To Forgive or Preach? What Jesus Meant by “Forgive Sins” in John 20:23

In John 20:23, Jesus tells the apostles:

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

For Catholics, that’s proof Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Confession.

But our Protestant friends aren’t convinced.

Some think Jesus simply meant for the apostles to preach the forgiveness of sins, and God is the one who will forgive or retain based on how the hearer of the message responds.

Is that a legitimate reading of the text?

Stick around and find out.

Does John 20:23 Simply Mean “Preach the Gospel”?

All right. I’d like to start with a few Protestant apologists who make this argument.

Take Robert Zins, for example.

In his book Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he writes on page 100:

“It is apparent that the commission to evangelize is tightly woven into the commission to proclaim forgiveness of sin through faith in Jesus Christ.”

Protestant apologist Ron Rhodes maps out the parallel between sins being forgiven or retained and a person accepting or rejecting the Gospel in his book Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics.

He writes:

“Only God can judicially forgive sins committed against him (Mark 2:7). All John 20:23 is saying is that when people respond positively to the gospel and accept it, we have the right to declare to them, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ based on the promise of Jesus.

“Likewise, when people respond negatively to the gospel and reject it, we have the right to declare to them, ‘Your sins are not forgiven,’ based on the promise of Jesus.

“We are simply declaring or announcing heaven’s verdict regarding what will happen if people respond one way or the other in regard to Christ.”

There are several reasons why this alternative explanation is problematic.

1. Preaching Isn’t in the Immediate Context

First, nowhere in the immediate context of John 20 does Jesus talk about the apostles going out to preach the Gospel.

It’s just not there.

2. “Forgive” Does Not Naturally Mean “Preach”

Second, the wording itself doesn’t suggest an instruction to preach.

The actions that Jesus’ ministers are to perform are forgiving and retaining:

“If you forgive . . . if you retain.”

Telling someone to forgive is not the same thing as telling someone to preach.

For example, when I tell my thirteen-year-old daughter to forgive her sixteen-year-old brother for making some ugly remark, I don’t mean:

“Tell him that what he did was wrong and that he needs to repent in order for God to forgive him.”

Would I be happy if she did something like that?

Sure, of course.

But that’s not what it means to forgive.

To suggest that forgiving sins and retaining sins means the same thing as preaching the Gospel is to force the text to be taken in an unnatural sense.

And since there’s no evidence in the context to suggest otherwise, we’re justified in taking the language in its natural sense.

3. Jesus Says the Apostles Forgive and Retain

Third, if Jesus meant what the objection suggests—tell people their sins will be forgiven or retained by God depending on whether they accept or reject the Gospel—then why does Jesus say the disciples are the ones who will be forgiving and retaining?

“If you forgive . . . if you retain.”

Of course, God is ultimately the one who forgives and retains sins.

But the apostles are the ones Jesus highlights as performing the action.

So they must be an agent of forgiving in some way.

4. Jesus Is Giving the Apostles Something New

Fourth, the command to forgive and retain is something new, unlike the instruction to preach the Gospel—and, in particular, to preach the forgiveness of sins.

Consider that Jesus sent out the apostles to preach repentance years before, when he first called them.

Mark 6:7,12 records:

“And [Jesus] called to him the Twelve, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. . . . So they went out and preached that men should repent.”

According to Rhodes’s and Zins’s interpretation, the apostles would have already been “forgiving and retaining” sins—people having their sins forgiven or retained depending on their response to the call to repentance—long before Jesus ever commissioned the apostles to forgive and retain sins in John 20:23.

But that’s unlikely because what Jesus commissions the apostles to do in John 20:22–23 is presented as something new.

At no other time are we told that Jesus “breathed” on the apostles.

We’re also never told that Jesus communicated the Holy Spirit to the apostles before this moment.

Nor had Jesus ever used the words:

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus had already given the apostles the role of preaching the forgiveness of sins.

Here, Jesus is giving the apostles a role they had not previously had:

Forgiving and retaining sins.

5. Jesus Sends the Apostles to Continue His Own Mission

Finally, this objection fails to take into account the connection Jesus makes between the mission his Father sent him on and the mission he’s sending the apostles on.

The Father didn’t send Jesus merely to preach the forgiveness of sins.

He sent Jesus to actually forgive them.

For example, Jesus didn’t tell the paralytic in Mark 2:5 about the forgiveness of sins.

He told him:

“Your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus makes it clear that he is sending his ministers on the same mission as the Father sent him on.

As he says in John 20:21:

“As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”

And lest there be any ambiguity as to what that mission is, he tells them specifically that the mission involves forgiving and retaining sins.

Since Jesus’ mission involved not merely preaching the forgiveness of sins, but the actual forgiving of sins, and since Jesus is unequivocal about his apostles doing the same thing that his Father sent him to do, we can conclude that Jesus doesn’t intend for the apostles merely to preach the forgiveness of sins.

They actually forgive them.

This also makes sense of the command to forgive or retain.

Like Jesus, the apostles are to judge whether to forgive or not to forgive.

And since God doesn’t ordinarily give his ministers the gift to read souls, this further implies that the penitent would need to confess his sins and express contrition.

