21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Introduction
Part of the act of baptism in the church of India is for the candidate to place his hand on his head and say, “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.” We might ought to initiate that practice in our churches, because many of us have forgotten that witnessing is our commission also.
We Christians do not understand our function in the world unless we realize that we are ambassadors for Christ. His interests and works are in our hands. Unless we proclaim his finished work to the world, we cannot carry on his work.
No passage presents this in a clearer way than John 20:21-23. This occurs on Resurrection Day. The disciples are huddled for fear in the Upper Room. Behind locked doors they listen intently for a creak in the steps that lead to their hideaway. They worry that a knock on the door may be an emissary from the Sanhedrin to do with them what the Sanhedrin had done with Jesus.
Jesus suddenly appears in their midst. He says, “Peace be unto you.” This is the ordinary Jewish greeting. It is about the same as our “God bless you.” Then Jesus speaks the words in verses 21-23. With them he brings the disciples back to the fact that responsibility is resting on them. They are to be his messengers in the world. He had already given them the Great Commission, but as you can imagine, the events of the past days were enough to make them forget. Two obstacles stood in their way: fear and elation. Fear of what might happen to them, and then sheer elation over the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus brings their mission back into sharp focus with the words of verse 21. He is saying, “Nothing has changed. You have the same mission. Get on with it.”
Here is the great truth for us: every Christian is to be an evangelist, a missionary, and a witness. In this text Jesus gives us the pattern, power, and promise for our work.
1. Jesus is the pattern for evangelism.
The two prepositions “as” and “so” in verse 21 give us insight into our mission. John lays heavy emphasis on the fact that Jesus was sent. There are only four chapters in John’s gospel in which he is not recorded as claiming to have been sent. Jesus was a man under orders. He was a man on a mission. As he was sent, so we are sent.
Look at Jesus as he goes about his work with great dispatch. He goes to all men. He seizes every opportunity. He will not be diverted into a miracle worker or allow the people to make him a king just because he can feed the multitudes. He is come for another purpose and this is not it.
We are sent for the same purpose, to the same end (we may have to die), and by the same authority. Jesus was sent to represent the Father; so are we. He was sent to be the light of the world; so are we. He was sent to seek and save that which was lost; so are we. He was sent to do the will of God and not his own will; so are we. The only kind of church that can crack this world is one where every member realizes that as Jesus was sent, so we are sent.
2. The Holy Spirit is the power of evangelism.
With this, Jesus breathed upon his disciples. This was a symbolic act, for breath represents life, power, and energy. With it, Jesus was saying, “I give you the life, breath, strength, and energy to be my witnesses.” The word breathe used here is the same word found in Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37:9. In both of these instances the breath of God was the difference between a lifeless corpse and a vibrant living person. And he was prophesying of what would happen on the day of Pentecost. Now he breathed upon them because breath is synonymous with life. Without breath we have no light. Without breath we have no strength. Without life, without breath, we have no power. It is only as we breathe that we have life and strength and power. This word that is used in John 20:22 is the exactly the same word that is used in the book of Genesis 2:7, when it says, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
God created Adam but Adam was a lifeless mass. He had no strength. He had no life. He had no vitality. And God breathed into him the breath of life and Adam began to move and to live.
It’s the same word that is used in the book of Ezekiel 37. Israel was in captivity in the days of Ezekiel. The nation had been destroyed. The people had been transported to a distant land as captives. And God wanted to say to Ezekiel and to the nation of Israel, “One of these days I will restore the nation and new life shall come to you. Out of this deadness of captivity new life shall come.” And so God transported his prophet Ezekiel out to an abandoned battlefield. It was covered with the bleached bones of soldiers who had been killed in battle. And they had been left out in the open plains for the vultures and for the sun and for the varmints. Nothing but bones out there. And God said to his prophet Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live again?” And Ezekiel said, “Lord, I don’t know. You are the only one who knows that.” And God told his prophet, “You begin to prophesy to these bones.” And Ezekiel began to preach to the bones and the bones began to come together to form complete skeletons and God said, “Keep on preaching. Preach some more.” And muscle and sinew came to the skeletons. Then God caused the wind to blow his breath upon those dead bodies and they came to life again. A gigantic army, living, vibrating, moving, marching.
The Holy Spirit is the life and the breath of evangelism. Without the Holy Spirit there is no life, there is no power, and there is no strength in evangelism. God never sent us out to witness on our own. He never sent us out to win the world by ourselves. He gave us the equipment to do so and that equipment was and is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost it was with the sound of rushing mighty wind that invisible and irresistible. That’s the way it came on the day of Pentecost.
As Adam could not live and function without the breath of God, as that ancient army could not live and march without the breath of God, so we cannot do the work he called us to do without the breath of the Holy Spirit upon us. The Holy Spirit is the communicating factor of evangelism. It is more important in communicating the Gospel than this PA system is in communicating my message to you.
