I do not believe that there is any doubt in our minds that God only has the power to forgive sin. After all, it is His law and He is the governor of His creation and He only can forgive sin. Now, if we start with that premise, which is true, we do not have the power to do that, then what does this mean? Do men actually have the power to forgive sin?
Well, obviously, there is a contradiction if God only has the power and yet here He has given it to men. Mere men, who are encumbered with all kinds of problems, and errors, and mistakes, and sins, and human nature besides, having the power to forgive sin? Would we indeed have the discernment to be able to do that or have the authority to do so? It does not seem so to me.
Let us go back to Leviticus, chapter 13. I offer this to you as an example of what John 20:23 means. And also I might say what Matthew 16:19 means there where Peter was given the keys of the Kingdom and he was given the power to bind and to loose. And now this provides a foundation for understanding.
Now, what do we have here? We have the priest rendering a decision; we have a priest deciding whether a person is clean or unclean. Now a person, you might say, laden with sin is somebody who is unclean. A person who is not sinning, at least as a way of life, is clean. What was to be determined here in Leviticus 13? What we have here are the laws of quarantine. The priest was determining whether or not a person with a certain affliction was going to be able to fellowship with the rest of the Israelitish people in their assemblies. Or were they going to be excluded from assembly and, we might say today, disfellowshipped, put out of the fellowship.
What we see here without using the words (I am going to use the words here), they were binding and loosing, they were bidding and forbidding. They were forgiving or they were not forgiving. Now, what was the basis of their determination? The basis of their determination, that is, the priest's determination, the basis on which the priest decided whether to bid or to forbid, whether to forgive, whether to lose, whether to bind, was what God had already revealed. You see, it was God who gave the evidence. And so what the priest had to do was examine the person in the light of what had already been revealed by God.
Now was the priest adding anything new? No. Was the priest taking away from what had already been given? No. He was merely using as evidence what had already been revealed. He said, well, this evidence lines up with this piece of evidence that I see in the person. And so he made a decision. No, you cannot go into services because you are quarantined. He was forbidden. Yes, you can come into services. I can see that your problem is cleared up. You are welcome back into fellowship.
Here we have a physical example of what was spiritually to take place in the New Testament church. Now, in these cases, we are not dealing with something that is necessarily physical. We are dealing with something that is spiritual. So what are we talking about here? We are talking about people being given God's Holy Spirit and with it a gift of discernment. That is what He is talking about in John 20:23. He is telling the apostles that He would give them to the discernment that they needed to bind or to loose, but they were not making anything that was new. He is telling them that they are being given the discernment, the gifts of God's Spirit necessary to be able to forgive or not forgive. That is, to discern whether or not God has already forgiven or whether God has not forgiven.
Peter was binding and loosing. Peter, in the words of John 20:23, was forgiving or not forgiving. Did Peter have the power to forgive? No, he did not. Did Peter have the power to not forgive? Not literally, in that sense. What God gave him was the discernment to see what Ananias' attitude was.
There they are there binding and loosing. What are they doing? They are discerning from the things … . . .
