Sermon File

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and may our Lord and Savior sanctify you in the truth, for His word is truth. Amen

The Second Sunday of Easter (2026)

The Blessings of Forgiveness                                                                                        Rev. Toby Byrd

“Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “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 20:21–23, ESV) 

It is evening the day of the Resurrection and the disciples, less St. Thomas, are gathered in a room with the doors locked, suddenly Jesus appears and says, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19, ESV) In His risen and glorified state, time and space have no meaning. The walls or doors of a building are not a barrier to His presence. He appears when and where He desires. Such is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in His supernatural state, appearing to His apostles seemingly from nowhere, showing them that He has risen the dead, He is alive.

Surprise, shock, wonderment; these are the reactions flowing through the apostles’ minds as Jesus, seemingly from nowhere, is now standing in their presence. Think of the questions flooding their thoughts: Is this Jesus? How can it be Jesus, He died? Am I seeing a ghost? What, Jesus is here! Is He really here? Doubt and fear strike their hearts, and our Lord recognizes their unease. Therefore, to calm their fear, our Lord shows them His nail-punctured hands and spear-punctured side; then they realize: Yes! This is our Lord! This is Jesus! It is then, at that very moment, Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (v. 21)

In these often-overlooked words, our Lord reassures them of His desire is to give them peace and to commission them into a monumental task. His words bestow on them their call into the office for which He had readied them, the office of the ministry. He calls them to go forth and evangelize the world: to proclaim the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins in His name. So, the peace He gives is not merely to fortify their hearts in the face of the world’s enmity and hatred, but rather that they will become possessors of His peace so as His witnesses, His messengers, they may dispense this blessed and divine gift of peace to a world without peace.

Having commissioned them as His ministers of His new Church, “he breathed on them and said . . . Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (vv. 22-23) And here is where it gets sticky for a lot of people. Many, not wanting to believe that men have been commissioned to forgive sins, ask; What? Christ gave the church the commission to forgive or retain sins? I thought this was something only between me and God. Sadly, it is quite natural for men to be hardheaded and unbelieving; therefore, the Holy Spirit, to dispel all doubts about what Jesus said to His apostles, records this same blessed truth in the gospel of St. Matthew. There, Jesus tells His disciples, how the Church must deal with an unrepentant sinner who refuses to repent; the unrepentant sinner is to be treated as a Gentile or a tax collector, (Matt. 18:17), then, immediately after these words our Lord Jesus says; “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18, ESV) Forgiving, retaining, loosing, and binding sins is an authority given to the apostles and by implication, since the apostles are the ministers of the Church, this authority is given to the church. Again, if these two references aren’t enough, then we can look at the words of our Lord when He said to the apostles; “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19, ESV) This ability of the church to forgive or retain sins is known as “the office of the keys;” because it works like a key, opening heaven by forgiving the sins of the repentant, while closing heaven, retaining the sins of the unrepentant. Furthermore, it is this very ability that is conferred upon every pastor at his installation. Thus, the pastor, as one called by the Holy Spirit and sent by Christ, becomes the keeper of the keys in that place through the proclamation and application of the Gospel. But sadly, far too many fail to understand this blessed office and the two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12) it wields. But without question, the most wonderful part of this office is the edge of the sword that proclaims absolution to the repentant sinner. An edge that is wielded in more ways than one.

To arouse a dying conscience, sometimes a pastor must approach the unrepentant and deliver a “A message from God.” (Judges 3:20) At times, the pastor must come not bearing gifts or flattering words, but instead bearing a dagger, the two-edged Sword of the Spirit, saying to the unrepentant, “God sent me to give you, His message.” Sometimes the sinner turns and listens to the pastor, who bears a message not of his own composing, but one from the hands of the Living God. But all too often the message is rejected, unheard and unheeded. All too often the hearer wants to slay the messenger, not physical assassination but character assassination. When a pastor preaches the Law of God, which cuts and wounds and hurts because it is the truth, too many forget that he is only exercising his call. If you listen closely, between the lines of those warnings and condemnations, you will hear these words: “I bring a message from God to you.”

The functions described here naturally go with the sending or the commission bestowed upon the apostles by Jesus through their endowment of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). The function of “the office of the key” forms the two supreme, divine acts for which the apostles have been equipped and sent. Through the apostles, who represent His church on earth, Jesus desires that they remit, that is unlock or forgive the sins of repentant sinners, while denying forgiveness, locking in the sins of the unrepentant. Thus, the pastors of today’s church are given the divine authority to unlock the sins of the repentant and to lock the sins of the unrepentant.

When we Lutherans speak of the Law of God, we always speak of its three uses: as a curb to control our appetite for sin; as a mirror to show us our sin; and as a guide, showing us what we should and should not do while trying to lead a God-pleasing life. But rarely when the Law is preached does anyone try to comprehend which of the three uses should apply in their case, for this is the function of the Holy Spirit.