The Holy Spirit is the PA system to the souls of men. And through the working of the Holy Spirit men are awakened to new life and to conviction of sin and the need of the Savior and they come to him and they are saved. And Jesus knew that we needed the Holy Spirit. And that’s why he breathed upon them. And take the Holy Spirit if you are afraid to witness. If you don’t know what to do receive the Holy Spirit and use the power that God has given to you.
He says to us that our relationship to the Holy Spirit is not a passive one. Jesus said, “Receive ye the Spirit.” That means literally take him. He was offering us a gift. If we won’t receive it, if we won’t take it, then we never enjoy it. You can offer a person a gift but if their hands won’t reach out to receive it, then you offer to no avail. Jesus said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Take the Holy Spirit into your life. Let the Holy Spirit control you and then you can be my witnesses.”
Dwight L. Moody, the gifted evangelist, once went to London and the entire city responded to his preaching. Thousands were converted to Christ because of his ministry. A reporter from the London Daily Times went to the services one night to observe Mr. Moody and to see the secret of his success. When he heard Mr. Moody, he was shocked at his poor use of language and his appearance. In the morning edition of the newspaper he wrote: “Mr. Moody is overweight. He is very rough in his appearance. He has a nasal tone and speaks in a very high voice. I see nothing in Mr. Moody to account for his success.” When the evangelist read the story in the paper, he remarked to a friend, “That’s the secret of my success.”
We are not to be passive in our relationship to the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to those disciples, ‘‘Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” The word receive literally means “take.” We cannot give a gift if the intended recipients will not receive it. We may extend it in our hands but if they do not reach out to take it, our efforts are useless. If you are timid and afraid to witness, take ye the Holy Spirit. If you do not know what to say, take ye the Holy Spirit. He is the power of evangelism. He makes it effective. He is the God-given equipment for evangelism.
3. Forgiveness is the promise of evangelism.
Henry David Thoreau once sat at Walden Pond watching a lineman string wires down the railroad. “What are you doing?” he inquired. The lineman replied, “We are building a telegraph system so the people of Maine can talk to the people of Texas.” Thoreau commented, “What if the people of Maine have nothing to say to the people in Texas or Texas people have nothing to say to them?”
What’s the use of all of this sending and empowering if we have nothing to say? What is the message of evangelism? What do we have to say to the lost world?
The word remit in this passage means “to send away.” It is often times translated as “forgive.” It is the same word that is used in Matthew 6:12 when Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It is the same word that is found in Matthew 9:2 when Jesus said to the paralyzed man brought by his four friends, “My son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” It is the same word that is used in Matthew 18:21 when Peter asked how often he should forgive another person of wrongs.
The word retain means to “lay fast hold of.” We know that only God can forgive sins (Luke 5:21). What then does this mean? Here the Lord commits to his disciples the right and the authority to declare in his name that there is forgiveness for man’s sin. Although it is not in the power of man to forgive sins, man can declare, proclaim, and announce forgiveness on the basis of what God has done in Christ.
If men will repent of their sins, believe in Jesus Christ, and commit their lives to him, they can be forgiven. Forgiveness, then, is at the heart of all that we believe and preach.
Didn’t the angel say, “You shall call his name Jesus and he shall save his people from his sins”? Didn’t John the Baptist say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”? Didn’t Jesus say, “I have come not to call the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance”? Didn’t Paul declare, “Jesus was manifest to take away our sins”?
We have the right to lift our voices in triumphant confidence and to assure people who repent and receive Christ that their sins have been forgiven. This is what our world needs to hear today. The world does not need a better philosophy. It needs a Savior. It does not need a new morality; it needs new life. It does not need reformation; it needs regeneration. Through Jesus Christ that can take place.
In his book This Way, Please, Roy McClain tells the story of an old Chinese man who was healed in one of the hospitals of the China Inland Mission started by the missionary Hudson Taylor. The old man had been blind for 50 years. For more than five decades he had not seen anything. Medical examinations at the missionary clinic revealed that he had acute cataracts on both of his eyes. After surgery, with the aid of corrective lenses, 75% of his sight was restored in both eyes. For the first time in five decades he could see. He not only regained his physical sight, but he also gained his spiritual sight. He was born again. And there wasn’t a happier man in the compound.
Then one day the old man just vanished. Without telling anyone, he was suddenly gone. No one could understand why because he had been so happy and grateful. The days, weeks, and months drifted by and the old man did not return. Then one day the old man came back. Those who saw his return tell it this way: “He had a large rope, about two inches in diameter and about 150 feet in length, hanging over his shoulder. Holding on to the rope and stumbling behind him were nearly 50 blind old men. He had gone back to his own province in inland China and he had spoken to every old blind man who would listen to him. He had told them the story of what had happened to his eyes, and better yet, what had happened in his heart. One by one, he had put their hand on his rope so he could become their eyes as he led them to the place where he had found sight.”
That’s about as fine a definition of what it means to be a Christian as I know. It is our job to find those who are spiritually blind and bring them to the place where we found sight.