiration of the Spirit above error. I come therefore to the conclusion that these are delineations of ideal Christianity; not ideal in the sense that they are beyond the line of practical possibility, but ideal in the sense that they are realized only by an uncommon exaltation of soul.
II. The question arises, WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO PRONOUNCE AN ABSOLUTION OF THIS SORT? The sacerdotalist replies, The man who has received an ordination that is unbroken in the line of its succession from the apostles, with Peter at their head. But the power committed to Peter is entrusted some few months later, not only to the apostles, but to each and every disciple who might chance to be offended by the wrong or transgression of another and who would be loyal to certain specified directions, as well as to the whole congregation of believers in their corporate capacity. The thorough-paced sacerdotallst demands confession as a preliminary basis for the absolution he utters. That demand is a tacit admission of the frivolity of his claim. It is just as though some thought-reader should boast that he would read the number of a bank-note placed in a sealed safe, and ask first to be allowed to look at the cash-book of the firm through whose hands the note last passed, and in which a record was made of the number. If the priest cannot read the heart of the penitent without the help of his confession, he is still less able to read that Divine heart, from whose secret judgment the absolution of the individual must spring. A genuine absolution must rest as much upon a correct interpretation of the mind of God to the individual, as upon the interpretation of the state of the individual mind itself. Indeed, no confession can supply an accurate basis for the utterance of an edict of absolution. The same acts may represent very diverse religious conditions in people of diverse knowledge, training, and experience. The God, who is a God of knowledge, and by whom actions are weighed, and He only, can read unerringly all the delicate factors in our spiritual state and condition, and pronounce the absolution that is unimpeachably and eternally judicial. So far, however, as absolution deals with the proclamation of Gods good will to the penitent, whoever is filled with the mind and spirit of Christ is free to proclaim it. The proclamation, resting as it ultimately does, upon Christs authority and that of His disciples, is just as good from one mans lips as anothers, if he be spiritually qualified to reflect the mind of God. It is not the man who clothes the truth with the authority of his office. It is the truth that clothes the man with his authority as he utters it. News may not always come from the Government gazette, or be proclaimed by the town crier who fills an office that may have existed from the first incorporation of the town; and yet it may be good and trustworthy news notwithstanding. It has been calculated that the amount of heat received from the sun in the course of a year is so great that if the earth were covered, from pole to pole, with an ice cap a hundred feet thick, the heat would suffice to melt away every atom of that ice heap. And the amount of heat our earth receives is but a trifle in comparison with the total volume given off by the sun. It is scarcely so much as a drop in the rainfall of a year. Our earth receives only one twenty-five-thousand-millionth of the heat the sun gives off year by year. Gods forgiveness is as bountiful as that. From the burning depths of His great, unfathomed heart He is ever pouring boundless grace and incomprehensible compassion. His love is sufficient, not only to melt the sin from every human heart, but to melt the sin from as many worlds, if they needed it, as there are human souls in this ant-heap world of ours. Do not suppose that the warmth of Gods forgiveness, before it can melt or transform our natures, must needs be gathered up into the burning-glass of some petty priests insignificant absolution. Gods warm love is pouring down upon you Sunday and weekday alike, without stint or condition other than that you will meekly and penitently receive it. You are not dependent upon the absolution of either the confessional or the inquiry room. (T. G. Selby.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 21. Even so send I you.] As I was sent to proclaim the truth of the Most High, and to convert sinners to God, I send you for the very same purpose, clothed with the very same authority, and influenced by the very same Spirit.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Peace be unto you; the repeating of this salutation speaketh it more than an ordinary compliment, or form of salutation. It signifieth his reconciliation to them, notwithstanding their error in forsaking him, and fleeing; it prepared their attention for the great things that he was now about to speak to them; it also signified, that he was about to preach the gospel of peace to all nations.
As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you; I have now fulfilled my ministry, and am now going to my Father who sent me: now by the same authority that I am sent, I send you, to gather, instruct, and govern my church; I send, or I will send, you clothed with the same authority with which I am clothed, and for the same ends in part for which I was sent.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
21. Then said Jesuspreparednow to listen to Him in a new character.
Peace be unto you. As myFather hath sent me, so send I you(See on Joh17:18).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then said Jesus to them again,…. The words he said before:
peace be unto you; which he repeated, to put them out of their fright, by reason of which they returned him no answer; and to raise and engage their attention to what he was about to say; and to pacify their consciences, distressed with a sense of their conduct towards him; and with a view to the Gospel of peace, he was now going to send them to preach:
as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you; Christ’s mission of his disciples, supposes power in him, honour done to them, authority put upon them, qualifications given them, and hence success attended them; what they were sent to do, was to preach the Gospel, convert sinners, build up saints, plant churches, and administer ordinances. The pattern of their mission, is the mission of Christ by his Father, which was into this world, to do his will, preach the Gospel, work miracles, and obtain eternal redemption for his people; and which mission does not suppose inferiority in his divine person, nor change of place, but harmony and agreement between the Father and Son: the likeness of these missions lies in these things; their authority is both divine; they are both sent into the same place, the world; and in much the same condition, mean, despicable, hated and persecuted; and in part for the same end, to preach the Gospel, and work miracles, for the confirmation of it; but not to obtain redemption, that being a work done solely by Christ; in which he has no partner, and to whom the glory must be only ascribed.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Even so send I you ( ). Jesus has often spoken of the Father’s sending him using both and . Here he employs both words in practically the same sense. Jesus still bears the Commission of the Father (perfect active indicative). For this balanced contention (as … so) see John 6:57; John 10:15. This is the first of the three commissions given by the Risen Christ (another on the mountain in Galilee (Matt 28:16-20; 1Cor 15:6), another on the Mount of Olives (Luke 24:44-51; Acts 1:3-11).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Hath sent [] . Note the distinction between this verb and that applied to the sending of the disciples [] . See on 1 6.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Then said Jesus to them again,” (eipen oun autois ho lesous palin) “Then Jesus again said directly to them,” to His assembled New Covenant church disciples, to impress upon them that He had come through a great conflict with victory.
2) “Peace be unto you:” (eirene humin) “Peace be to you all,” in a special, spiritually comforting sense, in which He had promised them, Joh 20:19; Joh 14:27, as He repeated His greeting.
3) “As my Father hath sent me,” (kathos apestalken me ho pater) “Just as the Father has and did send, commission, or mandate me,” into the world, Joh 3:17; Joh 17:18; Gal 4:4-5. So had He and would He send them.
4) “Even so send I you.” (kago pempo humas) I send or mandate you all,” to go into the world, Mat 28:18-20; Act 1:8; to commit to faithful men who may come after you, 2Ti 2:2; Heb 3:1-6.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
21. Jesus saith to them again, Peace be to you. This second salutation appears to me to have no other object than that the Lord should receive such a degree of attention as was due to the greatness and importance of the subjects on which he was about to speak.
As the Father hath sent me. By these words, Christ, as it were, instals them in the office to which he had previously appointed them. True, they had been already sent throughout Judea, but only as heralds, to issue a command that the supreme Teacher should be heard, and not as Apostles, to execute a perpetual office of teaching. But now the Lord ordains them to be his ambassadors, to establish his kingdom in the world. Let it therefore be held by us as an ascertained truth, that the Apostles were now, for the first time, appointed to be ordinary ministers of the Gospel.
His words amount to a declaration, that hitherto he has discharged the office of a Teacher, and that, having finished his course, he now confers on them the same office; for he means that the Father appointed him to be a Teacher on this condition, that he should be employed, for a time, in pointing out the way to others, and should, afterwards, put those persons in his room to supply his absence, for this reason Paul says that he gave some, apostles; some, evangelists; some, pastors, to govern the Church till the end of the world, (Eph 4:11.) Christ therefore testifies, first, that, though he held a temporary office of teaching, still the preaching of the Gospel is not for a short time, but will be perpetual. Again, that his doctrine may not have less authority in the mouth of the Apostles, he bids them succeed to that office which he has received from his Father, places them in his room, and bestows on them the same authority; and it was proper that their ministry should be ratified in this manner, for they were unknown persons and of mean condition. Moreover, though they had the highest splendor and dignity, yet we know that all that belongs to men does not approach to the excellence of faith.
It is not without reason, therefore, that Christ communicates to his Apostles the authority which he received from the Father, that thus he may declare that the preaching of the Gospel was committed to him, nut by human authority, but by the command of God. But he does not substitute them in his room, in such a manner as to resign to them the highest authority as a teacher, which the Father intended to be vested in him alone. He therefore continues, and will eternally continue to be, the only Teacher of the Church; but there is only this difference, that he spoke with his mouth so long as he dwelt on earth, but now speaks by the Apostles. The succession or substitution, (205) therefore, is of such a nature that it takes nothing from Christ, but his authority remains full and entire, and his honor unimpaired; for that decree by which we are enjoined to hear him, and not others, cannot be set aside:
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him, (Mat 17:5.)
In short, Christ intended here to adorn the doctrine of the Gospel and not men.
It ought likewise to be observed, that the only subject which is handled in this passage is the preaching of the Gospel; for Christ does not send his Apostles to atone for sins, and to procure justification, as he was sent by the Father. Accordingly, he makes no allusion in this passage to anything which is peculiar to himself, but only appoints ministers and pastors to govern the Church; and on this condition, that he alone keeps possession of the whole power, while they claim nothing for themselves but the ministry.
(205) “ La succession ou subrogation.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(21) Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you.These words may be here a solemn repetition of the greeting in Joh. 20:19, by which our Lords own message of peace is immediately connected with that which the Apostles were to deliver to the world. It is, however, more natural to understand the words in Joh. 20:19 as those of greeting, and these as words of farewell. (Comp. Joh. 14:27.) Other words had intervened, as we know from St. Lukes narrative. He is now about to withdraw the evidence of His presence from them, and does so with the customary Shalm; but with this He reminds them of the apostleship to which He has called them, gives them an earnest of the Presence which will never leave them, but always qualify them for it (Joh. 20:22), and places before them the greatness of the work to which He sends them (Joh. 20:23).
As my (better, the) Father hath sent me, even so send I you.Comp. Note on Joh. 17:18, where the words occur in prayer to the Father. As spoken here to the disciples they are the identification of them with Himself in His mediatorial work. He is the great Apostle (Heb. 3:1); they are ambassadors for Christ, to whom He commits the ministry of reconciliation (2Co. 5:18 et seq.). He stands in the same relation to the Father as that in which they stand to Him. He declares to them, and they in His name are to declare to the world, the fulness of the Fathers love, and the peace between man and God, witnessed to in His life and death. He and they stand also in the same relation to the world. At this very moment they are assembled with shut doors, for fear of the Jews, who are triumphing over Him as dead. But to that world, which will hate, persecute, and kill them, as it had hated, persecuted, and killed Him, they are sent as He was sent; they are to declare forgiveness, mercy, love, peace, as He had declared them, to every heart that does not harden itself against them; and they are to find in His presence, as He had ever found in the Fathers presence, the support which will ever bring peace to their own hearts (Joh. 14:27).
And when he had said this, he breathed on them.The word rendered breathed occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but was familiar from its use in the Greek (LXX.) of Gen. 2:7. St. John uses to describe this act of the risen Lord the striking word which had been used to describe the act by which God breathed into mans nostrils the breath of life. He writes as one who remembered how the influence of that moment on their future lives was a new spiritual creation, by which they were called, as it were, out of death into life. It was the first step in that great moral change which passed over the disciples after the Crucifixion, and of which the day of Pentecost witnessed the accomplishment.
And saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.These words are not, on the one hand, to be understood as simply a promise of the future gift of the Holy Ghost, for they are a definite imperative, referring to the moment when they were spoken; nor are they, on the other hand, to be taken as the promised advent of the Paraclete (Joh. 14:16 et seq.), for the gift of the Holy Ghost was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified (Joh. 7:39; Joh. 16:7 et seq.). The meaning is that He then gave to them a sign, which was itself to faithful hearts as the firstfruits of that which was to come. His act was sacramental, and with the outer and visible sign there was the inward and spiritual grace. The very word used was that used when He said to them, Take (receive ye), eat; this is My body (Mat. 26:26; Mar. 14:22). It would come to them now with a fulness of sacred meaning. The Risen Body is present with them. The constant spiritual Presence in the person of the Paraclete is promised to them. They again hear the words Receive ye, and the very command implies the power to obey. (Comp. Excursus C: The Sacramental Teaching of St. Johns Gospel, p. 556.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘Jesus therefore said to them again, “Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me even so I send you.”
To whom was Jesus speaking? As mentioned above others than the eleven were present, including the women. But John makes clear that the commission here is to ‘the disciples’ and in the context of chapter 13 onwards that is the eleven. The others join in it in a general sense, but the specific actions are for ‘the disciples’ (compare Joh 17:18; Joh 17:20). This is confirmed by the words with reference to Thomas as ‘one of the twelve’ (Joh 20:24).
They had endured great sorrow and despair. Now He reminded them what it had all been about. They must now take over His task of being the light of the world. He was sending them just as the Father had sent Him. From now on they would be His representatives, His ambassadors (2Co 5:20). They were ‘the foundation of the twelve Apostles’ (Rev 21:14 compare Eph 2:20 where the foundation is widened to include ‘prophets’, but those may have been the Old Testament prophets)
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Joh 20:21. As my Father hath sent me, &c. “As my heavenly Father sent me into the world, to discharge the office of the Messiah; even so I, by my plenary authority, and in proof of my mediatorial commission, send you to discharge the office of apostles and ministers in preaching the gospel to every creature, and to confirm it with miraculous signs wherever you may go.” See Mar 16:15; Mar 16:17-18.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Joh 20:21-22 . ] For now, after the joyful recognition, He could carry out that which He had in view in this His appearance. Hence He began once again, repeated His greeting, and then pursued His further address. The repetition of is not a taking leave , as Kuinoel, Lcke, B. Crusius, and several others, without any indication in the text, still think, which brings out a strange and sudden change from greeting to departure, but emphatic and elevated repetition of the greeting , after the preliminary act of self-demonstration, Joh 20:20 , had intervened. Hengstenberg makes an arbitrary separation: the first . refers to the disciples , the second to the apostles as such.
, . . .] Comp. Joh 17:18 . Now, however, and in fact designated a second time, according to its connection with the proper divine delegation, the mission of the disciples is formally and solemnly ratified, and how significantly at the very first meeting after the resurrection, to be witnesses of which was the fundamental task of the apostles! (Act 1:22 ; Act 2:32 ; Act 4:2 , et al .) ] To interpret it merely as a symbol of the impartation of the Holy Spirit, according to the relationship of breath and spirit (comp. Eze 37:5 ff.; Gen 2:7 ) (Augustine, De trin . iv. 29, and many others: “demonstratio per congruam significationem”), neither satisfies the preceding , nor the following , . . .; for, in connection with both, the breathing on the disciples could only be taken as medians of the impartation of the Spirit, i.e . as vehicle for the reception , which was to take place by means of the breathing, especially as (let the imperat. and the aor. be noted) cannot at all promise the reception which is first in the future (Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Grotius, Kuinoel, Neander, Baeumlein, and several others), but expresses the present actual reception. So substantially Origen, Cyril, Melanchthon, Calvin, Calovius, and several others, including Tholuck, Lange, Brckner (in answer to De Wette’s symbolical interpretation), Hengstenberg, Godet, Ewald, and several others; whilst Baur considers the whole occurrence as being already the fulfilment of the promise of the Paraclete, [267] which is an anticipation, and inapplicable to the idea of the mission of the Paraclete. The later and full outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, by which Christ returned in the Paraclete, remains untouched thereby; moreover, we are not to understand merely the in-breathing of a for the later reception of the Spirit (Euth. Zigabenus). An actual of the Holy Spirit is imparted to the disciples on account of a special aim belonging to their mission. Bengel well says: “arrha pentecostes.” It belongs to the peculiarities of the miraculous intermediate condition, in which Jesus at that time was, that He, the Bearer of the Spirit (Joh 3:34 ), could already impart such a special , whilst the full and proper outpouring , the fulfilment of the Messianic baptism of the Spirit, remained attached to His exaltation, Joh 7:39 , Joh 16:7 . The article needed as little to stand with . as in Joh 1:33 , Joh 7:39 ; Act 1:2 ; Act 1:5 , and many other passages. This in answer to Luthardt, who lays the emphasis on ; it was a holy spirit which the disciples received, something, that is, different from the Spirit of God, which dwells in man by nature; the breath of Jesus’ mouth was now holy spirit (comp. also Hofmann, Schriftbew . II. 1, p. 522 f.; Gess, Pers. Chr . p. 251; Weiss, Lchrbegr . p. 289), but this is not yet the spirit of the world-mighty Jesus; it is not as yet , but nevertheless already the basis of it, and stands intermediately between the word of Jesus on earth and the Spirit of Pentecost. Such a sacred intermediate thing, which is holy spirit and yet not the Holy Spirit, the new living breath of the Lord, but yet only of like kind to the Spirit of God (Hofmann), cannot be established from the N. T., in which rather with and without the article is ever the Holy Spirit in the ordinary Biblical dogmatic sense. Comp. on Rom 8:4 ; Gal 5:16 . The conceivableness of the above intermediate Spirit may therefore remain undetermined; it lies outside of Scripture.
] belongs to . Comp. Job 4:21 .
[267] Comp. Hilgenfeld in his ZeitsChr. 1868, p. 438, according to whom here, as in ver. 17 the ascension, the feast of Pentecost should be taken up into the history of the Resurrection. The originally apostolic idea of apostles is, so soon as Paul is called by the Risen One , “ adjusted ” according to the Pauline.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 1731
INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE APOSTLES
Joh 20:21-23. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
IT is not easy to conceive what disappointment our Lords Disciples must have felt, when they found that he was dead upon the cross, and committed to the silent tomb. They had expected that he was the person who should redeem Israel: and the wonderful works which he had done, had appeared to justify that expectation [Note: Luk 24:19-21.]: but, behold, his enemies had prevailed against him, and the hopes which they had entertained were altogether frustrated. But our blessed Lord left them not long in this disconsolate condition. He soon gave them evidences that he was risen from the dead. To some he appeared on the morning of his resurrection: and in the evening of that day he came to them all, whilst they were assembled, with closed doors, for fear of the Jews; and both spake peace to their troubled minds, and renewed to them the commission which he had given them to preach his Gospel to the world; enduing them, at the same time, with a more abundant measure of qualifications for their ministry than he had hitherto conferred; and assuring them, that all which they either said, or did, on earth, under the influence of his good Spirit, should be confirmed and ratified in heaven.
Interested as we are in the office which was here assigned them, it will be well for us to ascertain, with some precision,
I.
The measure of inspiration given them
The commission which the Apostles now received from Christ resembled that which Christ himself had received from the Father
[Christ was furnished by the Father for the office that was assigned him. The Spirit of the Lord God was upon him [Note: Isa 61:1.], yea, and was given to him without measure [Note: Joh 3:34.]. The Spirit of the Lord rested upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and made him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord [Note: Isa 11:2-3.]. At the time of his baptism, the Holy Spirit was sent down in a visible manner, both to attest his mission, and to qualify him for it [Note: Mat 3:16-17.]. And this was the way chosen by God for manifesting to the world the commission given to the Apostles, and for imparting to them, at the same time, the qualifications necessary for the discharge of their high office.]
On them the Lord Jesus poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit, to fit and qualify them for their work
[His breathing on them was merely an emblematic sign, to shew them that he was empowered to communicate the Holy Spirit to whomsoever he would. He had before told them, that he would send unto them the Holy Spirit from the Father [Note: Joh 15:26; Joh 16:7.]: and he now imparted to them that heavenly gift; and assured them, that, within the space of a few days, they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost [Note: Act 1:5.], and receive him in that abundant measure which would be necessary for the perfect execution of the various duties to which they would be called.
But there was, doubtless, an infinite disparity between our Lord and his Disciples, both as to the measure of inspiration with which they were endued, and as to the perfection of holiness which they possessed. The knowledge of our blessed Saviour was co-extensive with the knowledge of his heavenly Father [Note: Joh 5:20; Joh 10:15; Joh 16:30.]; and in him was not the smallest possible imperfection [Note: Heb 7:26.]: but they were still weak and sinful, and liable to err, except when under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit. In acting, we know, in the instance of St. Peter, how fallible they were: and in recording what they had been commissioned to declare, they were left to themselves, to use their own language, and to report what they knew: they were indeed assisted by the Holy Spirit, who brought all things to their remembrance; and by the Spirit they were instructed in things which they could not otherwise have known: and by the same Spirit they were kept from error of every kind: so that all which they have spoken must be regarded as the word of God, no less than if their very words had been dictated from above: for though, I say again, they were left to record every thing in their own language, yet, in all that they stated, and in all that they revealed, they were kept from error of every kind and every degree. If, on some occasions, they delivered any thing from their own minds, as matters of opinion, and not as divine authority, they failed not to inform the reader in what light he was to regard that particular sentiment which was so delivered [Note: 1Co 7:6; 1Co 7:10; 1Co 7:25; 1Co 7:40.]: but in all other matters they claimed the authority of God himself, as sanctioning and confirming all that they uttered in his name [Note: 1Th 2:13; 1Th 4:8.].]
This will yet more fully appear, whilst we consider,
II.
The authority committed to them
The words in which this authority was conveyed have been grievously misinterpreted and perverted
[The ministers of the Church of Rome found on this, and other similar passages of Holy Writ, a claim to the power of forgiving sins. When, indeed, they are accused of this, they will deny it, and will endeavour to explain away their arrogant assertions. But it is a fact, that they teach their people to conceive of them as possessing this power: and their people do entertain this opinion, and do look to them to exercise this power; and do submit to their unscriptural impositions, under this fallacious hope; aye, and do pay them, too, for administering to them this indulgence. This power, say they, was given to St. Peter [Note: Mat 16:19.]; and therefore the Pope, as the successor of St. Peter, possesses it. This power too, say they, was given to the Church; and therefore they, as constituting the Church, possess it [Note: Mat 18:18.]. And again: this power was given to all the Apostles; and therefore they, as descendants of the Apostles, possess it [Note: The text.]. But when did Peter ever exercise this power? Did he, when he first preached to the Jews? When, under great agony of mind, they cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do? did he say, I, I Peter, forgive you? No: he assumed no such power to himself; but said, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins [Note: Act 2:37-38.]. Did he arrogate to himself any such power, when he opened the kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles? No: when they would have been ready enough to yield him even divine honours, he forbad them [Note: Act 10:25-26.]; and, instead of saying I forgive you, he referred Cornelius and his company to the Lord Jesus Christ, as the only source of hope and peace; saying, To him give all the prophets witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins [Note: Act 10:43.]. When our blessed Lord himself forgave sins, the surrounding Jews, conceiving of him as a mere man, accused him of blasphemy. And their accusation was just, if he was not God; for, who can forgive sins, but God only [Note: Mar 2:7.]?]
What, then, is the true import of the passage?