Does Luke 24:47 Explain John 20:23?

Now, the objection so far has been taken in its general form, where it simply asserts that “to forgive and retain” means to preach the forgiveness of sins.

But some Protestants give reasons for this claim.

One is that Luke clarifies what Jesus means by “forgive and retain” in his parallel account in Luke 24:47.

Todd Baker, president of B’rit Hadasha Ministries and pastor of Shalom, Shalom Messianic Congregation in Dallas, argues in his book Exodus from Rome, Volume I that:

“The commission Jesus gave in John 20:23 is the same event recounted in Luke 24:46–48.”

Verse 47 is the key verse.

There we read:

“Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written . . . that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations.’”

Since Baker thinks John and Luke describe the same event, he concludes that the instruction to forgive and retain sins in John 20:23 has the same meaning as the instruction in Luke 24:47.

The disciples are to, in Baker’s words:

“Go into the world and proclaim that the forgiveness of sins is offered in the name of Jesus Christ . . . whereby the forgiveness of God is offered through faith in Jesus Christ to those who repent and believe, but is withheld to those who do not believe.”

Now, it’s true that Jesus’ instruction in Luke’s Gospel refers to the preaching of the forgiveness of sins.

But the objection assumes that the sequence of events in which this instruction is included—Luke 24:44–52—happened on Easter Sunday and therefore is the same event as the instruction in John 20:23.

A careful reading, however, indicates otherwise.

Luke’s Chronology After the Resurrection

Several times in the verses preceding the sequence of events in question, Luke uses time cues to indicate that what he’s recording took place on Easter Sunday.

For example, in Luke 24:1 he writes:

“On the first day of the week, at early dawn.”

In verse 13 he says:

“That very day.”

Then, in verse 33:

“That same hour.”

But when Luke records the sequence of events that includes the instruction to preach the forgiveness of sins, there are indications that Luke doesn’t tie it to Easter Sunday.

One could argue that earlier, in verses 41–42, Luke had already dropped chronological narration of the events that took place on Easter Sunday.

Notice how he speaks about Jesus requesting something to eat from the disciples and them giving him “broiled fish.”

It’s possible that Luke here is giving his version of the same tradition found in John 21:9–13, which John tells us occurred after Easter Sunday, sometime later when the disciples had returned to Galilee.

Moreover, the event described in Luke 24:39–40, where Jesus invites the apostles to handle him and convinces them that he is not a ghost, may be Luke’s presentation of the same tradition found in John 20:27, where Jesus allows himself to be handled and calls attention to his wounded hands and feet.

Again, if this is the same tradition, John informs us that this occurred after Easter Sunday—exactly one week later.

Or it may be that, for both events just mentioned, John provides us with their chronological placement whereas Luke mixes them topically with other post-Resurrection material as evidence that Jesus has been physically raised.

Topical arrangement is not uncommon for the biblical authors.

What If Luke 24:36–43 Is Easter Sunday?

Now, someone may counter and say Luke clearly connects Easter Sunday with Jesus’ appearance to the disciples and his invitation for them to handle him in verses 36–43.

Luke says Jesus appears while the disciples on the road to Emmaus are telling the other disciples what happened, which for Luke occurred on Easter Sunday.

You can check that out in Luke 24:1, 13, and 33.

Even if we grant for argument’s sake that what Luke records in verses 36–43 occurred on Easter Sunday, Luke does seem to move on from this event and summarize a series of events that took place during the forty days Jesus spent with his disciples prior to his Ascension.

Notice that in Luke 24:47, Luke connects Jesus’ instruction to preach the forgiveness of sins with Jesus’ instruction to preach his name:

“To all nations.”

And they were to begin in Jerusalem.

Luke also includes the Father’s promise to:

“Send power from on high.”

According to Acts 1:1–10, these are all items Luke includes in his list of things Jesus taught his disciples during the forty days before his Ascension.

Therefore, these instructions—including the instruction to preach the forgiveness of sins—were not given in the Upper Room on the night of Jesus’ Resurrection.

One could even read these instructions as being given on the day of the Ascension, since they concern preaching to the nations, which Matthew records in Matthew 28:19–20.

Moreover, Luke places these instructions immediately before he records the Ascension.

Regardless, Luke’s record of Jesus’ instruction for the apostles to preach the forgiveness of sins did not take place on Easter Sunday.

Thus, a Protestant can’t appeal to this instruction as the interpretive context for John 20:23.

Conclusion

John 20:23 does not naturally read as a mere command to preach that God forgives those who believe the Gospel.

The immediate context doesn’t mention preaching.

The verbs Jesus uses are “forgive” and “retain.”

The apostles themselves are identified as performing these actions.

The commission is presented as something new, accompanied by Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit upon them.

And Jesus explicitly connects their mission to his own mission from the Father—a mission that included actually forgiving sins.

Nor does Luke 24:47 overturn this reading, since Luke’s command to preach forgiveness to all nations belongs to a broader sequence of post-Resurrection instructions that need not—and apparently did not—occur during the Easter Sunday appearance recorded in John 20.

If you’d like to get my responses here in written form, be sure to check out my book Meeting the Protestant Response: How to Answer Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments.

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