Lent Midweek

Luke 23:33-34 - Lent I-V Midweek - February 20, 27; March 6, 13, 20, 2013

Confession & Absolution / Office of the Keys
Forgive them!

And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” 

O sinner, come thy sin to mourn,
So vast and vile that it has borne
Christ to this vale of anguish;
Son of a Virgin, sweet and mild
In poverty the Holy Child,
Thy substitute, did languish;
Behold, with faith, God’s only Son!
Come nigh and see what Love has done
To save thee from damnation;
The Father cast on Him thy guilt,
For thee His precious blood was spilt,
To bless thee with salvation.  Amen. 

The reason we confess our sins is because we need the forgiveness of sins.  We confess our sins to God, because it is against God whom we have sinned.  After Nathan went and spoke to David, David prayed these words of Psalm 51: “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight.”  There is no sin we commit that is not committed against God.  That is why we need God to forgive us for every sin we commit—every sin of thought, word, and deed.  For it is by these that we have justly deserved His temporal and eternal punishment.  

His punishment is just, because God is right to be angry with us for our disobedience.  He created us to be perfect and holy, and we have turned aside, each one of us, to our own way.  You can’t confess your sin to God unless you agree that God is right to be angry at your sin—unless you agree that the punishment He threatens is the punishment you deserve.  Consider the 10 Commandments.  Consider what they say to you.  Consider how good they are – how they teach you to fear and love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself.  And then consider how you have lived by them.  These are the sins that we ought to confess. 

Now it’s one thing to agree with what is good and bad, and so forth.  Even David while yet unrepentant, was persuaded that the one who did the heartless deed described by Nathan ought to die.  He said so himself: “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die!”  He agreed that the law was good, and that its punishment was just.  But the law teaches us more than what is right and wrong.  It teaches us who we are.  It teaches us where we stand underneath its demands and judgments and curse.  It teaches us that we individually need to confess our sins to God, because we individually deserve His just punishment. 

Confession has two parts: first that we confess our sins, and second that we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness for our sins.  There is no big in-between that we need to fulfill.  There is no quota of guilt and regret that we have to show or feel.  No.  There is repentance (which is true sorrow) and there is forgiveness (that is, absolution – that means it’s gone!).  God works repentance.  We don’t conjure it up; we simply agree to what God says about us.  God grants forgiveness.  We don’t earn it; we simply agree to what God says about Christ. 

God forgives us freely for Jesus’ sake.  Jesus has purchased the authority to forgive sins by His own innocent suffering and death.  This authority to forgive sins Jesus has given to his Church on earth.  We call it the Office of the Keys, because it is this authority that locks and unlocks the door to heaven.  It is the authority to forgive the sins of those who are sorry for their sins, and to retain, that is, not forgive or bind the sins of those who are not sorry for them.  If your sins are forgiven, then heaven is opened to you.  If your sins are not forgiven, then heaven is closed to you.  Everything depends on whether your sins are forgiven. 

The sins that God forgives are the sins that Jesus died for.  Jesus suffered and died for all sins.  When Jesus prayed to His Father to forgive those whose wickedness grieved His soul, He was praying that not one of your sins be omitted – that not one ounce of God’s wrath against you be held back from Him.  Jesus was praying for God’s just punishment (which He agreed with!) not to be mitigated in the least, but fully spent upon His sacred body and filled up in His innocent soul as He hung on the cross, shamefully dying for you.  Jesus was praying for the authority to say it Himself, to say it to you, as you languish in the depths of woe and regret: “I bore those sins! Therefore they are forgiven.” 

Isaiah foretold it in his 53^rd chapter – that Jesus would receive such authority to forgive sins for the following reasons:

Because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors,* and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors * (Isaiah 53:12).  

That’s why Jesus received such authority.  Jesus earned the authority to forgive your sins on the cross where he bore your sins.  And He continues to intercede for the sinner today.  He shows before the Father’s throne in heaven what He did to atone for our sins on earth. 

But we cannot go to the Father’s throne in order to see this forgiveness.  And we cannot go back to the cross where Jesus earned it.  We can’t fly back in time and pray to Jesus to remember us in His Kingdom or to hear Him pray on our behalf that we be forgiven – because we know not what we do.  We are told to behold in faith God’s only Son, to come nigh and see what Love has done.  But how can we do that when it all happened 2000 years ago.  Jesus has since been removed from the cross, raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven.  But between now and when He comes back to judge the living and the dead, where do we go to place our faith?  Upon what do we hold onto and trust? 

We go to where God answered Jesus’ prayer.  “Father, forgive them!”  The Father answered His Son’s prayer by accepting His perfect sacrifice.  And He made this public when He raised His Son from the dead.  When God raised Jesus from the dead, He absolved the whole world of its sin.  Christ’s resurrection is the world’s absolution. 