[The authority vested in the Apostles was not personal, but official; or rather, I should say, did not exist at all in themselves, but only as declaring the character of those whom God would accept or reject in the day of judgment. So far as this power was exercised in inflicting or removing censures from any members of the Church, it had relation only to this world. So far as it related to the eternal world, it was altogether declarative, and in no respect judicial. It accorded exactly with the authority of the priests under the law, when they were called upon to judge respecting lepers: there were given marks, whereby they were to try every case that came before them: where those marks were found, they pronounced the person leprous: and where they were not found, they absolved him from the charge of leprosy [Note: Lev 13:38-46.]. So the Apostles have laid down, with the utmost clearness, the marks whereby a child of God may be discerned, and be distinguished from an hypocritical professor: and according to what they have declared shall every case be decided in the day of judgment: those whom they have pronounced forgiven, shall be forgiven; and those to whom they have assigned a sentence of condemnation, shall assuredly be condemned. This was the power which they exercised: and this power still resides in those who, as Gods ambassadors, are authorised by him to declare his will to men. So far as they judge according to the written word, the sins of men, as remitted or retained by them, shall be remitted or retained in heaven.]
That we may bring this subject home for more general use, I would call you to notice from it,
1.
What aid is reserved for you in the discharge of your duties
[You need, in your respective callings, the influence of the Holy Spirit, as much as ever the Apostles did. And to you shall it be given, as freely as ever it was conferred on them The Lord Jesus Christ has the residue of the Spirit still abiding in him [Note: Mal 2:15.]: and if you pray, Lord Jesus, breathe on me! he will in no wise refuse your request [Note: Luk 11:13.].]
2.
How to judge of your state before God
[Men will pretend to declare, with great confidence, that such and such characters, which they account good, have nothing to fear. You yourselves, too, may have formed a strong opinion on such points. But I warn you, that whatever you or the world may think, Gods judgment shall stand; and his final sentence shall be in exact accordance with his written word. Your one inquiry therefore must be, What saith the Scripture? for assuredly those whom the Scripture acquits, shall be acquitted; and those whom the Scripture condemns, shall be condemned. To the word, therefore, and to the testimony. Whoever they be that speak not according to this word, there is no light in them.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
The Confession and Remission of Sins
Joh 20:21-23
The time at which these words were spoken should be considered in attempting to estimate their meaning and their value. Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and was rapidly drawing to a close his personal ministry upon earth. It was consequently time to disclose the very highest phases of the great work which he came to accomplish. The relations subsisting between the Father and himself, and between himself and the disciples, were now formally specified; the method by which the Christian economy was to be extended was particularly declared; and the divine Agent under whose direction that method was to be carried out was directly given by Jesus Christ himself. Now that their Lord was about to ascend to the Father, it was natural that the disciples should wish to be instructed and empowered as to the future. Jesus Christ’s personal ministry had been brief; viewed within a limited range, it had been marked by much failure; his miracles had been traced to the devil; his doctrines had been pronounced heretical and blasphemous; his Cross had been the laughing-stock of a ribald mob. What, then, was the future to be? Was the future to be a repetition of the past, or by a transition from the bodily to the spiritual was truth to find its way to the innermost heart of man, until that derided Cross should be everywhere confessed as the only way to heaven? On the termination of his personal ministry Jesus Christ had to provide for the future. He had cast the grain of corn into the ground: how was it to germinate and fructify until the whole world should be covered with the fruitfulness of harvest? The answer to all such inquiries will be found in the last addresses which Jesus Christ delivered to his disciples. One of those addresses is before us, and we can reach its deep meaning only by the aid of that spirit which it bestows. Holy Spirit, commune with us and teach us all we ought to know!
This address, it must be borne in mind, was delivered to the disciples in their corporate capacity. The disciples, with the exception of Thomas, were assembled on the first day of the week, with closed doors for fear of the Jews, when Jesus presented himself amongst them, and spake the words which are before us. They were not spoken to one disciple, but to all; we have no reason to infer that any one of the disciples received a larger measure of the Holy Spirit than his brethren. It may be assumed, then, that the Holy Ghost was given to the disciples as a body, and to each of them according to his capacity. They were sent forth by Jesus Christ, as Jesus Christ had been sent by the Father. Here is the divine commission of the Church. The Church is of God, not remotely or collaterally, but immediately and positively. The terms of the commission are most precise and emphatic “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” The question then arises, How did the Father send Jesus Christ? He himself says, “I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” This answer comprehends all details; the Church is sent to do God’s will, not its own; the Church is not upon its own errand, it is upon God’s; it is God’s servant, God’s representative, God’s light in a dark world. If it has proceeded upon the divine law, it is all this today; for it will be observed that Jesus Christ lays down the principle of transmission of authority the Father hath sent me, I send you, and you must send others. If we have any doubt as to the propriety of this enlargement of Jesus Christ’s commission, it will be removed by Paul’s words to Timothy “The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” It will be seen that the transmission is not one of doctrine, but that it proceeds upon personal qualification; the men to whom the doctrine is committed are to be “faithful” and “able,” and their faithfulness and ability can be known truly only by the spirit which God has committed to his people. Keeping, however, on the main line laid down by Jesus Christ himself, it appears perfectly plain that the disciples were divinely commissioned; that they were something more than zealous propagandists; that, in short, they held their authority from God. This would be evident even if the commission ended with the words “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” To these words, however, is added a special gift “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The possession of the Holy Ghost separated and contra-distinguished the disciples from all other men. It was distinctively a Christian gift; it was given to all who received the faith of Jesus Christ, not confined to an official body, out conferred upon all believers. Events recorded in the Acts of the Apostles leave no doubt upon this point. For example, on the day of Pentecost “the disciples were all with one accord in one place, and were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” While Peter addresses Cornelius and his household, “The Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word,” and Peter asked, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?” No words can more clearly show that the gift of the Holy Ghost was not confined to the apostles. Afterwards, when “the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea” contended with Peter about his going to the Gentiles, he answered, “Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God?” And on the same subject he afterwards said, “God which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” These passages are enough to show that the Holy Ghost was not confined to the apostles, nor do we anywhere find a hint that the apostles claim to have the Holy Spirit in any degree superior to all believers in Jesus Christ.
So far, there can be no doubt of two things: first, that the Church is divinely commissioned, and second, that its divine commission is attested by the personal presence and power of the Holy Ghost. We now come to a third point, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” This power, it would appear, is not separate from the Holy Ghost, but identical with it; apart from the Holy Ghost, it could not have any existence. It was given to the disciples as a body; and though the disciples of course received it as individuals, yet there is no hint that it was to be exercised by particular individuals in any secret or confidential manner; on the other hand, the terms are open, general, ecclesiastical, addressed to the disciples in their plurality. So far as the practice of confession of sin can be ascertained from the inspired writings, it was public, never confidential, except where the sin lay strictly between two individuals. In ancient Israel, for example, confession was made publicly. In the fourth chapter of Leviticus we find the elaborate law respecting sins of ignorance; and all that was to be done by the priest, the congregation, the ruler, or the common people, was to be done openly. In subsequent chapters we find confession and restitution referred to, but not in a single instance is there any trace of secret confidential confession. Even where special cases arose, as between a man and his wife, the priest was referred to by the party who had been aggrieved, not by the party who had done the wrong, and then not for confession, but for the administration of such tests as God himself had provided. Leaving the Old Testament and coming to the baptism of John, we find this statement “Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, confessing their sins,” the baptism and the confession being spoken of as equally public. It is not necessary to the elucidation of the text to enter upon a minute discussion of the particular manner of the confession made by the Jews; the point to be noted is that nowhere is secret or confidential confession referred to, or secret absolution permitted. We do find open confession, open penitence, open sacrifice, together with a continual illustration of the principle laid down in the Book of Proverbs “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”
The principle of confession is implied in the very terms of the commission. Sins cannot be remitted unless they are known, and they cannot be known except they are confessed. It will be found, too, in the teaching of Christ and the apostles that confession is always made an indispensable condition of forgiveness. It is so spiritually, it is so individually, it is so ecclesiastically. One passage will show that it is so spiritually: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Observe that the forgiveness depends upon the confession, for “if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Jesus Christ lays down the law of confession between individual and individual most explicitly. He says, “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” There can be no forgiveness where there is no repentance; and where repentance is expressed, confession is made. Jesus Christ adds, “And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.” Still, repentance, or confession, precedes forgiveness. On another occasion, also, Jesus Christ provided for the treatment of individual offences. He said, “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” Here the offended party is to give an opportunity of confession, if he shall hear thee, shall accept thy arguments, respond to thy entreaties, confess his offence, thou hast gained him. These instances elucidate the law which is to govern individual confession and forgiveness. The text now before us relates to a case not provided for in the law relating to spiritual offences or individual trespasses. The disciples were addressed as a body. Jesus Christ distinctly recognised the power of the Church when he made it the ultimate appeal in individual cases: “Tell it unto the Church, but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” Paul recognised the same authority; for when a case of discipline arose in the Church at Corinth, he wrote, “For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” The Church in its corporate capacity (“when ye are gathered together”) is here called to the exercise of extreme discipline. Addressing the same Church, the apostle gives, in a subsequent portion of the epistle, another view of Church discipline. “Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted of many; so that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such an one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow,” the “sorrow” showing that the man was in a fit spiritual state (amounting to confession) to receive the forgiveness and comfort of the Church.
From the structure of the passage more immediately under consideration, it is inferred that as the commission respecting the remission and retaining of sin was given to the disciples in their public and corporate capacity, so it refers only to sins which relate to the corporate and public aspect and jurisdiction of the Church. This inference is confirmed by passages already cited which provide for individual trespasses, and purely spiritual offences against God.
This construction of the passage illustrates the deeply spiritual nature of the Christian Church. That Church is not a miscellaneous gathering of people; it is a confraternity of souls under the dominion of him who bought them with his blood, and under the personal guidance of the Holy Ghost. No man is truly identified with the Church who is not first identified in all his deepest affections and sympathies with Jesus Christ. He who is so identified with Jesus Christ has received the Holy Ghost; “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” “Ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them.” He is no longer a common man; he is a new creature; the spirit of wisdom and of a sound mind is put within him. It is true, indeed, that he may grieve or even quench the Holy Spirit, but “if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.”
Not only does the passage illustrate the deeply spiritual character of the Christian Church, it invests the Church with high spiritual authority. Members of the Church are keepers of one another; they are called to a common sympathy alike in sorrow and in joy; they are bound to deliver some men to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme; they are called upon to note others and to have no company with them, that offenders may be ashamed; and they are authorised to reject the man who is “an heretic after the first and second admonition.” And Jesus Christ, who in the gift of the Holy Ghost gave them this authority, says that he will ratify their decisions. The Apostle Paul claimed that cases of dispute should be settled “before the saints,” and asks, “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?” Let the Church take heed lest its heavenly vocation be exchanged for a technical and worthless formalism. If it is to realise Jesus Christ’s idea of being the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and the city on a hill, it must claim all the powers and privileges which its Founder put within its reach.
Let us now look at a few inquiries and objections.
First of all, it may be asked, Where is the Church? The Church is where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name. They indeed are not the whole Church; but in a mystical sense, which unregenerated men cannot appreciate, they are the Church. Where is the sunlight? Is any man at liberty to confine himself in darkness because he cannot admit all the sunlight? The whole earth itself on the longest summer day receives but a small portion of that light; rays of the great glory strike other worlds, and carry morning and noon and summer to distant spheres; what then? The child can still play in the sunshine, and the weakest floweret claim to have been painted by the sun. So the Church is not wholly to be found in this place or in that; there may be a Church at Philadelphia, a Church at Smyrna, a Church at Thyatira, and at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Laodicea, at Pergamos, at Rome: where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, Christ himself is, and that union makes the Church.