The baptized Christian, in possession of faith given them by the Holy Spirit, sitting in the pew, hears the Law preached. Using the Law, the Holy Spirit confronts and convicts them of their sin. The Law does it work, crushing the believing sinner, bringing them to their spiritual knees. Realizing they have offended the Almighty God, they are confronted with their corrupted nature, that nature which succumbs to the temptations of their flesh, the world, and Satan. That nature, if left to its own, will gladly lead them into the wilderness of sin, where they will become lost, hopeless, and terrified creatures, wandering in the stench of sin, for which there is no manmade cure. It is this truth that, moved by the Holy Spirit, led Solomon to say, “If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin . . . turn their heart . . . and repent and plead with you . . . saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul . . . and pray to you . . . [and You] hear in heaven . . . and [You] forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, [You] grant them compassion.” (1 Kings 8:46–50, ESV) That same Spirit led St. John to write, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8–9, ESV) 

But when the Gospel is preached from the lips of that same pastor, the Holy Spirit opens their ears (Luke 14:35) and their hearts to hear it, and a watershed of relief pours over them as they remember, Christ died for the forgiveness of my sins, Christ shed His blood to cleans me of all sin. The greatest sacrificial deed of the world has opened God’s heart to my forgiveness. Has not God asked, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die?” (Ezekiel 33:11, ESV) Yes, He has! God, desires that the sinner should repent, that I should repent, that I should confess my sins and seek His absolution. Relief! Reprieve! Salvation has come and it is offered in the name of Jesus for a sinner such as I; the sinning Christians repents and receives God’s compassionate, merciful, forgiveness for the sake of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Moreover, the church’s liturgy is filled with this Gospel, reminding and offering the Christian God’s forgiveness through the sacramental Means of Grace: Holy Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the word of Absolution from the lips of the pastor. Thus, for the Christian the Law proclaimed from the lips of the pastor shows them their sin, reminding them of their sinfulness, while the Gospel, proclaimed from the lips of the same pastor, becomes the key that unlocks heaven’s door forgiving the sins of those sinners who repent, confess their sins, and seek God’s absolution.

To the unrepentant, God has said through Isaiah, “O Lord . . . You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent.” (Jeremiah 5:3, ESV) Sadly, the one who calls himself a Christian but is unrepentant, unwilling to hear either the Law or the Gospel, unwilling to believe in God’s wrath, unwilling to accept the truth of sin, and unwilling to recognize that they are in constant need of forgiveness, they are the ones for which “the office of the keys” is a locking key, a key that does not offer God’s forgiveness, a key that locks the unrepentant in their sin.

However, when the pastor brings the bitter pill of the Law to the unrepentant sinner, he always brings with it the remedy for this bitter pill, God’s absolution. Moreover, he is always willing and ready to offer absolution, offering the blessed Gospel of the forgiveness of sins to all who are led to repentance by the Holy Spirit. So, when your pastor comes calling and exhorts you to confess your sins that you may receive that which God so willingly desires to give you, His forgiveness for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ; do not hesitate to make a good confession and thankfully and eagerly receive absolution.

It is because of this law-gospel preaching that Christians are brought back to God in prayer and to the meditation of the Scriptures. Such preaching is salutary, it creates tension, a tension that turns the sinner to God rather than away from Him; a tension that does not suspend ones saving faith but rejuvenates it. The truth is, these two—Law and Gospel—exist side by side in each of us. The Law convicts and creates contrition, and when contrition is confronted by the Gospel, repentance occurs. It is at this time that the proclamation of the Law must stop and give way to the Gospel, bringing Christ’s blessed relief while reinvigorating faith.

This type of preaching, Law and Gospel, is found in those church’s whose ministries are Word and Sacrament. Gods revealed, audible Word and His visible Word in the Sacraments of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution. Forgiveness comes in the preaching of the Gospel and in the distribution of the Sacrament, earthly elements united to God’s Word by a sacramental union, becoming one. Through Word and Sacrament, God simultaneously moves the heart to believe and take hold of faith, as St. Paul says: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17, ESV) Furthermore, we believe, teach, and confess, that: “As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart, so the rite itself enters through the eyes to move the heart. The Word and the rite have the same effect.”

It is the Gospel in all its forms that announces and effects the forgiveness of sins purchased by Christ and is by meaning, absolution. The preaching of the Gospel is absolution; Baptism, which is Gospel is absolution, the Lord’s Supper, which is Gospel is absolution, and when the pastor pronounces from his lips the forgiveness of sin in the name of Jesus, this, too, is Gospel absolution. Moreover, we Lutherans have retained the ancient and blessed practice of confession and absolution in both private and public forms, because our forefathers were adamant regarding confession and absolution so as not to diminish that which Christ ordained on that first Resurrection eve; “the office of the keys.” Not only because it is such a great aid and consolation against sin and a bad conscience, but more importantly, because it grants The Blessings of Forgiveness.

What a marvelous God we have who forgives our sins for the sake His beloved Son, Jesus Christ who willingly sacrificed Himself upon the Altar of the Cross for our forgiveness. So, as did Christ, I too urge all to come, confess, and be absolved, receiving The Blessings of Forgiveness. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.