Trinity 19

Good Shepherd

2004 Pass Rd, Biloxi, MS 39531

Draft Gen 28:10–17; Eph 4:22–28; Mt 9:1–8; Ps 84; antiph: v. 8   –     10/11/26

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please open your hymnals to page 326. Getting into a boat [Jesus] crossed over and came to his own city. And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home.

Regarding this Gospel Luther says, “From today’s Gospel we learn about the wondrously gracious ministry of the word which God has given to mankind here upon earth, a word we can speak to one another, namely, Your sins are forgiven unto you! Wonder of wonders to every God-fearing person and something for which to thank God from the bottom of our hearts, because he has given such power unto people! It truly is a mighty power when one Christian can say to another, Dear brother, be unafraid, God is gracious to you; only believe what he promises, as I declare it to you in Jesus’ name, for it is as valid as if God himself were saying to you, Your sins are forgiven

“Such power began, as we hear in this account, with Christ himself, and it continues for mankind, especially with those who occupy the pastoral office and are duty bound to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name. Nevertheless, every Christian has the command, not only that he can, but should, say to you when you are troubled by your sin: Why are you troubled? As your fellow Christian, I say to you, you are not fair to yourself, for God is not ungracious toward you; you ought to trust these words just as surely as though God were speaking to you personally from heaven, never questioning them because of the person of the one from whom you hear them.” (7.79–80)

But how can Luther claim that we have been given this authority? Where did God ever really grant to man the authority to forgive sins? Consider the response of the scribes, those whose work was to copy our the Old Testament, And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” Now, they thought more than just that, they had their reasons, as the Gospel of Mark shows us, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (2:7) Apparently, these keepers of the Law know better than the God Who wrote it that no man can forgive sins. After a fashion, they were correct, but Jesus was no sinner like they, or like the paralytic, or like us. He is God, and if He decides, as He did, to grant men the use and effect of the words, “Your sins are forgiven you”, then it is so and we had best believe it.

It is true that at this point we first see Jesus showing us that God is going to grant men the the use of the words, “Your sins are forgiven.” But Jesus makes this more clear later. Consider what you learned as children in the Small Catechism about this blessing. First you were posed the question, What is Confession? And let us all read the answer together: “Confession has two parts. First, that we confess our sins, and second, that we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.” And what sins we were taught that we should confess to God Luther here means all our sins both known and unknown, but because of the weakness of the human memory, in confession we ought only confess whatever sins bother our consciences.

But how can it be that one man, in this case, a pastor, has the authority to forgive the sins you have committed against God? For that we move down the column to the question, What is the Office of the Keys? And we read together, “The Office of the Keys is that special authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.” And then we come to the authoritative text, Where is this written? Together: “This is what St. John the Evangelist writes in chapter twenty: The Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, ‘Receive the holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (LSB 326) That is the clearest passage in the Bible among a few where we see God, our Lord Jesus, grant to us the authority to forgive, but it is not our forgiveness, it is Christ’s forgiveness spoken through each Christian to another.

And again Luther says, “Everything depends on your receiving the promise as true, that God, for Christ’s sake, wants to be gracious to you. That is why the Lord, in the first place, exhorts the man sick with palsy to believe, saying,” Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven. “Immediately, as soon as the afflicted man believed, he had the forgiveness of his sins.

“Similarly, when the pastor or another Christian declares to you, God is not angry with you; now don’t you be angry with him, for he has forgiven you all your sins for the sake of his Son, Jesus Christ, and so you should believe this pledge with all your might. Better to be torn apart rather than to doubt it! For if you doubt and do not believe, the absolution is of no benefit, even if God himself with all his angels were to speak it with his own mouth over you.” (80) If a man refuses to receive God’s forgiveness, whether from the mouth of a forgiven sinner, a saint really, or from an angel, or from God’s booming voice in the sky, then that man spits in God’s eye. No forgiveness can be his because he thrusts it out of his arms as if with a curse. Such an ungrateful lout deserves what is coming to him in the fires of hell because God had given him the righteousness of Christ Who died on the cross for him, a home in heaven, and eternal life, but that man in his obstinacy rejected all those gifts and would rather hold onto the stain of his sin. Woe to such a man!

Then Luther says, “For the fact is that when we refuse to believe, we disdain God as a deceiver, as though the things he declares to us were not true, that he can and wants to do them for us. May God graciously keep us from such unbelief and sin. The devil is an extraordinary master at getting us to call God a liar and refuse to believe his promise. An unbelieving heart dishonors God and makes him a liar.” (80) But a believing heart hears the Word of God and believes it, thereby honoring God and treating Him as trustworthy and incapable of lying. It is just such a believing heart that the men who brought the paralytic had, and it is this believing heart which pleased Christ, as we see, And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”

