John 20:19-23 (Second Sunday of Easter—Series B)
“Forgiven Because He’s Risen”
Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT
April 7, 2024
Christ is risen, Alleluia! He is Risen, indeed, Alleluia!
The sermon text today is the first half of the Gospel for this Second Sunday of Easter, recorded in John 20:
19When, therefore, it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, the doors having been locked where the disciples were because they feared the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the middle [of them] and said to them, “Peace to you.” 20And after He had said this, He showed them the hands and the side. Therefore, the disciples rejoiced because they saw the Lord. 21Then Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you. Just as the Father has sent me, also I send you.” 22After He had said this, He breathed upon them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23Of whomever you forgive the sins, they stand forgiven them. Of whomever you retain [the sins], they stand retained.”
The Christian Church confesses in the Third Article of Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in . . . the forgiveness of sins.” In the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, God the Holy Spirit “daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers” (Small Catechism). The Church is “the only community in which there is salvation, for it is the gathering of all who believe in Jesus Christ, who comes to them in His Word and Sacraments” (Explanation of Small Catechism, 208). Salvation (to be saved) from the power of sin, death, and the devil is what the Lord Jesus Christ purchased and won for us with His death on the cross and which He guarantees to us by His resurrection from the dead. The chief gift of the Gospel in Word, Baptism, and Holy Communion, then, is the forgiveness of sins! Since forgiveness is what the Gospel is about, forgiveness is what the Church is about in her life and proclamation.
If the Church is going to be faithful to her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Church is going to talk about sin. Not a very popular idea, is it? “Let’s go to a place where I get to hear how I messed up! Let’s go and hear that I’m not the person I think I am. Let’s listen to a message that tells me that I’m a “lost and condemned person,” who is “turned away from God and unable to look to Him for security, meaning, and righteousness.” And while we are at it, let’s talk about the things I do in thought, desire, word, and deed that God’s Word says “don’t” in the Ten Commandments . . . oh, and the good things I fail to do according to those same Commandments!
Well, that doesn’t make us feel very good, does it? Not at all! And it’s not supposed to. God’s Law was not given to make us feel good about ourselves. It was given for us to do, and to do perfectly according to His will. But because we are enslaved in a lifelong condition from which we cannot free ourselves, the Law shows us our sins. The Law reveals how far we have missed the mark of God’s perfect Commandments. This means that we have an endless desire to sin and so we are, by nature, God’s enemies. Ephesians 2:3 tells us that we “were by nature children of wrath.” God’s wrath at our disobedience of His Commandments should be directed squarely toward us. If we are the focus of God’s anger, wrath, and displeasure, we are most certainly His enemies who are against Him and His Word. This means that by nature we do not have peace with God.
To have peace with God would mean that there would have to be the absence of hostility. We are hostile to God in our sinful rebellion against Him and His Word. In turn, God has to be hostile to us according to His holiness and must punish us in His wrath as His enemies. All people, then, have cut themselves off from God by their sin. We have done just that as well. As a result of our sinful natures, you and I have been at war with God. We have fought against Him with all our might, giving our fear, love, and trust to things that are not god, but our personal idols. We have dug a hole so deep, built a wall so high, that we can never climb our way to God, even if we wanted to.
Perhaps that is what Jesus’ followers were feeling on that very first Easter evening. Peter had denied knowing Jesus and being His disciple. All of the disciples had fled from the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested. Not one stood up to be counted with Him or to offer their support at His trial. Mary Magdalene had returned from the tomb with glorious news, “I have seen the Lord!” But there isn’t any rejoicing going on. The disciples were together in the Upper Room, the doors being shut and locked because they feared the Jews. How awful did this small band of followers feel? Their Lord and Master crucified in hellish agony, their Christ dead and buried, and their guilt of denial and abandonment weighed heavy on them. Were the words of Jesus on their minds, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven”? (Matthew 10:32-33 NAS95). Their sins pressed against them—their doubt, their fear, their failure to confess Him before the crowd. The lyrics of a song puts these words into the mouth of Peter, “Back inside the house again The guilt and anguish came Everything I’d promised him Just added to my shame When at last it came to choices I denied I knew his name And even if he was alive It wouldn’t be the same.” All the disciples would relate. Even if the word of the women was true, how could things ever be the same between them and Jesus, even between them and God?