It may be objected that the Church is fallible, and consequently its remissions and retentions of sin may be mistaken. True, the Church is fallible; but the Holy Ghost is infallible, and it is the Holy Ghost who directs the Church to remit or retain sins. It is impossible for a man to sin against his neighbour or against the Church without at the same time sinning against God. The true confession, either to the individual or to the Church, is that which comes after confession to God; the truly penitent offender does not come first to the human side of his offence but to the divine side, and having poured out his contrition before God he is impelled to abase himself before the offended individual or the dishonoured Church. But may not an offender make an insincere confession of sin? True; but rules cannot be made for hypocrites, the gracious provision can be made only for sincere men. The Church is bound to deal with each case upon its merits; to make the most searching inquiry; to put all doubtful men to the most exacting tests; and, having satisfied the spirit of wisdom, it must exercise the spirit of righteousness and charity. Jesus Christ says, “Whosoever believeth shall be saved.” An insincere man may profess belief, will he therefore be saved? In all such cases (and they are many in spiritual life) there is necessarily an assumption of conditions. When Jesus Christ says, “Ask and ye shall receive,” the implied condition is that he who asks is sincere, and that his petitions are confined within a legitimate bound; when he says, “He that believeth shall be saved,” the implied condition is that the man believes with his heart; so when he says, “Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted,” the implied condition is that the offending man has made a candid and contrite confession of his guilt.
“But,” it may be urged, “the apostles had the power of discerning spirits; we have not this power.” We may exaggerate the gift of discerning spirits as possessed by the apostles. For example, when they wished to ordain one to be a witness with them of the resurrection, they did not discern between Joseph and Matthias; on the contrary, “They prayed and said, Thou Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen.” Will the Church proceed either to remission or retention of sins without prayer? Will it be an off-handed exercise, making no demand upon the highest sensibilities, no strain upon the very heart of hearts? Will it not, on the contrary, lead the Church to a deeper spiritual abasement, bring it into the most entire sympathy with the pure and merciful spirit of Jesus Christ? and if it must needs fast and pray, even through many days, who dare say that God will not openly smite the liar with vengeance, and give the true penitent a new hope in life?
And even with regard to discerning spirits, dare we say that we have exhausted the measure of the Holy Ghost which Jesus Christ intended his Church to receive? If we surrendered ourselves entirely to God’s will; it we knew nothing among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified; if by giving our days to study and our nights to prayer we did really and truly “prove” the God of heaven, who dare say that he would not open the windows of heaven and pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, that their sons and their daughters should prophesy, their old men dream dreams, and their young men see visions? If we were charged with presumption or blasphemy we could answer with Jesus Christ who sent us as he himself was sent of the Father, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”
No doubt that in the application of these principles some practical difficulties will arise, but not one that cannot be overcome by ordinary sagacity and care. When is it that we pronounce the application of such principles impracticable? Is it when we have been living a most worldly life, or when we have spent much time in fellowship with God? Everything, so far as difficulty is concerned, depends upon the spiritual mood in which we consider the question. When the heart is most deeply conscious of Jesus Christ’s excellence; when it gets farthest away from the debasing influences of its worldly associations, and by so much nearer to the great light which spreads eternal morning upon the sphere into which Jesus Christ has entered, then all difficulty is scattered, all doubt is cleared off. This, I am persuaded, is one of the truths which can be apprehended only when the soul is in its very highest moods. It belongs emphatically to the sphere of inspiration. Jesus Christ placed it there; he breathed, or, as Tyndale translates it, he blew, upon the disciples, he inspired them, that they might accept and adopt an inspired truth.
There is a touching incident in ancient history which throws light upon several points of this argument. The incident will be found in the first book of the Anabasis of Xenophon. Cyrus summoned a council of his fellow-soldiers and friends to confer with them as to a just sentence to be pronounced upon the arch-traitor Orontas. Cyrus told the court-martial that his father had placed Orontas under his command, yet that the traitor had made war upon him but was compelled to succumb, and then he took the hand which Cyrus generously offered him. In the presence of the court-martial, under the cross-examination of Cyrus, Orontas confessed that Cyrus had done him no injury; he further confessed that after this he went over, without any provocation, to the Mysians and depopulated the lands of Cyrus. Orontas further confessed that as soon as he found his own weakness he fled to the altar of Diana, professed repentance, induced Cyrus to think him sincere, and once more succeeded in receiving the confidence of the magnanimous soldier. “What injury, then,” said Cyrus, “have I done you, that you should have been induced the third time to betray my confidence?” Orontas denied that Cyrus had done him any injury. “Then,” said Cyrus, “you admit that you have done me an unprovoked injury?” “That,” said Orontas, “I am under the necessity of confessing.” Then the noble Cyrus, with more than soldierly grace, with a dignity indeed that would adorn a Christian, asked him, “Can you, O Orontas, on my forgiving you, be an enemy to my brother and a friend to me?” To which the wretched man, stung by the recollections of his repeated treachery, answered, “Were I to say so, O Cyrus, neither you nor any other person would believe me.” Cyrus then put the case to Clearchus, his first general, who gave a verdict of condemnation; the whole camp coincided, even the traitor’s relations united in the opinion, and the oft-forgiven but incurable traitor was led forth to death. Truly there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. In this narrative we have a sin committed against the individual, and condoned, upon confession, by the individual; we have also a sin against the army, tried and condemned by the army; and we have an appeal to the deep moral sense that is in all human hearts; and we have that outraged moral sense justly demanding the life of a man who employed repentance as an ally of villainy, and made confession the password to a confidence which he plotted to betray.
It is upon this moral sense that the Holy Ghost descends in all-quickening, enlightening, and sanctifying power. The Church should present the only true example of a refined and thoroughly educated moral sense. Its spirit should be quick in judgment. By profound study of Jesus Christ it should come to hate sin, to know it afar off, yet to have all the pity of the heart turned upon the repentant sinner. It may be, and do, all this! Why does it tarry behind, when it might be the terror of all evil, and the refuge and joy of everything that is good in heaven and on earth?
The result of a careful examination into biblical teaching upon this subject is the acceptance of the following propositions:
(1) That the power of forgiving sins is divinely bestowed upon the disciples of Jesus Christ in their corporate capacity, and that such power is in harmony with the purpose of Jesus Christ’s mediation and the genius of the religious epoch in which we live.
(2) That Jesus Christ taught the doctrine of individual confession to the offended individual, and called upon the offended individual to forgive the offender upon receiving such confession.
(3) That nowhere in the sacred Scriptures is forgiveness promised apart from confession and restitution, whether the sin lie between man and man, or between man and God.
(4) That nowhere in the sacred Scriptures is there any authority given to any official person, bishop, priest, minister, or deacon, to receive secretly and confidentially a confession of sins.
(5) That the confession of sins is too sacred a duty, involving consequences too many and important, to be reduced to a system and presided over by any single human being.
(6) That all overt sin has a human as well as a divine aspect, and that the Church, inspired and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, has power to deal with the human aspect, according to the nature of the confession which the sinner may make.
(7) That to shrink from receiving confession of sin, and dealing with it according to its merits, may have the appearance of great reverence and humility, without the reality, may show that the Church has part in the first baptism only, and not in the baptism of fire.
(8) That to avoid all priestly pretension and destroy the confessional, that infinitely hateful institution which has degraded and oppressed every nation in which it has found an existence, and further to show that all who have the Holy Ghost are kings and priests unto God, the sinner should openly confess his overt sins in the presence of the Church (which could be done by writing, or before such a number of witnesses as the Church itself might appoint), and receive from the Church such comfort as can never be refused to those who truly confess and heartily repent their sins.
We cannot be unaware that other interpretations than that which is now before us have been given, nor should we deny that much deference is due to those who with patient devotion have endeavoured to discover the mind of the Spirit The most generally received interpretation is, that in preaching the gospel the disciples declared the principles upon which sins were either remitted or retained, he that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned. This interpretation appears to me to be utterly inadequate; entirely opposed to the grammatical construction of the text; and a weak dilution of the wholesome spirit of its doctrine. Such an interpretation limits the function of the Church to a mere preaching ministry. One of the principal objections urged against the view presented in this discourse may be urged against this interpretation. There may be insincere believers as well as insincere confessors; if you tell a man who insincerely believes the gospel that his sins are remitted, are they therefore remitted? The commission merely says, “he that believeth,” not he that truly believeth; yet who would found any argument upon that? It is enough to repeat that terms can be offered only to sincere men; hypocrites can evade or resist anything. The view suggested in this discourse honours the Church by honouring the Holy Ghost, and gives the sinner to feel the moral influence of men who live constantly in the fellowship of Christ. Of course the Church upon earth has its imperfections; but the imperfections are felt in the preaching of the gospel as much as in any other department of Christian service, so that if they invalidate confession they invalidate the whole ministry. Bad men preach the gospel; is the preaching of the gospel therefore opposed to the will of God? Imperfect men preach the gospel; is there therefore no Christian truth?
Believing that God’s gifts increase rather than decrease, that his plan is progressive not retrogressive, I see no reason why the first disciples of the Lord should have greater spiritual privileges than those of the present age; but I do see that if the Church will magnify its office, and show a disposition to possess the best gifts, if it will seek to know more thoroughly the will of Jesus Christ, it will attain an exaltation compared with which all its former eminence shall be unworthy of remembrance.
Prayer
Almighty God, thou hast surrounded us with mercy upon mercy, countless and precious. What shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us? Receive our thanksgiving, so far as words can express our gratitude, and cause us to feel the inexpressible thankfulness which never can be uttered in mortal speech, the thankfulness of our whole heart, expressed in the consecration of our whole life. We are sinners. God be merciful unto us! We come to the Saviour’s Cross; we look unto the Lamb of God; we lay our hand upon the one Sacrifice. God be merciful unto us! We cannot justify our ways before God. We have no reasons to set in order before thee to vindicate our conduct wherein it has been contrary to thy most holy Word. We shut our mouth, we lay our hand upon it, we bow ourselves down into the dust. If we might say ought before thee, we would say, Unclean, unclean! But if we confess our sins, thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Undertake that work. Sanctify us, body, soul, and spirit. May our whole nature be pure. May every aspiration, affection, desire, be sanctified by the Holy Ghost. May our whole strength be an offering unto the Lord’s service, accepted because offered on the Cross of the Lord Jesus. Thou hast added another week unto our years; thou hast taken another week from our life upon the earth. Help us to live in Christ, then our life cannot be measured by time. May our heart be in Christ’s keeping. May our whole life be hidden with Christ in God, then eternity itself can never waste our energy or impair our perfect beauty. Come to us now according to our want. To the hunger of our soul do thou apply the bread of heaven. To the burning, consuming thirst of our love and highest nature do thou apply the water of the river of life. Revive the drooping. May they look up where they cannot stand up. May they feel thy presence and submit to thy rule. Dry the tears of our sorrow. Explain thou to us, if so be we may thereby be stronger in the Lord and in the power of his might; if not, help us to believe in the future, where there is no sorrow because no sin, where there is complete ever-enduring rest. Look upon thy servants who have to face the world day by day, whose life is often a battle; whose battle is often a failing strife; whose hearts are discouraged, and whose strength is wasted. Give them thy grace, work in them thy peace, and give them hope. Look upon thy servants who seem to carry everything before them; who speak, and it is done; who command, and it stands fast; who dream themselves into success; who put forth the finger, and carry all things as they will. This is a great temptation: who can bear it? Our success endangers us, if our roots be not fixed in God, if our love and our faith be not established in Jesus Christ. Teach thy servants that all this world can give is but a splendid nothing. Show them that if the whole world were at their feet it would ultimately fall away and leave them without possession and without rest. May we set out affections on things above. May we look at things not seen. May we dominate over time and sense, and even now sit down in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
Ver. 21. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace ] The common salutation among the Jews (the Turks at this day salute in like sort, Salaum aleek; the reply is, Aleek salaum, that is, Peace be unto you). This our Saviour purposely redoubleth, to persuade them of pardon for their late shameful defection from him, and their backwardness to believe his resurrection. Sin is soon committed, but not so easily remitted; or, if in heaven, yet not in our own consciences, till which there is little comfort. Christ, to confirm them, is pleased again to employ them, and to count them faithful, putting them again into the ministry, 1Ti 1:13 . A calling not more honourable than comfortable; the very trust that God commits to a man therein, seals up love and favour to him.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
21. ] ‘Peace be unto you’ is solemnly repeated, as the introduction of the sending which follows. The ministers and disciples of the Lord are messengers of peace . This view is more natural than that of Euthym [255] : , .
