Impossibility of forgiving sins (We cannot forgive each other)

This post is not tied to any particular passage, but something that comes up again and again.

Summary:  As Christians, we often believe that it is our duty to forgive the sins of others.  This is not actually what the New Testament teaches.  The New Testament teaches that God forgives sins, not us; That said, we enable life together to happen by extending forgiveness to others.

Point #1:  Forgiveness of sins is a key mission of Jesus Christ

(The word for forgiveness here is αφεσις; the word for sin is αμαρτια)

• Jesus instructs his disciples before his ascension:  Repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47)
• Jesus describes the new covenant:  "for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:28)
• In Pauline epistles:  "We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace." (Ephesians 1:7).  I realize that many argue Luther(ans) overemphasize forgiveness in Paul, but it would be impossible to read Paul, even the perceived "real" Paul, and say that forgiveness was neither significant nor connected with justification.
• Hebrews has a lengthy developments of the theme of forgiveness and Jesus work as the new sacrifice, once and for all.  (E.g.:  Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.)

Point #2:  Forgiveness of sins is a divine and not human task

• In Matthew 9, Mark 2 and Luke 5, there is the story of a paralytic who is healed.  In each case, the issue is whether Jesus had permission to forgive sins.  In fact, his forgiving sins is considered blasphemy because it means he is assuming the role of God.
• In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus teaches about prayer and forgiveness.  However, The Lord's Prayer does not invite us to forgive the sins of others
• The Lord's Prayer in Matthew's Gospel:  καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν.  Forgive us our debts as we forgave the debts of others. (6:12)
• Further instructions about forgiveness:  Ἐὰν γὰρ ἀφῆτε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, ἀφήσει καὶ ὑμῖν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος·(6:14)  Here we are invited to forgive the trespasses.  While this is similar to sins, the writer Matthew is clearly avoiding commanding us to forgive the sins of others.  Why?  Because this is for God alone!
• In Luke's Gospel, there is also careful attention paid to the words around forgiveness:  
• καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν.  Forgive us our sins as we are forgiving others.  (11:4).  
• In Luke's Gospel, the lack of human capacity to forgive sins is even more strongly underscored by the change in words here.  We are to pray that our sins are forgiven, but we are to forgive debts.
• The only time humans are commanded to forgive sins is when they are given the "power of the keys", that is, explicitly told to forgive sins.  This is done by the resurrected Christ as he breathes on his disciples the Holy Spirit
• “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:22-23)
• When we look at the New Testament (and Old Testament) as a whole, we realize that within the biblical worldview, the declaration that humans can forgive sins is earth shattering.  Literally.  This is not a casual declaration that we can live and let live, but that human agents can change the divine ledger.  This is a truly awesome power given over to the apostles.  

Point #3:  As Christians, we are to practice forgiveness toward each other, but outside of the office of the keys, this is not about declaring someone forgiven before God.  Rather, this is about making life possible together.

• In Ephesians and Colossians, we are commended to forgive each other.  Yet a look at the words, reveals this is not about forgiving sins:
• ἀνεχόμενοι ἀλλήλων καὶ χαριζόμενοι ἑαυτοῖς ἐάν τις πρός τινα ἔχῃ μομφήν· καθὼς καὶ ὁ κύριος ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς·  "...bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." (Colossians 3:13, cf Ephesians 4:32)
• The word that is used here is χαριζόμαι, which means "be gracious to", "give favor" akin to Mary being called "full of grace."  The point here is not to declare them righteous before the heavenly Father, but to be gracious to them.
• In Luke's Gospel, we are commanded to forgive someone seven times seventy times. 
• ἐὰν ἁμάρτῃ ὁ ἀδελφός σου ἐπιτίμησον αὐτῷ, καὶ ἐὰν μετανοήσῃ ἄφες αὐτῷ· 4 καὶ ἐὰν ἑπτάκις τῆς ἡμέρας ἁμαρτήσῃ εἰς σὲ καὶ ἑπτάκις ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς σὲ λέγων Μετανοῶ, ἀφήσεις αὐτῷ. If your brother sins, rebuke him.  If he repents, forgive him.  And if he sins against you seven times that day, saying "I repent" forgive him. (Luke 17:3-4)
• Here may be the only time in Scripture that we are commanded to forgive someone else for what they do.  However, linguistically, the object of the forgiveness is the person, not their sins (we forgive them, not their sins).  This forgiveness here seems far more like akin to the meaning "let go" or "permit" (also meanings of the word αφεσις).  In short, what seems at stake here is letting the person back into your life, rather than declaring them forgiven before God.