But that’s the beauty of the Gospel. That’s the glory of the Resurrection of Jesus! NOTHING is the same between us and the Lord! There is now peace between God and humanity. There is now complete forgiveness for every sin of every sinner that restores people to the good favor of God the Father.
“Jesus came and stood in the middle [of them] and said to them, ‘Peace to you.’ And after He had said this, He showed them the hands and the side. Therefore, the disciples rejoiced because they saw the Lord.” This peace that Jesus brings to His followers is full peace with God through the power and grace of the resurrected Lord Christ! It is the peace of the forgiveness of sins! Remember our confession of faith? “I believe in . . . the forgiveness of sins.” Peace with God for us sinners comes from what the death and resurrection of Christ won and created—the forgiveness of sins because Jesus is risen!
Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, redeemed us lost and condemned people, purchased and won us from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. This was accomplished with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death on a cross. As Paul writes by the power of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 15, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” But that’s not the end of the matter. The Apostle continues, “. . .that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4 ESV).
A Crucified Jesus is not enough. Sinners need a Crucified and Risen Jesus to be our Savior from sin, to grant us the forgiveness of sins. Again from 1 Corinthians 15, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17 ESV). But the fact of the matter is Jesus has been raised. He is living. See the hands and the side—forever marked by the nails and the spear so that we might look upon Him whom they pierced, the One “pierced for our transgressions [and] crushed for our iniquities. . . [With] his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5 ESV).
And that healing comes from the forgiveness of sins. That forgiveness of sins gives to us peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified, is risen, and is glorified! And our Lord has provided that very forgiveness throughout the centuries through His authoritative Word of forgiveness given to His holy Church, the whole people of God in Christ Jesus. The Gospel of Christ’s perfect life lived for us, His death, and His resurrection in Word, Baptism, and Lord’s Supper delivers to us the forgiveness of sins purchased for us by Christ.
You and I receive the forgiveness of sins through the spoken and written Word of the Gospel as we read it and as we hear it proclaimed by the pastor and by one another. The pastor speaks the Gospel in the stead and by the command of Christ to his congregation. That Gospel delivers to you the forgiveness of sins by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit as it is preached. But you also speak the Gospel to one another as you study the Word together and as you share the Good News message of Jesus in your encouragement toward one another. As promised by the Lord, that Word delivers the forgiveness of sins won by Christ.
When your brother or sister sins against you and repents, you speak Christ’s forgiveness to them when you say, “I forgive you.” It’s not your forgiveness any more than it is the pastor’s forgiveness when he speaks the Words of Absolution. It’s the forgiveness that the Crucified and Risen Jesus bestows through His Gospel Word—“I forgive you all your sins.” The Gospel of forgiveness spoken by the people of the Church as well as by the pastors which the Church calls to exercise publicly the Office of the Holy Ministry in her midst conveys the forgiveness of sins because Jesus is risen!
With sins forgiven, we are at peace with God. We have this peace because Jesus’ hands were nailed to the cross where He died to win our forgiveness. We have this peace because the spear pierced Him for our transgressions. As we have received the Holy Spirit in Baptism, so we also received from the Risen Jesus release from sin, death, and the devil’s power. In the power of the Spirit, you now speak Christ’s Gospel of forgiveness to one another as you share and receive that Good News of forgiveness. You receive from the Risen Christ absolution spoken by your pastor as from the Lord Himself because it is HIS forgiveness, not mine. And in the Lord’s Supper, we together receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation from the Risen Lord at His banquet table, a foretaste of the feast to come. Peace to you. Amen.
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Hebrews 13:20-21 ESV).
Lutheran Church of our Redeemer 