Q: When visiting a church on
Sunday, I observed that the congregation began the service with a Confession of
Sins, and at the end of that Confession, the pastor said to the congregation,
“I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.” Can the pastor forgive
sins or only God? Does the pastor also
have the power to refuse to forgive sins?
The Confession described here is the
opening element of services in many liturgical churches. It functions in much the same way that
private confessions do, but in this case, confession is done generally, as a
group, with specific individual sins recounted only silently rather than named
individually to the priest or pastor.
Much like private confession, the
pastor’s declaration of forgiveness is, in Martin Luther’s words, “just as
valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord had dealt with us
Himself.” Even though this may be an
uncomfortable thought for many individualistic do-it-yourself Americans, and
even though all who trust Jesus have their sins forgiven, the idea that God
desires to deliver forgiveness in specific ways, which involve pastors, also is
Biblical.
In Matthew 16, we see Jesus promise
this authority to Peter, saying, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever
you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
In this case, Jesus promises that this authority will be given in the
future, and makes the promise to Peter individually. However, when Jesus fulfills this promise, as
recorded in John 20, saying, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending
you… Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they
are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld,” He
grants this authority not only to Peter, but to all of His disciples, and by
extension to the pastors who would follow them in coming generations.
This is not to say, however, that pastors
may grant or withhold forgiveness according to their own whim or based on their
own standards. Instead, they are called
to grant and to withhold forgiveness solely as a reflection of what God has
already determined by God in heaven, which the Greek words John writes in these
verses make clear. In private
confession, this means that pastors forgive those who acknowledge and repent of
their sins, but withhold from those who refuse to acknowledge their sins or
repent of them. Since pastors are not
capable of judging anyone’s heart, they must base their actions on what is
declared or confessed by the person seeking forgiveness. Likewise in public confession, the absolution
is given under the assumption that those confessing are confessing sincerely.
Additionally, pastors do not forgive
sins as independent agents, nor do they have the power within themselves to
forgive or withhold sins. Instead, they
have been called to a particular office to act on behalf of Jesus and His
Church, and their authority to forgive sins is exercised in the congregation
“in the stead and by the command” of Jesus, as is stated in the absolution
itself. Another way to say it is that
when the pastor is forgiving sins, Jesus is forgiving sins; or that Jesus
forgives sins through the pastor.
So, it would not be possible for a
pastor to improperly keep God’s forgiveness from getting to a person or to
effectually grant forgiveness when the person was unrepentant. If it would happen that a pastor were to attempt
to act in violation of Jesus command or apart from the proper authority to do
so, the warnings and promises of Scripture would still prevail respectively for
the benefit of the repentant and the condemnation of the unrepentant, in spite
of a mistaken or improper act of the pastor.
Well stated.
ReplyDelete