Admission:  I am not developing here a deep theology of "the office of the keys" by which humans declare to each other that they are forgiven on Christ's behalf.  This is certainly a reality.  Humans need an external word of forgiveness and we can become Christ to each other, to offer forgiveness.  I am thinking more of a situation in which two people are upset with each other and the one person begins to feel they are responsible for "generating" the love required to forgive the other person.

What is at stake:  When Christians teach an ethic of forgiveness, we need to be careful that we do not ascribe too lofty a goal for ourselves.  God takes care of the heavenly ledger.  Outside of the office of the keys, this is not ours to mess with.  What is our job is to trust that Christ has been gracious to us and therefore find a way to be gracious to others.  More deeply, we might begin to see that God is also gracious to others and has forgiven them and therefore, any movement to forgive them is an act of aligning ourselves with God's movement.

Furthermore, God's forgiveness creates resurrection and new life -- this is in fact, what the story of the healed paralytic shows.  The man, forgiven, rises to new life.  As Luther writes, "where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation."  We cannot transform the hearts of others.  This is the work of God.  What we can do - with Christ's love - is make life possible for each other...and on rare occasions, be given the great joy of handing over the promises that Jesus has already forgiven the other person. 

John 1:6-8, 19-28

This passage occurs in the Revised Common Lectionary during Advent (year B), most recently December 17, 2023.

Summary

I have not preached on this passage in years, choosing to focus on the Isaiah passage or the words of Mary in the Magnificat.  In many ways, it is the tamest picture of John the Baptist we have in the New Testament.  The Gospel writer John effectively takes the focus away from John the Baptist and returns it to Jesus.  This then is a model for confessing Christ!

John is asked "Who are you?"  His answer is in relation to Christ.  May we answer likewise when asked this question.

Confessing Christ - Words and Grammar

μαρτυρια (as verb and noun, "testify", 1:7)  

Translation note:  What the NSRV translates as "witness" and "testify" are both the same word in Greek (or the same word in verb and noun forms).  This distinction in translation of the root "martyria" has no basis in the Greek but reveals the English language's disdain for the same word in a sentence twice!

• To give witness does not necessarily mean to have all the answers; nor does it mean to have an emotionally cathartic story.  It simply means to point back to Jesus Christ.
• The witness of John conforms to the New Testament pattern in which the witness we will need to give is over and against a skeptical but curious, if not threatened world.

Συ τις ει; (question asked to John, 1:19).  

Translation note:  The NIV botches the translation of this sentence by making the question, "Who are you?" into an indirect question. It is a direct question in the Greek

• We will be asked the question: "Who are you?" in life.  This is especially true in the 21st century, when identity is a construct of (perceived) choice rather than something given through family or genes. 
• John answers his identity in terms of Jesus.  How many of us would do the same?  We did learn as children - "If anyone asks you who I am, tell them I am child of God."  We must learn as adults to sing this again.
• Almost all of the speaking verbs in this section are in the aorist; yet here John must say repeatedly (present tense): "I am not." Perhaps a suggestion that we have to confess Christ over and over again.

ομολογεω (meaning "to confess", 1:20).  

Pronunciation and translation note:  The o here has a rough breathing mark, meaning it is pronounced "homologeoo."  This word literally means "same speak" or "to speak the same as another."  