[255] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116
] He confirms and grounds their Apostleship on the present glorification of Himself, whose Apostleship ( Heb 3:1 ) on earth was now ended, but was to be continued by this sending forth of them. This commission was not now first given them, but now first fully assured to them: and their sending forth by Him their glorified Head, was to be, in character and process, like that of Himself by the Father.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Joh 20:21 . When they recognised Him and composed themselves, He naturally repeated His greeting, , but now adds, . “As the Father hath sent me, so send I you.” In these words ( cf. Joh 17:18 ) He gives them their commission as His representatives. And in confirmation of it, (Joh 20:22 ) . “He breathed on them,” ; the same word is used in Gen 2:7 to describe the distinction between Adam’s “living soul,” breathed into him by God, and the life principle of the other animals. The breathing upon them was meant to convey the impression that His own very Spirit was imparted to them.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
John
THE RISEN LORD’S CHARGE AND GIFT
Joh 20:21 – Joh 20:23
The day of the Resurrection had been full of strange rumours, and of growing excitement. As evening fell, some of the disciples, at any rate, gathered together, probably in the upper room. They were brave, for in spite of the Jews they dared to assemble; they were timid, for they barred themselves in ‘for fear of the Jews.’ No doubt in little groups they were eagerly discussing what had happened that day. Fuel was added to the fire by the return of the two from Emmaus. And then, at once, the buzz of conversation ceased, for ‘He Himself, with His human air,’ stood there in the midst, with the quiet greeting on His lips, which might have come from any casual stranger, and minimised the separation that was now ending: ‘Peace be unto you!’
We have two accounts of that evening’s interview which remarkably supplement each other. They deal with two different parts of it. John begins where Luke ends. The latter Evangelist dwells mainly on the disciples’ fears that it was some ghostly appearance that they saw, and on the removal of these by the sight, and perhaps the touch, of the hands and the feet. John says nothing of the terror, but Luke’s account explains John’s statement that ‘He showed them His hands and His side,’ and that, ‘Then were the disciples glad,’ the joy expelling the fear. Luke’s account also, by dwelling on the first part of the interview, explains what else is unexplained in John’s narrative, viz. the repetition of the salutation, ‘Peace be unto you!’ Our Lord thereby marked off the previous portion of the conversation as being separate, and a whole in itself. Their doubts were dissipated, and now something else was to begin. They who were sure of the risen Lord, and had had communion with Him, were capable of receiving a deeper peace, and so ‘Jesus said to them again, Peace be unto you!’ and thereby inaugurated the second part of the interview.
Luke’s account also helps us in another and very important way. John simply says that ‘the disciples were gathered together,’ and that might mean the Eleven only. Luke is more specific, and tells us what is of prime importance for understanding the whole incident, that ‘the Eleven. . . and they that were with them’ were assembled. This interview, the crown of the appearances on Easter Day, is marked as being an interview with the assembled body of disciples, whom the Lord, having scattered their doubts, and laid the deep benediction of His peace upon their hearts, then goes on to invest with a sacred mission, ‘As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you’; to equip them with the needed power, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost’; and to unfold to them the solemn issues of their work, ‘Whose sins ye remit they are remitted; and whose sins ye retain they are retained.’ The message of that Easter evening is for us all; and so I ask you to look at these three points.
I. The Christian Mission.
We Nonconformists pride ourselves upon our freedom from what we call ‘sacerdotalism.’ Ay! and we Nonconformists are quite willing to assert our priesthood in opposition to the claims of a class, and are as willing to forget it, should the question of the duties of the priest come into view. You do not believe in priests, but a great many of you believe that it is ministers that are ‘sent,’ and that you have no charge. Officialism is the dry-rot of all the Churches, and is found as rampant amongst democratic Nonconformists as amongst the more hierarchical communities. Brethren! you are included in Christ’s words of sending on this errand, if you are included in this greeting of ‘Peace be unto you!’ ‘I send,’ not the clerical order, not the priest, but ‘you,’ because you have seen the Lord, and been glad, and heard the low whisper of His benediction creeping into your hearts.
Mark, too, how our Lord reveals much of Himself, as well as of our position, when He thus speaks. For He assumes here the royal tone, and claims to possess as absolute authority over the lives and work of all Christian people as the Father exercised when He sent the Son. But we must further ask ourselves the question, what is the parallel that our Lord here draws, not only between His action in sending us, and the Father’s action in sending Him, but also between the attitude of the Son who was sent, and of the disciples whom He sends? And the answer is this-the work of Jesus Christ is continued by, prolonged in, and carried on henceforward through, the work that He lays upon His servants. Mark the exact expression that our Lord here uses. ‘As My Father hath sent,’ that is a past action, continuing its consequences in the present. It is not ‘as My Father did send once,’ but as ‘My Father hath sent,’ which means ‘is also at present sending,’ and continues to send. Which being translated into less technical phraseology is just this, that we here have our Lord presenting to us the thought that, though in a new form, His work continues during the ages, and is now being wrought through His servants. What He does by another, He does by Himself. We Christian men and women do not understand our function in the world, unless we have realised this: ‘Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ’ and His interests and His work are entrusted to our hands.
How shall the servants continue and carry on the work of the Master? The chief way to do it is by proclaiming everywhere that finished work on which the world’s hopes depend. But note,-’as My Father hath sent Me, so send I you,’-then we are not only to carry on His work in the world, but if one might venture to say so, we are to reproduce His attitude towards God and the world. He was sent to be ‘the Light of the world’; and so are we. He was sent to ‘seek and to save that which was lost’; so are we. He was sent not to do His own will, but the will of the Father that sent Him; so are we. He took upon Himself with all cheerfulness the office to which He was appointed, and said, ‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,-and to finish His work’; and that must be our voice too. He was sent to pity, to look upon the multitudes with compassion, to carry to them the healing of His touch, and the sympathy of His heart; so must we. We are the representatives of Jesus Christ, and if I might dare to use such a phrase, He is to be incarnated again in the hearts, and manifested again in the lives, of His servants. Many weak eyes, that would be dazzled and hurt if they were to gaze on the sun, may look at the clouds cradled by its side, and dyed with its lustre, and learn something of the radiance and the glory of the illuminating light from the illuminated vapour. And thus, ‘as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.’
Now let us turn to
II. The Christian Equipment.
But the gift which Jesus brought to that group of timid disciples in the upper room did not make superfluous the further gift on the day of Pentecost. The communication of the divine Spirit to men runs parallel with, depends on, and follows, the revelation of divine truth, so the ascended Lord gave more of that life to the disciples, who had been made capable of more of it by the fact of beholding His ascension, than the risen Lord could give on that Easter Day. But whilst thus there are measures and degrees, the life is given to every believer in correspondence with the clearness and the contents of his faith.
It is the power that will fit any of us for the work for which we are sent into the world. If we are here to represent Jesus Christ, and if it is true of us that ‘as He is, so are we, in this world,’ that likeness can only come about by our receiving into our spirits a kindred life which will effloresce and manifest itself to men in kindred beauty of foliage and of fruit. If we are to be ‘the lights of the world,’ our lamps must be fed with oil. If we are to be Christ’s representatives, we must have Christ’s life in us. Here, too, is the only source of strength and life to us Christian people, when we look at the difficulties of our task and measure our own feebleness against the work that lies before us. I suppose no man has ever tried honestly to be what Christ wished him to be amidst his fellows, whether as preacher or teacher or guide in any fashion, who has not hundreds of times clasped his hands in all but despair, and said, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ That is the temper into which the power will come. The rivers run in the valleys, and it is the lowly sense of our own unfitness for the task which yet presses upon us, and imperatively demands to be done, that makes us capable of receiving that divine gift.
It is for lack of it that so much of so-called ‘Christian effort’ comes to nothing. The priests may pile the wood upon the altar, and compass it all day long with vain cries, and nothing happens. It is not till the fire comes down from heaven that sacrifice and altar and wood and water in the trench, are licked up and converted into fiery light. So, dear brethren! it is because the Christian Church as a whole, and we as individual members of it, so imperfectly realise the A B C of our faith, our absolute dependence on the inbreathed life of Jesus Christ, to fit us for any of our work, that so much of our work is ploughing the sands, and so often we labour for vanity and spend our strength for nought. What is the use of a mill full of spindles and looms until the fire-born impulse comes rushing through the pipes? Then they begin to move.
Let me remind you, too, that the words which our Lord here employs about these great gifts, when accurately examined, do lead us to the thought that we, even we, are not altogether passive in the reception of that gift. For the expression, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost’ might, with more completeness of signification, be rendered, ‘take ye the Holy Ghost.’ True, the outstretched hand is nothing, unless the giving hand is stretched out too. True, the open palm and the clutching fingers remain empty, unless the open palm above drops the gift. But also true, things in the spiritual realm that are given have to be asked for, because asking opens the heart for their entrance. True, that gift was given once for all, and continuously, but the appropriation and the continual possession of it largely depend upon ourselves. There must be desire before there can be possession. If a man does not take his pitcher to the fountain the pitcher remains empty, though the fountain never ceases to spring. There must be taking by patient waiting. The old Friends had a lovely phrase when they spoke about ‘waiting for the springing of the life.’ If we hold out a tremulous hand, and our cup is not kept steady, the falling water will not enter it, and much will be spilt upon the ground. Wait on the Lord, and the life will rise like a tide in the heart. There must be a taking by the faithful use of what we possess. ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ There must be a taking by careful avoidance of what would hinder. In the winter weather the water supply sometimes fails in a house. Why? Because there is a plug of ice in the service-pipe. Some of us have a plug of ice, and so the water has not come,
‘Take the Holy Spirit!’
Now, lastly, we have here
III. The Christian power over sin.
We must interpret these words in harmony with the two preceding points, the Christian mission and the Christian equipment. So interpreted, they lead us to a very plain thought which I may put thus. This same Apostle tells us in his letter that ‘Jesus Christ was manifested to take away sin.’ His work in this world, which we are to continue, was ‘to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.’ We continue that work when,-as we have all, if Christians, the right to do-we lift up our voices with triumphant confidence, and call upon our brethren to ‘behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!’ The proclamation has a twofold effect, according as it is received or rejected; to him who receives it his sins melt away, and the preacher of forgiveness through Christ has the right to say to his brother, ‘Thy sins are forgiven because thou believest on Him.’ The rejecter or the neglecter binds his sin upon himself by his rejection or neglect. The same message is, as the Apostle puts it, ‘a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.’ These words are the best commentary on this part of my text. The same heat, as the old Fathers used to say, ‘softens wax and hardens clay.’ The message of the word will either couch a blind eye, and let in the light, or draw another film of obscuration over the visual orb.
And so, Christian men and women have to feel that to them is entrusted a solemn message, that they walk in the world charged with a mighty power, that by the preaching of the Word, and by their own utterance of the forgiving mercy of the Lord Jesus, they may ‘remit’ or ‘retain’ not only the punishment of sin, but sin itself. How tender, how diligent, how reverent, how-not bowed down, but-erect under the weight of our obligations, we should be, if we realised that solemn thought!
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
My Father = The Father. See Joh 1:14.
sent. Greek. apostello. App-174.
even so = I also.
send. Greek. pempo. App-174. Note the distinction. The Father sent the Son alone, but the Son sends His disciples with an “escort” or guard, i.e. the Holy Spirit. This is to emphasize the fact that the Lord remains (by the Spirit) with those whom He sends.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
21.] Peace be unto you is solemnly repeated, as the introduction of the sending which follows. The ministers and disciples of the Lord are messengers of peace. This view is more natural than that of Euthym[255]: , .
