# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 01 25_S84
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

law; only God, who gave the law, can forgive sins by his own authority: to this extent the scribes rightly said, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). Precisely by the fact that Christ forgives sin, he proves his eternal deity and the power over all things granted to him also according to his human nature (Matt. 11:27; 28:18). In this plenitude of power, which he possesses as the God-man, he says to the man sick of the palsy, whose heart, with the little spark of faith in it, was known to him: "Son, your sins are forgiven you." And when certain scribes, who regarded Christ as a mere man, found blasphemy in this, he confirmed the right belonging to him of forgiving sins by a work of wonder: "That you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, he said to the man sick of the palsy: I say unto you, arise, take up your bed, and go home" (Mark 2:10-11). As with the man sick of the palsy, so also the Lord granted forgiveness of sins to the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee. She was truly penitent; her contrition showed itself in her tears, and her faith in that she wet the feet of the Lord Jesus with these tears of repentance. She had found grace in the eyes of the Lord even before she received absolution; "her sins, which are many, are forgiven," the Lord had already said beforehand (Luke 7:47). But so that she might be made properly certain of the forgiveness of her sins, he granted it to her also in a manner perceptible from without, in that he says to her: "your sins are forgiven you." And when those who sat at table with him said among themselves, "Who is this, that he also forgives sins?" he here too confirms the right belonging to him by repeating to the woman his assurance of grace in the words: "Your faith has saved you, go in peace" (Luke 7:36ff). Likewise forgiveness of sins was granted to Zacchaeus by the Lord. The words: "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold," are Zacchaeus's confession, in which his repentance, his faith, and his obedience express themselves. And the Lord's words: "today salvation has come to this house," are his absolution, through which it became certain to him that he too, in particular, belonged among the lost, whom the Son of Man came to seek and to save (Luke 19:2ff). Surely the Lord exercised the power to declare penitent sinners quit and free of their sins much more often still; indeed the world could not contain the books that would have had to be written, if all of this had been told (John 21:25). It belonged to the visible administration of his prophetic office to actually grant and apply, to penitent souls, the forgiveness of sins earned through his high-priestly work, just as he also retained the sins of the impenitent and unbelieving. "I have told you," he calls out to the unbelieving Jewish crowd, "that you shall die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am he, you shall die in your sins" (John 8:24). But above all he was sent to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are bruised (Luke 4:18). The word of the prophet was fulfilled through him: "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking flax he will not quench" (Matt. 12:20). For these appropriating proclamations of the gospel he was, even according to his humanity, anointed with the Spirit of the Lord, and a learned tongue was given him, that he should know how to speak a word in season to the weary.

After the work of redemption was accomplished, the Lord entered into his glory. He was taken up before their eyes, and a cloud received him out of the sight of his own (Acts 1:9). From that time on he no longer wished to exercise his power to forgive sin in a visible manner, although by virtue of his promise he remains invisibly present in his church until the end of the world. But he did not take away with him from the earth the evangelical comfort of grace found in absolution, or in the outward application of the forgiveness of sins; he did not withhold from us the gift he received for the children of men, even for the rebellious (Ps. 68:19), but rather he founded an office of reconciliation and entrusted to it the stewardship of his means of grace. After he ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things, he is, although we do not see him, still working and present in his church in an invisible manner; he gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ (Eph. 4:12; 1 Cor. 12:28). The same love which moved him himself to grant forgiveness of sins to penitent sinners moved him to transfer to his disciples, and through them to the whole New Testament ministry, the power granted to him by his Father. The Risen One said to his disciples: "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit; whosesoever sins you remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins you retain, they are retained" (John 20:21-23). These words of Christ are, as Augustine says, more certain than the edicts and diplomas of all kings. As Christ, then, is the ambassador of the Father, so the disciples are the ambassadors of Christ; the gifts which he received from the Father for the purpose of his mission, for our salvation, pass over from him to his disciples. For the carrying out of their mission he imparts to them, by means of the breath of his mouth, out of his infinite fullness of God, the Holy Spirit, with which he himself, according to his humanity, was anointed without measure by his Father. The power to forgive or to retain sin, which was given over to him by his Father in virtue of his work of redemption, and which he as the Son of God originally possesses, he, as Lord of the church, transfers to his disciples as servants. Because, after the withdrawal of his visible presence, he no longer visibly wields this power himself, and yet, for the comfort of souls hungry for grace but timid, as well as for the terror of the secure and persistently impenitent, such an exercise of it is to continue, he therefore hands it over to his disciples, and the forgiving and retaining of sins through them shall be valid, because the Lord himself, though invisible, works with them and through them (Mark 16:20).

The authority to forgive sins is not one and the same as the authority to preach the gospel, which is given to them soon after their calling (Matt. 16:7). For it is one thing to teach through whom and how one may obtain forgiveness of sins; it is another thing actually to impart this forgiveness. The preaching of the gospel goes out to all people without distinction; but the forgiveness of sins is granted only to the penitent, and, after Christ has seated himself at the right hand of the Father, is to come to them through his disciples with the same power with which he himself granted it during his walk on earth. For as his Father sent him, so he sends them; they are his authorized representatives, who act in his power and, through the Holy Spirit imparted to them, are enabled to act in his mind — the instruments through whom he himself, the Savior ever present in his church, wills to continue exercising the right of forgiving sins that belongs to him. When they forgive or retain sins, it shall be as powerful, as effective, as if Christ himself spoke it; for they do it in Christ's name, in Christ's stead. If by the remitting of sins only the preaching of the gospel were to be understood, and by the retaining only the announcement of divine punishment, then the words of Christ would have the empty, meaningless sense: To whomever you preach the gospel, to them it is preached; to whomever you announce God's wrath, to them it is announced.

(To be continued.)

Repentance and Amendment.

A journeyman craftsman in Magdeburg led a very dissolute life; he gave himself over to drunkenness, walked the ways of lust, and caroused many a night in the taverns. When he had once again drunk immoderately and caroused the whole night through, and, as day was breaking, was returning from the works of darkness, he met the night watchman, who was just then calling out the hour and, as he did so, sang the verse:

Awake, O man, from the sleep of sin!
Rouse yourself, you wandering sheep,
And soon amend your life!