• It is interesting that a unilateral confession is unintelligible!  In the case of Christians who feel that we are alone in our context, we never confess the faith alone, but stand with others across the globe and across time.

Warning

• The people asking for the witness, in this case, are "the Jews."  In light of the rise of antisemitic words and actions, I would humbly offer to translate "the Jews" as "the Jewish leaders of Jesus day."

Mark 1:1-8

This passage occurs in the RCL during Advent (year 2, week 2; most recently Dec. 10, 2023)
 
Summary:
The Greek in this passage is not complex, but it is riddled with problems.  How do we read Mark's rough Greek and sloppy use of the Old Testament?  Perhaps the hermenuetic offered by Mark about Isaiah is the proper one for us today.  Mark rips Isaiah out of his historical context and reestablishes the passage's meaning christologically.  In the same way, let's rip John the Baptist out of his context and interpret him christologically:  You need more than confessing your sins.  You need the son of God to send out the Spirit to forgive your sins in your Baptism!  Sure, that adds a bit of theology to the whole thing, but as Mark shows, that is the job of a proclaimer :-)

->  My added insight for 2014:  Mark's Gospel begins, it seems, with the theology of the cross.  Where do we find God?  In the wilderness, on the edge, in a stinky socially unacceptable man.  Jesus will keep showing up in the wrong places in the Gospel of Mark (and all the Gospels).  Jesus will keep showing up in our lives in the wrong places too.

Here are some problems:
Citation problem:  Isaiah in verse 1:2 and v 3
Mark says "Just as it is written in the prophet Isaiah" and then goes to quote Malachi.  He doesn't get to Isaiah until verse 3.  (My guess is that Malachi wouldn't be known to his audience but Isaiah perhaps would have been).  Even if you ignore this problem, Mark is clearly a bad student of the OT because he takes the verse out of context.  Clearly Isaiah was not talking about John the Baptist!  But wait a minute.  If Mark takes Isaiah out of its historical context and reinterprets the passage in light of Christ...then cannot we do the same??

Word problem:  John the Baptist/baptizing in verse 1:4
Literally the text reads "John the one who baptizes" or even "John, while baptizing."  However, I do not think calling him "John the Baptist" is an unfair translation.  In fact, Mark will call John the Baptist elsewhere, 6:25; 8:28.  Here Mark is emphasizing his activity of baptizing.  The most complex thing however is simply the word "baptism."  We have 2,000 years+ of interpretation of this word.  In this pre-theological usage it simply means, "to dip in water to wash."  It came to mean, according to the Freiberg dictionary, "of Jewish ritual washings wash, cleanse, purify by washing."  The point of all this is that John's Baptism is not necessarily what we think of as our baptisms.  This is not a baptism of grace; it is not a baptism of binding oneself to Jesus ministry, much less his death and resurrection.  John was telling people to commit themselves to God and signify their repentance with Baptism.

Textual problems:  "Of God" in verse 1:1
The phrase "of God" (του θεου, tou theou) is not found in all the manuscripts. It is pretty debatable from a textual point, although I think Nestle Aland 27's double brackets are a bit strong.  Some significant manuscripts have it.  The NET Bible notes offer a really fascinating hypothesis as to why the "son of God" is dropped from various manuscripts (based on the particular letters that are used).  However, this is kind of a moot point for the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus clearly is the son of God in the book; the question is when and how do we learn this. From the first line of the book?  No.  From the cross.  From a centurion nonetheless.  Perhaps it simply adds to the great mystery novel that Mark wrote...

Punctuation problem:  "In the wilderness" in 1:3
The position of the phrase "in the wilderness" is arbitrary.  We do not have the original punctuation is either Hebrew or Greek.  Later Jewish monks added the punctuation (suggested by the original likely meaning of the verse), "A voice cries out, 'In the wilderness prepare the way'" but the writer of Mark moves the break and makes it "A voice cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way."  Admittedly, we really don't know Mark's original punctuation (this was not passed on for the first four centuries at least) but Mark definitely seems to suggest a change from the Hebrew.

