We are now moving into the Sundays of Easter with the 2nd Sunday on March 30, 2008. The three readings are Acts 5:29-42, I Peter 1:3-9 and John 20:19-31. The text is John 20:23, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

When first-time visitors to a church hear the pastor say, “I therefore forgive your sins,” a number of questions come to mind. “Where did this pastor get the right to forgive anyone’s sins?” “Only God can forgive sins; certainly not a human being.” “It is possible to forgive someone who has done something against you but how can you forgive someone who has done something against God?”

The problem with these questions is that there is a mix-up between having the power to forgive sins and having the authority to forgive sins. For example, can a human being make a decision that another person should die? While we would agree that there is no intrinsic right or power to make such a decision, a human being who is a judge may have the authority to have a murderer executed.

Those who question whether pastors, or for that matter, anyone, has the power to forgive sins, need to turn their direction to the One Who has the power to forgive sins and that is God alone. But what God has done is to have human beings say the words of forgiveness. And because the words of forgiveness can be used by the Holy Spirit to create faith and forgive sins, any Christian can be said to have the authority to forgive sins.

In fact, you do not even have to be a Christian. For the power of forgiveness does not reside in the faith of the person who is speaking but in the Word which is spoken. Therefore, if an atheist was hired to make a CD of the Bible, his voice would be used by God to bring unbelievers to faith through hearing the words of the atheist!

The reason that anyone can speak the word of forgiveness; that is, the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is because the power of salvation is found in the words spoken or read. In fact, we know of no other way in which God works salvation apart from a hearing/reading of the word of God especially in connect with the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

While the called pastor is the one God has assigned to forgive sins publicaly in a worship service, any person can forgive sins because the power is not in the obedience of the individual but in the promise of God. John, chapter 20, ends with verse 31 that the words of this book are “written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”