[255] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116
] He confirms and grounds their Apostleship on the present glorification of Himself, whose Apostleship (Heb 3:1) on earth was now ended, but was to be continued by this sending forth of them. This commission was not now first given them, but now first fully assured to them: and their sending forth by Him their glorified Head, was to be, in character and process, like that of Himself by the Father.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 20:21. , again) They had not yet altogether comprehended the force of His former salutation: therefore it is repeated, and so is enlarged by additional words.-, peace) This constitutes the foundation of the mission of the ministers of the Gospel: 2Co 4:1, Seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not.-, even as) Christ is the Apostle of the Father, Heb 3:1 : Peter and the others were apostles of Christ. He does not discuss at large the subject of His resurrection, but takes for granted the evidence for it, and gives further instructions.- ) These two verbs differ: in the will of the Sender, and of Him who is sent, is had respect to; in , the will of the Sender, as distinguished from the will of the person sent.-, I send) Both this, and what goes before and what follows, are parallel to Isa 61:1, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings-He hath sent Me, etc.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 20:21
Joh 20:21
Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you:-He again pronounces the benediction of peace upon them and announces
as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.-For the same purpose and end. He was sent by the Father. By the same authority Jesus sends them. The authority of the Father and of the Son was to be present with the apostles. [The apostles are the executors of the New Testament that comes into force after the testator dies (Heb 9:15-17) and are to be sent forth to declare its provisions to a lost world. This is the first development of the Great Commission, which is more fully developed in Galilee a little later, and finally completed on Mount Olivet, just before he ascended.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Christs Mission and Ours
As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.Joh 20:21.
1. It was the evening of the greatest day in history, and the little company of the disciples sat watching anxiously within locked doors. They had waited all day for Jesus, but Jesus had not come. And now it was evening, and their hopes had perhaps dwindled with the setting of the sun, when suddenly, silentlywithout the sound of footfall or the warning of opened doorHe was there. Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
2. What an astonishing statement it is! Christ makes Himself co-ordinate with the Father. He associates in indefeasible unity the Father and I. He tacitly claims the right to do what the Father does. He makes Himself equal with God. He was either incarnate God, or He was incredible blasphemer; there is no escape from the alternative. It is in such implications that we see our Saviours Deity. These subtle claims of Christ are irresistible arguments for His absolute divineness.
3. Quite as astonishing are these words from another point of view. Not only does the Lord associate Himself uniquely with God, but in a wonderful way He associates Christians with Himself. What an honourable vocation He assigns to His people! He sends us as He Himself was sent. He classes His disciples with Himself. He who said the FatherI, says, Meyou. Ours is a task analogous to His. What He thus declares to His disciples He expressly declares to God the Father, in that high-priestly prayer of His: As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I them into the world. This immutable word which puts such honour upon Christians Christ asseverates alike to God and to man. What a word is this!
4. What is the real and permanent value of that message? It reveals His conception of the meaning of our mission; it unveils before us the truth concerning the responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ, the truth concerning the responsibility of all the Churches of Jesus Christ, the truth concerning the responsibility of every individual member thereof.
I
The Son and the Disciples
1. There is a series of remarkable utterances, found only in St. John, in which our Lord draws a parallel between the relation He bears to the Father and the relation the believer bears to Himself. In these passages our Lord asserts that He is the central and connecting link in a dual relationship the upper and lower sides of which exactly correspond to each other. What the Father is to the Son, that Christ is to him who believes in Him. And thus Jesus Christ stands midway between the Father and us, and the lines of communication between earth and heaven pass through Him. All that the Father has to communicate is first received by Him and then transmitted to us, while on the other hand He receives the love and trust and obedience of His disciples and passes it all on in turn to the Father.
(1) As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me (Joh 6:57). The whole series of utterances now under consideration is cast in this parallel form. There is something more than similarity of relationship implied in these words; they also imply that the great principle of life is an identical principle both on the upper and on the lower side of this relationship. Life is the same in us as in God; and wonderful as the thought may be, it is nevertheless true that when we believe in Christ and through Him are made partakers of spiritual life, we enter into communion with the life of God Himself. When one thinks of life in man as one thing and life in God as another, one has lost the key to the science of life. Spiritual life is not a series of isolated springs, but an ocean laving every shore.
(2) As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you (Joh 15:9). Here again we have the same passing on from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the disciple. The love of the Father to the Son is beyond human comprehension. It is frequently referred to in the Gospel narratives, but always as a sacred and mystical thing which it is almost a sacrilege to unveil to the common gaze. Christ Himself says, Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. But love, like life, is the same throughout the universe; the same bond that unites God and Christ unites Christ and the disciple, and the disciple and his fellow-disciple, and the heart of the humblest believer thrills with the same love that dwells in the heart of God. I have declared unto them thy name, says Christ, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.
(3) I know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father (Joh 10:14-15). These two verses belong to one sentence, and must not be separated as in the Authorized Version. They are two sides of a comparison. Christ is speaking of Himself as the Good Shepherd, and of the perfect understanding there is between Him and His sheep. There is an instinctive recognition by which the sheep know the shepherd, and the shepherd knows the sheep. And our Lord declares that this reciprocal knowledge and intimacy is of the same kind as that which exists between Him and His Father.
(4) If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Fathers commandments, and abide in his love (Joh 15:10). That obedience is the true test of love is a commonplace of Christian thought; Christ has taught us this in His familiar admonition, If ye love me keep my commandments. But here our Lord shows us how this principle runs up into the higher sphere, and forms the basis of the love which exists between Him and God. It is a law that operates universally, in heaven as well as on earth; it is not peculiar to the sphere of earthly discipleship but rules also in the heavenly places; an ordinance whose sway is felt throughout the whole circle of being. Christ lived in the love of the Father because He always did the Fathers will; His perfect obedience was the soil out of which the flower of love grew; His oneness of will and desire with the Father formed the harmonious environment in which alone love can subsist. I have kept my Fathers commandments, and abide in his love. And now our Lord takes that exalted experience of Histhe life which He lived toward the Fatherand turns it earthward, as the pattern of our relation to Him. Obedience is the royal law that binds the Father, the Son, and the disciple in one fellowship of love.
(5) As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world (Joh 17:18). Christ thus links the mission of His disciples to that which He received from the Father, and makes their work the outcome and continuation of His own. The purpose which brought Christ into the world runs through the whole service and ministry of the Church, and the work in which Christian men and women are employed to-day is a continuation of the purpose of the Incarnation. The commission which the Father placed first in the hands of Jesus Christ, Christ has handed on to His disciples, thus raising them to the position of co-workers with Himself, to share in the honour and privilege of carrying out the redeeming purpose of God.
(6) For a final instance of this special form of expression let us turn to Rev 3:21. Though we go outside the Gospel for this passage, we do not quit the circle of St. Johns writings; nor is there any change in the person of the speaker. And the fact that these words were spoken from heaven, after our Lords exaltation to the right hand of God, makes it all the more significant that they should assume the same parallel form as those we have already examined, which were spoken while He was on earth. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. Here we see that this twofold relationship runs right through to the end, and is completed in the final triumph and glory of Christs people in heaven.1 [Note: J. T. Hamly.]
The beginning of the Gospel is to be found in the thought and love of God. We may cast our lines back as far as we can through the ages of eternity, and we shall never be able to find the point at which Gods concern for the welfare of the universe that was to be first began, and yet the Lamb of God is said to have been slain from before the foundation of the world. The sacrifice of Christ was not an afterthought on the part of the Divine Being; it was, so to speak, part of Himself, an element of His very Godhead and of His very existence. So that, if we are really to go back to what may be termed the beginning of beginnings, we shall have to search the depths of the Divine existence, and follow all the wonderful and infinite course of the Divine thinking and purpose and love. There, of course, we are lost. Our hearts can only point, as it were, towards that great solemn mystery. Explanation we have none. Special indication is entirely beyond our power. We are lost in wonder, and our wonder is lost in speechlessness.
The second beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is found in the Incarnation of Gods Son. We begin the next time at Bethlehem. We were lost when it was a mere question of unuttered and in speech unutterable love. We only begin to think and to feel and to understand in part Gods meaning, when He utters His love not in speech, but in the person, the flesh and blood of Gods dear Son. We can begin therelittle children can begin at that point; our love can commence its study at the cradle of our Lord Jesus Christ. Creatures like ourselves need alphabets, beginnings, sharp lines, visibilities. We are not all pure mind; we cannot dwell upon the abstract, the unconditioned, the absolute, the infinite, in matters of this kind. We need some one to look at, to speak to, to go up to quite closely, and to hear speak the language of the love of God. This is what may be termed the second beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Where, then, are we to look for the third beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? We look for it in the Church. As He was, so are we to be in the world. We are to be living epistles, known and read of all men. When men ask, Where is Christ? we are to show them Christianity. And when they ask, What is Christianity? we are to show them the Churchmeanwhile, indeed, an incomplete representation of the truth, yet Jesus Christ Himself claims it, and devolves upon the Church the responsibility not only of bearing His name by exemplifying His life, but of interpreting His doctrine and living upon His love.1 [Note: J. Parker.]
2. As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Mark the deep significance of that resounding as and even so. The parallel involves disparity. He is God, and we are but men. He came to atone, and we but preach His sovereign atonement. This and much more is implied in the fact that in this text two different Greek verbs are used, which are translated by the common word send. The sending of Jesus was a grander sending far than the sending of us. He represents God more intimately and vividly than we can ever represent Him. But if there be this disparity there is in many respects a wonderful identity between His mission in the world and ours. The tenses of the verbs in the original indicate this in a very generative manner. As the Father hath sent methe tense shows that the commission is still in forceeven so send I you. The idea is that our commission is but a continuation of His in another form. The duty of the Christian is practically equivalent to the mission of the Christ. As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
The word send which He uses concerning Himself is not the same word send as that used concerning His disciples. He speaks of Himself as the Apostle of the Father; He says, in effect, My Father hath delegated authority to Me, but He never delegated authority to His disciples. The word used concerning them was simpler, and merely indicates that they are His messengers. He dispatches them under authority, but He holds the authority within His own grasp.
Thus the commission of Matthew harmonises with the declaration of John: All authority is given unto me; go ye, therefore, and be My messengers and preach My Gospel. Jesus has never delegated His authority either to man or to men, to synods or to conferences, or even to unions; He holds it still Himself.
This is not to degrade the office of the Church; it is to indicate the fact that He brings the Church into such union with Himself that she is to exercise His authority. She is to be the instrument through which He carries out the purposes of God. God delegated all authority to His Son; and His Son calls into living and vital union with Himself all believers, and they become the instruments through which He carries out the work of God.
And I think the same meaning is found in the words He used on another occasion, when He said, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work; and then, presently, He brought into association with Himself all His disciples when He used the plural and said, We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.
If this be the meaning of the text, then the mission of the Church in the world is the mission of Christ. He is the Sent of the Father, still the living and present Worker; but the Church is His Bodybone of His bone, flesh of His flesh. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. And as the Church of Jesus Christ realizes her actual and vital union with Christ, she becomes the instrument through which He moves to the accomplishment of His work.1 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan.]
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To be of the same mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective; it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not much debated; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision that, whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the original, that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once accept.2 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Lay Morals.]
II
The Mission of Christ and Our Mission
The Mission of Jesus Christ to the world may be expressed by three great wordsRevelation, Redemption, Salvation.