Participle problem:  "confessing" in 1:5
The tenses of the Greek participles fight against an "Ordo Salutis" in this passage. Baptizing and confessing occur at the SAME time CONTINUALLY. Not one after the other (imperfect active verb with a present participle == concurrent, on-going action).  The people do not confess and then get baptized or the other-way around.  They are doing both of them.

Isaiah 40:1-11

The passage is found in the Narrative and Revised Common Lectionary, Advent 2, Year 2 (Most recently Dec 10, 2023).

Summary:  This passage is almost impossible to translate because one has Handel's Messiah in the background!  One possible direction:  Highlight the work of the Holy Spirit, as that which kills but also creates through compassion and comfort.  But I am preaching in Advent so I will focus, most likely, on preparing the way.  In what way do we need a wilderness, a time of disconnecting, to connect to God?  In what way is God's Holy Spirit present to us in the wilderness?  I would argue that the wilderness is not a time of listening to inner voices, but a time of being comforted by the communion of saints and hearing the Word of God.

Key words:
נחם ("nakham" meaning "comfort, repent or compassion", vs 1)  This word appears in all sorts of amazing and significant passages.  It can mean a range of things -- comfort, repent or have compassion.  The idea is someone taking a deep breath.  In this case, the translators of every language, whether Greek speaking Jews in the 4th century BC, or Jerome in the 4th century AD, to modern English translators, have translated this word to mean "comfort."  I agree!  The question remains linguistically in the passage -- who is doing the comforting?  The ancient Israelites to each other?  God?  The pastoral question for us is -- who comforts us?  How is do we experience God's comfort?
Lastly, it is interesting that the Greek translation of this word παρακαλεω (parakaleo) will also be used as a title for the Holy Spirit in John's Gospel!

יד ("yad", meaning "hand", vs 2)  It is strange and disconcerting that the same God who offers comfort is also the same God, from whose hand the people have taken punishment.  It is a reminder that God has two hands -- one to punish and one to build up. (An article by David Lose talks about these two hands) in Luther's writings.  

מדבר ("midbar", meaning "wilderness", vs 3)  Wilderness does not mean "place where God is not."  The book of Numbers records God's faithful presence in the wilderness.  Wilderness can mean a time of reflection and examination, comfort and repentance, but certainly not banishment from God. 
Final note:  If you are curious about the position of the comma in the sentence:
A voice cries out in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord...see this week's post on Luke 3 

מסלה ("mislah" meaning "highway", vs 3)  The word highway is a fairly modern word!!  The point here is that this is not a city street, but a royal road that would have been constructed.  As NET Bible offers:  "typically refers to a main road, possibly paved with stones or made level with fill (see HALOT 606 s.v. and The Concise DCH 230 s.v.)."  The point is that there is a royal entourage coming into town!

רוח ("ruach" meaning "spirit, voice or breath", vs 7)  The "literal" translation could be "the spirit of God blows upon it."  I find it quite strange that anyone would want to translate this as breath.  What is God's breath if not God's spirit?  This is important because it helps us recognize that the Spirit's work specifically in this passage but also more generally in the work of putting to death.  It is also worth noting that the Spirit is connected here to the Word of God (vs 8) and finally proclamation of the good news (9)

רעה ("rahah" meaning "shepherd", vs 11) It is striking that the glory of the Lord is revealed not simply in power, but in merciful compassion.  God's alien work may be bringing about death and destruction, but the proper and crowning work of God is exhibiting mercy.
Side grammar note:  the is technically a verbal noun, like "the one who shepherds" or more literally "shepherder"

ישא עלית ינהל ("raise up those who are giving suck and lead them", 11)  This verse can fairly be translated as "He will gently lead the mother sheep."  But I see it a bit different:  He will raise up and lead those who are nursing, those who are feeding.  This is a little word of hope for those involved in ministry -- who are feeding other sheep.  God will raise you up and lead you.  The word lead here is also used in Psalm 23 -- lead us besides still waters.  The leading is not into a hard place, but a place of rest.