"If You Forgive"

“He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’” John 20:22,23

I can only try to imagine what it must have been like to be one of Jesus’ disciples after the resurrection. I really have nothing to compare it to; I have no one who has died and come back to life. I have not even been fooled; thought someone was dead, then found out later that they were alive. April 1 is only three months away, though. That would be the greatest prank ever.

“Mark, we have discovered your wife has a major tumor of the “hittemup” gland. We are going to have to use invasive measures, keep her isolated for at least a week, and try the new treatment: “wereafoolinU”. If it works, she’ll be good as new.” Then they cart her off to an unnamed motel while I wait out the isolation period.

A few days into the week her “doctor” approaches me: “We did all we could.” We all know what that means. After a person does all they can, there is nothing more to do. Bye bye to earth-land. The next day being April 1, somehow my wife would sneak into our bed the next morning, or some other such “revealing” would happen. I, of course, pushing 60, probably would die of a heart-attack the moment she was presented to me “alive”.

I must say, it probably took those men and women quite some time to get used to “crucified” Jesus walking around, eating food, entering locked doors, and talking with them like He did before. Well, almost like He did before. Now, it was crunch time. This was the crash course. No time for daydreaming out the classroom window, each moment counted. He had made it clear He would leave them, prepare a place, and then return a second time. But now, dead Jesus wasn’t dead Jesus at all. Dead Jesus was alive, still bearing the torturous scars of the cross.

In one of those important resurrection gatherings Jesus groups the disciples around Him, exhales across each of their faces, and declares, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Good Jews that they were, they probably had some preconceptions about what this might mean. Moses was given the Holy Spirit and he guided Israel into their promised land. The Holy Spirit came on Samson and he beat up the Philistine bad guys all by himself. Isaiah prophesied, Elijah worked miracles, David wrote incredible poetry. Something was bound to happen when they also received the Holy Spirit.

After exhaling all His air, Jesus inhaled and spoke, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” I am not entirely sure this is what the disciples expected. And, being a Pentecostal myself, I would have imagined a fairly noisy scene with tongues-speaking and a bit of holy-roller hip-hopping about the room. But, instead, Jesus talks in one more riddle.

Scholars have pulled this sentence of Jesus apart over the last 2000 years. I am not going to add my juvenile bit of guesswork. But I am certain it took the disciples by surprise. Jesus bestows the Holy Spirit on all in the room and He expects one thing of them: Make sure to get the message of forgiveness out there!

Whatever else Jesus meant, He wanted those disciples to understand the keynote message of God’s kingdom. He wanted them tell people, without a doubt, “Yes, your sins are forgiven.” And, since we must deal with the text as it is, they also must be able to express when people for certain have not been forgiven. The surprise, I think, is that forgiveness is the keynote at all.

If I were in the room, my mind would be grinding its gears, trying to grasp what had just happened. I knew forgiveness was involved in Jesus’ teaching. I had seen Him forgive the paralytic and get charged with blasphemy by the Pharisees. He had taught us that Father God would forgive us in the same way we forgave others. And, who could forget Him crying from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

But, here, in this resurrection meeting, Jesus is clarifying His kingdom’s mission. And I think His kingdom needs the same clarity today. How many new converts do we counsel to be in church, read their Bibles, pray and witness? Those are important tools in the maturation process. But, what if we made sure forgiveness was understood. What if that was what new believers constantly heard, learned and experienced?

It is certain that our life is transformed upon following Jesus. Old habits, thoughts and activities die off as we come alive in Christ. Sometimes, though, we stress the outer evidence of that new life instead of emphasizing the nourishment. It would be like measuring our five-year-old and pumping him full of enthusiasm to “be all you can be”, meaning, of course, that we want him at least six-foot tall by the next measurement. All the effort possible would not add an inch. But, if we emphasized the nutrition necessary for a 5-year-old’s growth, who knows, he might make five feet, eight inches. (Sadly, the tallest of any of my side of the family…namely, me!)

Don’t be afraid to tell yourself, with great authority: “Your sins have been forgiven!” Trust in Jesus has enabled every follower to drop the dead weight of shame aside and live joyously and free. Forgiven and filled with the Holy Spirit to pass on the grand announcement to others: “You are forgiven.”