1. It is a mission of Revelation.
He came to declare the love of the Fathers heart. The Father entrusted to the Son the manifestation of His love. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The love of the Father to a guilty and dying world was the substance of the Redeemers message. God so loved the world, it began. How it would have gladdened that poor prodigal in the parable if he had heard in the midst of his hunger and loneliness that his father tenderly cherished his memory still. He would not then have waited till the pangs of insatiate hunger drove him to his fathers presence, if perchance it might yet be open to him, as the only alternative with death. Had a message from the father found him and called him home again, full joyously would he have trodden the homeward path. And so God loved the world in its rebellion and miseryshameful rebellion, no doubt, and merited misery; but they were His children who were groaning in bondage, and the meaning of their anguish reached and touched His heart. And God gave His only begotten Son, that the world should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now as the Father required for the expression of His own mind and will and love to the world, and by the very nature of the case, a sufficient and adequate image, organ, hand, word, and mediatorial ambassador; so Christ requiredwhen He was about to return clothed in our humanity to the bosom of the Father, to the midst of the thronea corresponding agency. We are not the direct representatives of the Invisible God, of Him who fills eternity and space with His glory; but we are sent by Christ to be the image, the messengers, the hands, the mediatorial representatives of His Divine humanity to the world in which we live. Therefore, first of all, in order to realize the grandeur of our calling, let us keep ever in mind that Christ sends us to men, that by our character, by our growing sanctification, by our holy living, by our entire walk, by our habits, our spirit, we may make Him known; He was and is the light of the world, but light itself is invisible unless reflected or refracted by the medium on or through which it vibrates. We may be able to reflect some one ray of the perfect beam of unsullied light.
I am very glad that you asked me your question. May I put it this way? The contents of the Christian revelation is the Person of the Lord Jesus. Scripture is the record of that revelation. The Church is the witness of that revelation.
In early times, amongst a rude and semi-barbarous people, the Church was greatly engaged in considering how she was to discharge her function as a witness. But this process was largely concerned with mechanism. Just as the State was striving at the same time to embody the idea of justice; the method was imperfect, but the idea existed nowhere else. Still, at the present day, the State embodies that idea imperfectly; but we do not doubt about the idea itself. So with the revelation of which the Church is the guardian. That revelation is immediate to each human soul; and the attempts to express it in the forms of outward organisationtheir partial success, their conspicuous failureonly make the eternal meaning of the revelation itself clearer and more precious.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, i. 416.]
One of the last acts of Henry Ward Beecher showed the true greatness of that great man. He was leaving Plymouth Church on the last Sabbath evening of his ministry, just as the strains of the organ were dying away, when he saw two little pauper children, who had come inside from the storm to listen to the music, startled with childish fright as he drew near, as though detected in some wrong; but the warm-hearted preacher spoke lovingly to them, and, kissing them, soothed away their fears, as he went out with them into the wintry cold and sleet, with his arms thrown around them to shelter and shield. And, doing this act of lowly love, he went home to die.1 [Note: T. F. Lockyer, The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 121.]
2. It is a mission of Redemption.
(1) Christ came into the world to express Gods absolute hatred of sin, and to extirpate it from the heart of man, by taking upon Himself all its curse and shame, bearing these to the bitter end. He came on a sacrificial and redeeming mission, to do what no angel or man could accomplish. He came to set forth what was eternally present in the Fathers heart, to bring to a climax the expression of perfect holiness and boundless mercy, to bring righteousness and love with infinite travail and peerless joy into absolute unity, to justify by remission of sins past, present, and to come, and to prove that when men realize this awful and glorious fact, when little children can sob themselves to rest in the arms of Jesus, then full reconciliation, repentance, submission to the will of the Father supervene, and there is the beginning of a new and eternal life.
My blood so red
For thee was shed,
Come home again, come home again!
My own sweet heart, come home again!
Youve gone astray
Out of your way
Come home again, come home again!
(2) Now if we are sent at all, we are sent to take a share in the very ministry of our Lord Himself. Our service represents and continues His service. Our labour is indissolubly joined to His. We are actually brought into a partnership with Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. And what a tremendous obligation does that fellowship lay upon us! We remember, with shame for ourselves, how utterly Christ gave Himself. Of Tissots 365 drawings of His life, no less than 310 are concerned with the ministry and Passion: and yet even that proportion is inadequate to express the place which service occupied in the life of the Great Pastor. Why, surely His every act, His every word and thought, was service. The whole of His life was one long sacrificing of Himself for others. And when there was nothing further that His life could give, He gave the life itself a willing sacrifice in death. Well might our Lord, looking into the eager faces of His Apostles, ask, Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? Well may He put to us that question now!
Scarce had she learnt to lisp the name
Of Martyr; yet she thinks it shame
Life should so long play with that breath
Which spent could buy so brave a death.
She never undertook to know
What death with love should have to do;
Nor has she eer yet understood
Why to shew love, she should shed blood.
Yet though she cannot tell you why,
She can love, and she can die.1 [Note: Richard Crashaw.]
3. It is a mission of Salvation.
(1) In order to save the world He began with loving care showered on little children, with sympathy extending to the outcast and excommunicate, to the publican, the harlot, the devilridden, and the dead. He healed men one by one. He felt the special agony of the widow of Nain and of the family at Bethany. He had saving words for rulers and priests, for Pilate and Caiaphas, for His executioners, and for the dying brigand.
(2) Now in all this He was sent to unveil the righteousness and love of the Father, and He sends faithful souls who have learned His secret to carry out the plan of which He sets the example, the first beginnings of which He wrought alone. When a missionary, with patience, persists in saving one drunkard, one idolater, one cannibal from his otherwise inevitable doom, pursues the proud rebel with the calls of pity, or urgently plies any one despairing soul with the great consolation; when a missionary of the cross knows that his Masters order is, Go, preach to every creature, compel the vile and the most ignorant, the most bewildered, to come into the light, and accept the conditions of salvation, he shares the burden of Jesus, takes His cross upon his shoulders, and hears and accepts His commission as certainly as if it had been thundered to him from the skies, As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
Wherever I see a young man teaching the Gospel to half-a-dozen children, I recognize a living branch of the Church of Christ.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of John Cairns, 588.]
The late Bishop Simpson relates a remarkable instance of the work of a young man in America, who started an institution for the care and improvement of poor imbecile children. Among those brought him was a little boy, five years of age, who had never made an intentional act, had never spoken a word, and had never given any look of recognition to a friend. He lay on the floor, a mass of flesh, without even ability to turn himself over. Such was the student brought to this school. The teacher made effort after effort to get the slightest recognition from his eye, or to produce the slightest voluntary movement; but in vain. Unwilling, however, to yield, he had the boy brought to his room, and he lay down beside him every day for half-an-hour, hoping that some favourable indication might occur. One day, at the end of six months of unavailing effort, he was unusually weary, and did not read. He soon discovered that the child was uneasy, and was trying to move himself a little. The thought flashed across his mind: He misses the sound of my voice. He brought his mouth near the childs hands, and, after repeated efforts, the little one succeeded in placing his fingers on the teachers lips, as if to say, Make that sound again. The teacher felt that from that moment his success was assured. And, as the narrative goes on to relate, only five years after that time, the child stood on a platform, in the presence of interested spectators, and answered with ready accuracy the questions of a public examination. The patience of love had conquered.2 [Note: T. F. Lockyer, The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 122.]
Yes, the ugly old church!at first such a failure that Bishop Blomfield was wroth at its appearance,though it cannot raise its head among the handsome churches of the metropolis, yet it has been the nursery of babes in Christ and the home of thousands who have reached a fuller age in Christian experience. I can say this without incurring the charge of egotism, for I am speaking of what the church had become before I knew it. The material fabric was the ugly, uninteresting building I have described. The church which was built up within it was a church of simple, honest souls, whose outlook on life had been raised to such a level that piety had discarded the temptation to be a sham, and a deep, earnest conviction of the reality of spiritual life had laid hold npon their hearts. They formed a society of true-hearted men and women who loved their Lord, and who strove, severally and unitedly, to do His will. The very atmosphere of the church and parish brought me a message which helped, while it humbled me. They were so much better than Ithose devout and simple-minded souls to whom I was sent to minister. Whence had this atmosphere come? Under God, it was owing to the untiring and unique work of one manthe Rev. William Bell Mackenziemy predecessor, and the first vicar of the church. Fidelity and fixity marked his life. He lived till he was sixty-four years of age. He had been ordained thirty-six years, and in that time he served but one curacy, St. James, Bristol, and one incumbency, St. James, Holloway. The thirty-two years at St. James, Holloway, were devoted to building up his flock in faith and lovea generations work for the regeneration of the people. Slowly he gathered round him, not only an attached and appreciative congregation, but a band of trusty and faithful men and women, genuinely interested in the good of the parish and neighbourhood, and keenly alive to missionary responsibility.1 [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter, Some Pages of My Life, 158.]
Christs Mission and Ours
Literature
Bardsley (J. W.), Illustrative Texts, 29.
Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. ii.) 479.
Brown (J. B.), The Divine Life in Man, 309.
Coyle (R. F.), The Church and the Times, 35.
Dudden (F. Homes), Christ and Christs Religion, 217.
Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord, 256.
Henson (H. H.), Preaching to the Times, 174.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons in Outline, 246.
Knight (G. H.), Divine Upliftings, 73.
Lockyer (T. F.), The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 120.
Macfarlaud (C. S.), The Infinite Affection, 63.
Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 17.
Maolaren (A.), After the Resurrection, 40.
Marten (C. H.), Plain Bible Addresses, 208.
Rainsford (M.), The Lords Prayer for Believers, 343.
Reynolds (H. R.), Lamps of the Temple, 82.
Young (D. T.), The Enthusiasm of God, 62.
Cambridge Review, i. No. 7 (Perowne).
Cliristian World Pulpit, xxxii. 312 (Glover); lxx. 257 (Morgan).
Church of England Pulpit, lxii. 237 (Hitchcock).
Literary Churchman, xvi. 184.
Preachers Magazine, xii. (1901) 352 (Hamly).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Peace: Joh 14:27
as: Joh 13:20, Joh 17:18, Joh 17:19, Joh 21:15-17, Isa 63:1-3, Mat 10:16, Mat 10:40, Mat 28:18-20, Mar 16:15-18, Luk 24:47-49, Act 1:8, 2Ti 2:2, Heb 3:1
Reciprocal: Gen 43:23 – Peace Num 6:26 – give thee Isa 22:24 – hang Isa 48:16 – the Lord God Jer 23:21 – General Eze 2:3 – I send Mal 2:7 – the messenger Mat 9:6 – that the Mat 9:38 – the Lord Mat 10:5 – sent Mat 13:37 – is Mat 23:34 – I send Mat 28:8 – with Luk 4:43 – therefore Joh 14:28 – Father Joh 15:16 – ordained Joh 17:22 – the glory Joh 20:19 – Peace Act 1:2 – the apostles Act 5:31 – forgiveness Rom 10:15 – And how 1Co 1:1 – an 2Co 5:20 – ambassadors Gal 1:1 – and 2Pe 1:1 – an apostle 1Jo 4:6 – he that knoweth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1
Whenever Jesus promised peace for his disciples, it was always the kind that was backed up by his Father. The same is true of the sending mentioned in this place. The wording shows that Jesus was sending his apostles out with the same authority by which He had been sent by his Father. The verse is the same in thought as Mat 28:18, where Jesus declared that all power (or authority) in heaven and in earth had been given to him.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Joh 20:21. Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you. The words are exactly the same as before (Joh 20:19), but they must have gone home with a deeper power to the hearts of the disciples, who now understood more fully the Person from whom they came. They prepare the way for the great commission to be given,a commission which, amidst all the trials it would bring with it from the world, the disciples are to execute in peace.
