Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 19-21.

When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection He told them that He was sending them into the world as the Father had sent Him.  He followed that up by telling them to receive the Holy Spirit and that if they forgive anyone’s sins, those sins are forgiven, and if they do not forgive those sins, those sins are not forgiven.  From one perspective, Jesus was sent into the world to forgive people’s sin.  So, Jesus sent His disciples, and us, into the world in order to forgive people’s sin. This has some serious implications.  First, Jesus carried out His mission to forgive sins by dying n the cross, so we should expect that we may be called upon to suffer and die for others.  Not all of those present when Jesus said this died as martyrs, so not all of us will either.  I also want to stress the importance of forgiving the sins of those we meet.  Jesus told us that those we do not forgive will not be forgiven.  Of course, He also told us that if we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven.

I want to add one final note: while it is important that we forgive the sins of others, there must be some sins which we should not forgive.  If the latter was not the case, Jesus would not have granted the Church the power to refuse to forgive some people’s sins.

Note: the Church is the Body of Believers. That is, each one of us who put our faith in Jesus Christ represent one portion of the Church.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.