These men had heard word of Christ, had heard how he healed the sick and forgave sins, therefore they brought their dear broken friend to the only hope, trusting in the word about Christ that He would do for them as they desired. Luther would therefore remind us of something quite important to our understanding of God and the forgiveness of sins: “Word and faith are correlatives; the one is never without the other. If a person has faith without the Word, he believes like the Turk or the Jew; they believe that God is benevolent and good, but they are without the promise, for God will not be gracious apart from Christ. Contrariwise, whoever has the Word but no faith, for him the Word avails nothing. Therefore, both belong together, Word and faith, like marriage partners, and they must not be separated.” (81) The apocalyptic prophets of Luther’s day or our own had great faith in all sorts of things, but their belief was nothing but delusion—you would be hard pressed to keep track of the number of times the end of the world has been falsely predicted in the last 500 years. Likewise the muslim believes he will enjoy his seventy virgins in heaven if he dies while killing Jews and Christians, but there is no truth in that either; he is just a foolish murderer who suffers in hell now. The papacy, according to its own catechism and doctrines, believes that Christians must provide their own works to achieve to heaven; but all of these lack the clear promise in the Word of God.

Our sinful nature would reject what the Word of God says. God would comfort us with the promises in the Bible; but we tend rather toward doubt. How sweet would it be to believe in full confidence that what Jesus says to the paralytic here was also given “to you and to me every day in baptism, in absolution, and in public preaching, that I must not mistakenly think that God is angry and ungracious toward me. Shouldn’t that cause me to stand on my head with joy?” (81) But that this is not how we feel shows that our old sinful Adam remains. What did you learn about him in the Small Catechism? Turn back a page and answer this question with me: What does such baptizing with water indicate? “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

We surely sin much and deserve nothing but condemnation, but God is faithful and just to forgive us of all our sins and unrighteousness. How do we know? We don’t go to angels, we don’t go to prophets, we don’t go to the pope, or bishop, or celebrity; we go to God’s Word: Where is this written? Together, “St. Paul writes in Romans, chapter six: ‘We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’” Since God has said these things, since in baptism he has promised forgiveness and new life, shown and given to us by the means of that water connected with God’s Word; since He has promised us the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s crucifixion on the cross, and that we can and should even forgive one another, and since He has demonstrated this to us in the forgiving of the paralytic; we ought to believe no matter what the scolds say.

Luther continues, we see the same doubt of the scribes in many people who err and fail to understand “in what way forgiveness of sin comes about. Similarly, the pope and all his doctors of theology fail to understand what absolution is, for all of popedom rests on this article: Grace is infused into people in a mystical way, and whoever wants to have it must be sorry, be contrite, and make satisfaction.

“But if you ask, What do absolution and the keys accomplish? then they answer that it is an external power belonging to the church. So, forgiveness of sins is not grounded upon the Word and faith, where it ought to be, but upon contrition, confession, and making satisfaction. The Anabaptists say the same thing: What can baptism do for the forgiveness of sins? A handful of water cannot wash the soul, … How can water cleanse the soul? The Spirit must do it. The pope and his monks, likewise, fail to see what power has been given to mankind to forgive sins. Also the Enthusiasts and Sacramentarians chime in, The Sacrament gives only bread and wine; therefore, one cannot find forgiveness of sins there; the Spirit must give it, the flesh profits nothing. In short, no fantastic spirit, no papist or monk, is able to discern this, that the power to forgive sins is a power God has given to mankind, as stated in this Gospel lesson.” (83) We must learn God’s Word so that we are not swayed by such fools. We must learn to respond like this, “If I am to have forgiveness of sins, I must not sit in a corner and say, My God, forgiven me my sin, and then, as it were, wait for an angel from heaven to come, to say to me, Your sins are forgiven; but God has deigned to draw near to me by ordaining holy baptism and his Word, that I should be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and he attaches his promise along with his command, saying, ‘Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.’

“Yes, you say, but isn’t baptism just water? True, but not water only, for the Word is connected with it. Therefore, when you go to the parish pastor, who has been given his office or to some other Christian, asking that he comfort you and absolve you from your sin, and he says to you, In the stead of God, I declare to you the forgiveness of all of your sins through Christ, then you may be certain that through the external word your sins are really and truly forgiven. For baptism and the Word do not lie to you.” (83–84) The Spirit in the Word, the Holy Spirit, does not lie. We ought to rejoice that we have such gifts and promises in the Word. When you think on the day of your baptism you ought to rejoice that God gave you this physical and audible sign of His pleasure with you, for in that baptism when the water touched you and the words descended upon your ears Jesus Himself was saying, Take heart, my son; Take heart, my daughter; Take heart, my dear Anya, your sins are forgiven you.

If you want forgiveness don’t “try to climb into heaven, but go and be baptized, if you are not already, or, if you have been, remember the promise God has made to you in your baptism, be reconciled to your neighbor, and ask that the absolution be declared unto you in Jesus’ name. Believe the Word, receive the most venerable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, so that you may be sure that such priceless treasure is meant for you to have and to enjoy.” (84)

Therefore what do you believe according to today’s Gospel and according to John 20:22–23 which we read together? Look to the top of the second column on page 326 of your hymnal and read with me: “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.” Amen.