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| Forgiveness of Sins (John 20:19-23) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! Grace, mercy and peace to you… There’s a story about Emperor Constantine, the Roman emperor, who established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Yes, the same Roman Empire that had about 300 years earlier crucified Jesus under Pontius Pilate… The same Roman empire that destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. The same Roman empire that persecuted Christians, thereafter, even putting them to death for holding fast to their faith. But Emperor Constantine … claimed Christianity personally, and as emperor, declared the entire Roman Empire in his time “Christian.” Now the interesting thing about Constantine’s Christianity … was that it is said that he delayed his own baptism until the day of his death. Why’d he do that? Well, Baptism is seen as a time when God’s Grace comes onto a person’s life. And as such, then, their sins are forgiven. Unfortunately, in Constantine’s time, there was some confusion about what happens when we sin after Baptism. So to solve the problem in his own mind, Constantine tired to arrange His own baptism so that there was little chance he could sin afterwards. But God never intended that we should have to manipulate His Means of Grace to be assured of the forgiveness of our sins … nor of our salvation. And yet, it is part of our human experience to have doubts come into our minds. Doubts like “doubting Thomas’.” Doubts about our forgiveness, even our salvation … God knows that we do have them. And that’s why dealing with those doubts is so important to God. It’s interesting that before we hear about Doubting Thomas in our Gospel reading … we see Jesus imparting His Holy Spirit to His disciples … and then, immediately giving them instructions about how to assure people of the forgiveness of their sins. You see, the problem is this: the world didn’t change when Jesus died on the Cross. Nor did it change when He rose again from the tomb. People are still the same. People were then, and are still today, Sinners. Sinners who can be plagued by a guilty conscience. But … something DID happen when Jesus died on the Cross that people could not see. Their sins, every last one of them, had been put on Jesus … and Jesus had experienced God’s punishment for all of them. Now, God’s people no longer had to witness the death of a pigeon, or a lamb or a bull for the forgiveness of their sins before God. And that’s good, right? Well, enter the antinomians. Now antinomians… for you Star Wars experts, are not the things you find in the blood streams of Jedi Knights…. The Antinomians were a so-called Christian group that said: “Well, since Jesus died for our sins … fulfilled the law for us … then the law for us is null and void. It no longer applies. So, since God no longer charges our sins against us, we can do whatever we want.” And of course, out of that kind of thinking comes all the things that St. Paul decries like, drunkenness, orgies, party spirit … you name it. Or simply what the name antinomian means … against the law … or lawlessness. But that’s not the picture we have in our reading from the book of Acts for today of how real Christians behaved. They didn’t see the law as something that kept them from having a good time … they saw the law as a guide to living in harmony with God and with one another. And that’s how we today, right here, view the Law, God’s Moral Law, as well. It is a guide for God glorifying living … and also a mirror that shows us our sin and our daily need for God’s forgiveness. Today, God’s Law does keep us from following in the footsteps of the antinomians … of going off the deep end entirely by taking God’s grace for granted and running the name of God into the ground. It seems simple. Christ died for the sins of the world. And the fact that His Holy Spirit has worked faith in your heart makes that reality yours, personally. Your sins have been forgiven. The question that we get a bit hung up about, though, is when are they forgiven? That was the question that Constantine was having trouble with … he thought His sins were wiped out only at the time he was baptized. Let’s be honest with ourselves. We do sin. Some sins we aren’t even aware of. And yet there are times in our lives when we goof up royally, and other people may even be hurt has the result. And low and behold, our conscience comes alive all of a sudden it condemns us as guilty. We’ve done wrong, we know it, and we feel guilt. And not are just those we’ve hurt making us feel that way, perhaps, but we also feel that we’ve offended God, we’ve sinned, and we feel guilty about that as well. Now, as we know that Jesus died for our sins on the cross, you might think we would be able to put that guilt away. But that doesn’t always work. Theoretically, it should. But it doesn’t. Why? Two reasons. Number 1 … the devil is always looking for a way to drive a wedge between us and God … anything he can use to try to destroy our relationship … that father/child relationship. Think about it: how did you feel as a child when you’d messed up and were frightened by the very thought of Dad coming home? That’s the picture the devil wants to paint for us. And in that way he does his best to heap on guilt. And then, second reason for our guilt is: Knowing my sins were buried at the foot of the cross once-and-for-all is an intellectual thing. It’s a head thing. The problem is … guilt is a heart thing. It’s an emotion. Ever try to talk or reason yourself out of an emotion … a strong emotion? Then you understand the problem. And those two reasons … the devil’s guilt … and the fact that guilt is an emotion … are why Jesus breathed on His disciples and told them how to deal with sins. To those of faith, they are to say … “Your sins have been forgiven.” To those without faith, they are to tell them their sins still remain. In Luther’s small catechism we once memorized that passage: “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us according to His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.” (P29) You see what Jesus was doing? Instead of people having to rely on head knowledge … theological doctrine … about the forgiveness of sins … He has given those He has called into Word and Sacrament Ministry … through His Church … the job to personally tell you your sins have been forgiven on His behalf … and to give you the sacrament of His body and blood to assure you of the certainty of your forgiveness. That’s so you can see the devil’s guilt for what it really is … false guilt … and for Jesus to speak not only to your intellect, but also directly to your heart … to rid you, by His spirit’s power, of those guilty feelings. You see, as you are a Christian, you live in what’s called a state of Grace. Your sins are forgiven just like an eraser attached a piece of chalk skating across a blackboard. The sin, the mark, is never seen in God’s eyes. However, human that we are, one of the consequences of sin is its guilt. We may be actually pure in God’s eyes … but not in our own. The solution to that problem is to confess our sin … and then hear God’s own absolution. Do you go from sinner to saint in that exercise? … No. Your sin was forgiven in God’s eyes even before you confessed it. But your heart didn’t know that. And so God knows that His word of absolution has the power to assuage that guilt from your heart, to put it away, forever… So, that you would know for certain, in your head, and in your heart, that your sin is forgiven. And guess what? As God forgives us in this way … so are we, then, empowered by His Spirit, to forgive one another. Just as we did before God: we confess and He absolves … So, when we offend others … we too confess. And when others confess to us… and we too absolve and forgive … with no strings attached … just as we have been forgiven. That is truly having all things in common in the most biblical sense … that harmony described in our reading from the Book of Acts for this day. There is no higher good that to share that which Jesus came to offer us on the cross … the forgiveness of sins. That’s also why, in His church, in remembrance of Him, we regularly gather at His table. Jesus gives us Himself physically to dispel our doubts, like He did for “doubting Thomas.” He gives us His own body and blood for the assurance of our forgiveness … so that we might share together His forgiveness …and that we might share together our own forgiveness. That there might be peace and harmony and unity with our God … and with one another. And to that … all God’s people say … (Amen.) |