Confession
A fair amount of people ask if I pray to Jesus. I thought this very random but obliged them with an answer anyway. Yes I do. Then they proceeded to ask if I believe Jesus died for my sins. I replied, “absolutely”. Then comes the thing that mystifies them; “How can priests possibly forgive your sin? Why confession?” My brothers and sisters who ask me this don’t understand the sacrament of confession and how beautifully sound it is for man to be involved in reconciliation with God. Allow me to open up scripture and share with you the truth that God has offered us in the Bible.
To begin, we must acknowledge that Christ has authority. Authority to do what? Authority to do whatsoever He pleases. Matthew 9:2-8 is more thorough in specifying that the Son of Man [Jesus Christ] has the authority to forgive sins. It’s interesting that as Jesus has the authority, he authorizes men – sharing His authority – by sending them as He was sent (John 20:21). And what authority is man given? What is man authorized to do? To forgive sins. Read with me John 20:23, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” What more can explain man’s authority, given by Christ, to absolve [forgive] us of our sins? Christ, having given this power, recommits it again to one of the apostles, St. Peter, to whom He says, “Whatever you bound on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth is loose in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). If the apostles wanted to retain or bind, it happened. If the apostles wanted to forgive or loosen, it happened. Back to John 20:23, where we see Christ gave man the authority to forgive sin. If we look at the verse preceding it, we see a miraculous event take place. John 20:22 reads,”And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.” To understand what breathing on them to receive the Holy Spirit has to do with sin and confession with forgiveness, let’s study an excerpt from Genesis. We see that man is created from dirt of the earth. But man was not alive until God breathed into him, bestowing the Holy Spirit and life simultaneously. The Jews understood that God’s breath was man’s life, and God’s breath was also the Holy Spirit. God’s breath, the Holy Spirit, and man’s life are all the same thing! This is why the Jews, in Hebrew, use the same word for breath and Holy Spirit. But how does this life giving breath, which is the Holy Spirit, give life in the works of forgiveness of sins ordained to the apostles? We know that the remissions of sins is the bestowal of life; this is why Christ died on the cross, so that sin regresses and life fills us. Jesus breathed on His apostles to invigorate them with the Holy Spirit that gives life just as God breathed on Adam in Genesis 2:7 to give life. Remember, the repentance and forgiveness of sin is life generating.
But are we sure that the apostles really are given the calling to forgive sins? Of course, lest we don’t believe in what the Bible tells us, that they have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). An example has been taught to us in the Holy Writ of James 5:13-15 which fulfills this promise of reconciliation. In James, we see that the prayer of a presbyter forgives sins. This is the same author who tells us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16).
Even the apostle John, John the beloved, the John that was Jesus’ favorite, John, the only apostle that was at the foot of the cross at Jesus’ Passion, tells us we are to pray and men are to offer forgiveness of sins. 1 John 5:16, “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.” Can we wrap our minds around that? John is saying that a man can pray for another man and the man sinning will have his sins forgiven and will receive life from God! We are communal. We are ecumenical. We are family, brothers and sisters in Christ. We work together, whether in holy matrimony, in family, in our careers, in our acts of faith, or in our forgiveness of sins. Remember, we are a body, we are one.
If Christ has given the authority to forgive sins to His apostles, and the inspired authors of infallible Holy Writ proclaim the authority to forgive sins unto men appointed by God, who are we to deny this truth, this gift of life, this sacrament of reconciliation, confession?
Your’s.
Drew Castel
