FORGIVENESS OF SINS: Talbot W.Chambers

John 20:23. “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

THE Roman Catholic Church (and ritualism in general) sets great store by the priestly interpretation of this verse. Jesus, according to such views, was more interested in establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy on earth than he was in setting up his true kingdom. The whole miserable system of meritorious penance and priestly indulgence and the monstrous private confessional have largely arisen out of this distorted view of his words. 

Evangelical Christianity receives the Sar's words as declarative. He has authorized his Church to declare the forgiveness of sins upon the simple condition of faith and repentance; and to announce the solemn biblical truth that sins unrepented are sins unforgiven. Roman and Evangelical Christianity are both agreed in this, that the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins through a divine Redeemer is central in the faith. But no man but Christ has the power to forgive sins.

No matter how far advanced I may be in my Christian life, there is no going beyond the simplest and most personal article of the Creed, "I believe ... in the forgiveness of sins." It was for this that Jesus suffered and died. He died for me and in Him alone I have that forgiveness.