And when Jesus appeared to His disciples on that first Easter evening, you know the 1^st thing on His mind; He gave to them His Holy Spirit and commanded them to speak this very same absolution to all who repented of their sins.  This is the authority that Jesus gave to His Church on earth.  It is the authority that Jesus prayed for.  It is not a coercive authority.  It is not a political or military power.  It is the Gospel.  Where the Gospel is preached, there is the Church.  And the Church is wherever sins are being forgiven in Jesus’ name. 

When Jesus sent His Apostles to forgive sins and preach the Gospel, He wasn’t just instituting a bunch of duties that need to be fulfilled.  No.  He sent specific men to do it.  And when He did, He instituted an office for the Church, which if a man is called to this office, it is His duty to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments and forgive sins in Jesus’ name.  We usually call this office the pastoral office, or the Office of the Ministry.  Ministry means service. 

Jesus cannot be separated from His Church.  You cannot find the Church apart from the Ministry that Jesus instituted for the Church.  The Church does not and cannot exist apart from where Jesus serves her with the forgiveness of sins. 

Jesus created and sustains His Church, that is, all believers in Him, by serving the Church.  This is how He deals with us… through His servants.  “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God,” Paul says.  Christ serves you through your pastor.  This does not mean that your pastor is your servant.  No, he is God’s servant; he is God’s minister.  A pastor is only your servant inasmuch as he is Christ’s servant – inasmuch as he is doing what Jesus told him to do.  “Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” 

The Office of the Keys is given to the Church in order that Christ may serve her with the forgiveness of sins.  That’s why you have a pastor.  That’s what you should expect from your pastor.  The Office is given to you, the Church.  You exercise this Office when you call pastors to do what the Office requires.  That is what makes the call that you issue to your pastor God’s call.  God doesn’t call a pastor to do anything other than what Jesus died on the cross to give you.    

And so this is what the pastor must do.  Jesus prayed to His Father, “Father forgive them.”  God answered His Son’s prayer.  And so in His resurrected glory, Jesus said to His Apostles, and to all whom He calls to preach, “Pastor, forgive them.”  Forgive them.  In order for a pastor to faithfully do this, as Jesus commands him, he must preach both the law and the gospel. 

He needs to preach against sin.  He needs to preach against your sin.  The sin that makes you mad to hear about ….  He needs to speak the law clearly so as to identify for you what and who you are.  As Nathan faithfully spoke to David, although he was scared: “You are the man!” 

The pastor needs to preach the gospel.  He must do so clearly.  He must not place conditions on the forgiveness of sins, because Jesus places no condition.  He must apply what Jesus did on the cross for all sinners to all sinners who confess their sins.  It is not his job to weed out those who don’t truly believe.  It is his job to faithfully expose what God’s law condemns, and to faithfully speak what God’s word says to repentant sinners.  And God’s word imparts reality.  “Your sins are forgiven.”  And your sins are forgiven.  As Nathan said, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” 

The pastor speaks for God.  What you seek from your pastor, you seek from God.  And God tells you what to seek, because He tells your pastor what to speak.  God forgives us our sins for the sake of the innocent suffering and death of Jesus.  Just like in Nathan’s story that indicted David, it was David’s sin that brought the little lamb to its unjust slaughter, so also it was our own sins that brought Jesus, God’s Lamb, to the cross.  But it is the death that our sins merited that ends up saving us.  It is the carrying out of our own punishment that rescues.  Such a wondrous plan could not have entered into the heart of man.  No way.  And of course it didn’t.  “They know not what they do,” Jesus said.  Oh, no.  They have no idea.  Not only that this was God they were slaying – not only that He was an innocent man numbered with transgressors, but that by this awful death, their own sins were being taken away and forgiven. 

To deny what your sins have earned is to deny what Christ has suffered.  That is why impenitence cannot receive forgiveness.  That is why the one who does not repent must continue to hear the law until he sees with David that he is that man.  But to confess what your sins have borne, to see in Christ, the Lamb of God’s death what your sins have merited, and yet to see in the same vicarious suffering God’s boundless grace that covers all your sins—this is to know the Gospel. 

You need not go to your pastor to empty your heart and unload your conscience.  But that is why he’s there.  You can confess your sins to your brother, sister, your daughter even, and receive God’s absolution from the same.  You can.  Do.  But in your midst, for His Church, God has sent you a pastor whose job it is to serve Christ by serving you.  Your pastor is obliged by his ordination vow never to reveal to anyone anything that anyone confesses to him.  The confession is made to the God who dismisses our sins, removing them from us as far as the east is from the west.  Sins that are forgiven are not revealed.  They are covered by the blood of Jesus who bore them for all the world to see.  Thank God that Christ serves us here through the Ministry He continues to give. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.