Even as the Father hath sent me, I also send you. The words even as bring out the close correspondence between the mission of Jesus Himself and that upon which He sends His disciples. In both cases it was a mission of self-denying love to men; in both one of labour, suffering, and death, followed by glory; in both we have the thought of willing service imposed by an authority that is supreme. We have already met with words expressing a very similar thought in our Lords intercessory prayer: Even as Thou didst send Me into the world, I also sent them into the world (chap. Joh 17:18). But there is one important point of difference, which an English translation fails to exhibit. In chap. 17 the Greek word for sent is the same in both members of the sentence; in the verse before us it is otherwise. Here the former clause (Even as the Father hath sent Me) contains the word of chap. Joh 17:18 (apostello), but in the latter clause (I also send you) the verb is different (pempo). The distinction in meaning seems to be that the second word expresses mission, the first more properly commission. When the first is used, our thoughts turn to a special embassy, and special instructions which the ambassador receives; the second brings into view rather the authority of the sender and the obedience of the sent. Both words, therefore, may be used either of our Lord or of His disciples. Thus in more than twenty verses of this Gospel Jesus applies the second word to Himself (see especially chap. Joh 4:34, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me); whilst in such passages as chap. Joh 6:29, Joh 17:3 (Joh 17:8; Joh 17:18; Joh 17:21; Joh 17:23; Joh 17:25), we find instead the more expressive word. In chap. Joh 5:36-37, and again in chap. Joh 7:28-29, the two are brought together, as they are here; and the appropriateness of each word in its place may readily be seen. In chaps, Joh 5:37 and Joh 7:28 our thought must rest chiefly on the Sender; but in chaps, Joh 5:36 and Joh 7:29 on the commission which the Father has given to His Son. On the other hand, the word apostello is used by Jesus in regard to His disciples in chap. Joh 4:38 (I sent you to reap) as well as in chap. Joh 17:18; and is indeed the word from which the distinctive name of the Twelve, apostles, is derived. Various thoughts are suggested here by the marked and sudden transition from one word to the other. It may be said with truth that, as chap. Joh 17:18 has its primary application to apostles, the word which designates their special office was naturally chosen there; here, on the contrary (see note on Joh 20:19), the disciples in general are addressed,the disciples who are the representatives of the whole Church of Christ. Again, the word by which Jesus here expresses the mission of His disciples (pempo), is one which brings into relief their separation from His bodily presence: formerly they were continually at His side, but now they must be dismissed for their labour throughout the world (Mat 28:19). One other thought it is impossible to overlook. There is peculiar dignity in the avoidance on the part of the Risen Lord of that form of speech which would seem to identify two relations which (however closely they may sometimes be associated) are essentially distinct. No human disciples can really bear the commission of Jesus as Jesus bears that which He has received from the Father (comp. note on Joh 20:17). By design, therefore, the Lord here, reserving for Himself the higher word, speaks of the disciples as His envoys to the world. The commission which they hold from Him receives separate mention in a later verse (Joh 20:23).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, 1. The repetition of our Saviour’s endearing salutation to his desciples, Peace be unto you, peace be unto you. This was no more than might be needful, to signify his firm reconciliation to them, notwithstanding their late cowardice in forsaking of him, and flying from him, when the storm fell upon him.
Observe, 2. How Christ doth renew his disciples’ commission for the work of the ministry, who possibly were much discouraged with the remembrance of their faint-heartedness in the time of his sufferings. He doth therefore anew commissionate them, and sends them forth in these words, As my Father hath sent me; that is, to preach, plant, and propagate the gospel; so send I you. By the same authority, and for the same ends, in part, for which I was sent by my Father, do I send you; namely, to gather, to govern, and instruct my church.
Learn hence, that when Christ left the world, he did not leave the church destitute of a gospel ministry, which shall continue to the end of the world. As Christ was sent by the Father, so are his ministers sent by him: and they may expect, he having the same authority and commission, the same success and blessing; and the contempt cast upon them and their message, ultimately reflects upon God and Christ, whose messengers they are.
Observe, 3. How Christ that sends them forth, doth furnish them with the gifts of the Spirit for their office: He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; that is, the gift of the Holy Ghost. They had received the Holy Spirit before as a spirit of sanctification: here they receive it in his extraordinary gifts to fit them for their office. And Christ’s conferring the Holy Ghost, by breathing upon them, shews that the Holy Spirit proceeds as well from the Son as from the Father. And as by God’s breathing the first man was made a living soul; so by Christ’s breathing upon the apostles they were quickened and extraordinarily enabled for the service they were called to.
Learn hence, that when Christ sends forth and about his work, he will furnish them with endowments answerable to their vast employment; and the best furniture they can have, is the Holy Spirit in his gifts and qualifications suitable to their work: He breathed on them, and said, received ye the Holy Ghost.
Observe, 4. How Christ asserts their authority in the discharge of their commission, and declares, that what they act ministerially according to their commission here on earth, is ratified in heaven: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted.
Where note, that there is a two-fold power of remitting or forgiving sins; the one magisterial and authoritative, (this belongs to Christ alone;) the other ministerial and declarative, (this belongs to Christ’s ambassadors, who have a power in his name to bind and loose.) It is a pious not of St. Austin upon this place, that Christ first conferred the Holy Ghost upon his apostles, and then said, Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted. Thereby intimating, that it is not they, but the Holy Ghost by them, that puts away sin: For who can forgive sin but God only? The power of forgiving sin, that man hath, is only to declare, that if men be truly and really penitent, their sins are forgiven them for the sake of Christ’s satisfaction.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Joh 20:21-23. Then said Jesus again, Peace be unto you This is the foundation of the mission of a true gospel minister; peace in his own soul, in consequence of his having received pardoning mercy from God through Christ, 2Co 4:1. As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you Christ was the apostle of the Father, Heb 3:1 : Peter and the rest the apostles of Christ. And when he had said this, he breathed on them In a solemn manner, communicating unto them new life and vigour; and saith unto them As ye receive this breath out of my mouth, so receive ye That is, ye shall receive; the Holy Ghost Out of my fulness, in his various graces and gifts, influencing your minds and hearts in a peculiar manner, and fitting you for your great and important embassy. He refers chiefly to those extraordinary influences of the Spirit which they were to receive at the following pentecost. Whose soever sins ye remit According to the tenor of the gospel; that is, supposing them to repent and believe; they are remitted; and whose soever sins ye retain Supposing them to remain impenitent and unbelieving; they are retained So far is plain: but here arises a difficulty. Are not the sins of one who truly repents and unfeignedly believes in Christ, remitted without the absolution by Christs ministers here spoken of? And are not the sins of one who does not repent and believe, retained even with it? What then does this commission imply? Can it imply any more than, 1st, A power of declaring with authority the Christian terms of pardon, whose sins are remitted and whose retained? as is done in the form of absolution contained in our church service: and, 2d, A power of inflicting and remitting ecclesiastical censures? that is, of excluding from, and readmitting into, a Christian congregation? See note on Mat 16:19. Some, indeed, are of opinion, that something further than this is intended in this commission, as given to the apostles, namely, the gift of discerning the spirits of men in such perfection, as to be able to declare with certainty to particular persons in question whether or not they were in a state of pardon and acceptance with God; and it must be acknowledged that such a gift was doubtless conferred in certain cases on some, if not on many, of the first ministers of Christ, 1Co 12:10.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Vv. 21-23. Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be to you! As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. 22. And, having said this, he breathed on them and says to them, Receive [the] Holy Spirit. 23. Whosesoever sins you remit, they are remitted to them; whosesoever sins you retain, they are retained.
It is no longer only as to believers that Jesus desires to give them peace; it is in view of their future vocation. Peace is the foundation of the apostleship; hence the repetition of the prayer: Peace be to you! This message of reconciliation, which Jesus brings to them, they will have the task of preaching to the world (2Co 5:20). Jesus first confers on them the office (Joh 20:21 b); then He communicates to them the gift, in the measure in which He can do so in His present position (Joh 20:22); finally, He reveals to them the wonderful greatness of this task (Joh 20:23).
There is properly only one mission from heaven to earth: it is that of Jesus. He is the apostle (Heb 3:1). That of the disciples is included in His, and will finally realize it for the world. Hence it comes to pass that Jesus, when speaking of Himself, employs the more official term : it is an embassy; while, in passing to them, He uses the more simple term : it is a sending.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Verse 21
Again; after supping with them. (Luke 24:41.)
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
Jesus repeated His benediction (Joh 20:19). He then commissioned His disciples for their mission from then on. [Note: See John E. Johnson, "The Old Testament Offices as Paradigm for Pastoral Identity," Bibliotheca Sacra 152:606 (April-June 1995):182-200.] He expressed this commission in terms of the relationships that John recorded Jesus teaching extensively in this Gospel. Jesus was sending His disciples on a mission just as His Father had sent Him on a mission (cf. Joh 17:18). The emphasis here is on the sending and the authoritative person doing the sending. Thus Jesus’ disciples became apostles (lit. sent ones) in a new sense. The New Testament writers used the term "apostle" in a technical and in a general sense. In the general sense, it refers to all Christians (cf. Act 14:4; Act 14:14; 2Co 8:23; Php 2:25). In the technical sense, it refers to the original 12 apostles-Matthias took Judas Iscariot’s place (Act 1:26)-plus Paul.
Each Gospel plus Acts records a different version of the Great Commission (Mat 28:19-20; Mar 16:15-16; Luk 24:46-48; Joh 20:21-23; Act 1:8). Jesus apparently gave this commission on at least four separate occasions. The first recorded commission chronologically was evidently the one in Joh 20:21-23. The second was the one recorded in Mar 16:15-16. Mat 28:19-20 appears to be another account of a later event. Likewise Luk 24:46-48 and Act 1:8 seem to be two versions of one incident, the last giving of the commission. The reader of the Gospels can scarcely escape its crucial importance. Each Gospel closes with a commission from the risen Lord. It expresses God’s will for every believer in the present age.
Some Christians believe that Jesus intended this commission only for His original disciples. They point to the fact that the writers of the New Testament epistles never referred to it. However even though they did not refer to it explicitly they clearly presupposed its validity for the whole church. They simply cast it in different terminology (e.g., 2Co 5:20). The universal scope of the commission also argues for its continuation. Third, the repetition of this commission five times suggests that Jesus intended all of His disciples to carry it out. Finally, this was the last charge that Jesus gave His disciples before He returned to His Father (Luk 24:46-48; Act 1:8). This fact also suggests that He intended it for all succeeding generations of disciples.
Clearly on this occasion Jesus was presenting His mission as a model for His disciples’ mission. Many Christians have concluded, therefore, that what characterized Jesus’ ministry must characterize the church’s ministry. They see this mission including healing the sick, casting out demons, and feeding the hungry. They believe that the church’s mission is much broader than just preaching the gospel, baptizing, teaching, and planting churches. I believe this understanding is correct.
However the emphasis on Jesus’ mission in John’s Gospel has been primarily that Jesus always carried out God’s will in perfect obedience (cf. Joh 5:19-30; Joh 8:29). Even before His crucifixion Jesus stressed the importance of the believer’s obedience as the fulfillment of this paradigm (Joh 15:9-10). The purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was the spiritual salvation of the world (Joh 1:29). That is also the believer’s primary, though not our exclusive, purpose (cf. Gal 6:10). As Jesus always operated in dependence on the Father with the Spirit’s enablement, so should His disciples (cf. Joh 1:32; Joh 3:34; Joh 4:34; Joh 5:19; Joh 6:27; Joh 10:36; Joh 17:4). As He was a Son of God, so are His disciples sons of God (cf. Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5; Joh 20:17).
Since believers no longer belong to the world (Joh 15:19), it was necessary for Jesus to send His disciples back into the world. Our mission does not replace Jesus’ mission, however. He carries out His present mission through us. [Note: Westcott, The Gospel . . . Greek Text . . ., 2:349-50.] We must consider all the versions of the Great Commission that Jesus gave to understand our mission correctly, not just this one.
". . . what is central to the Son’s mission-that he came as the Father’s gift so that those who believe in him might not perish but have eternal life (Joh 3:16), experiencing new life as the children of God (Joh 1:12-13) and freedom from the slavery of sin because they have been set free by the Son of God (Joh 8:34-36)-must never be lost to view as the church defines her mission." [Note: Carson, The Gospel . . ., p. 649.]
Jesus and John reminded all disciples of these central issues in the verses that follow (cf. Joh 20:23; Joh 20:30-31).