And having said this, he breathed into [them], and says to them, Receive [the] Holy Spirit
On resurrection evening the risen Jesus stood among His disciples behind locked doors and breathed on them. Commentators tie this act to the creation of Adam, and ask what the breath gave, and how it relates to Pentecost.
The act points back to how the first man came to life.
Words of commission came first. Then came words of impartation, joined to an unusual action. He breathed on — or, more correctly, into — them, and said, "Receive Holy Spirit," for the definite article "the" is missing in the original. We must notice the connection between this and the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7. God formed his body from the dust of the ground. But the spiritual part of him came into being when the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and so he became a living soul. Our Lord is the last Adam, a quickening or life-giving spirit, as we read in 1 Corinthians 15:45. Here we see Him breathing into His disciples His own risen life.
The contrast is not only in the gift but in the giver. Adam received; Christ gives.
He is not Himself breathed into, as the first man was, but breathes into others. As the life-giving Spirit, He communicates spiritual, divine life. This is the very thing we have seen to be the essential element in new birth. In this way He is the Author of a new creation, higher in character than the old. That is clearly what His present action symbolises.
The disciples already believed and already had life. So what did this breath add? Writers tie it to the promise of John 10:10.
He had come that they might have life. This breathing was so that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10), and have it in the risen Christ. That is a condition in which it had never existed before, with an increase of power never before connected with it. So it is not "receive life," nor "the Holy Spirit," but "Holy Spirit," as the breath of the life in the power of the risen Lord.
Kelly sets that new condition against the old.
Full victory already achieved and made ours in Christ is very different from life struggling with death. It is different from life with the written record of legal demands still uncancelled and standing against us. It is different from life not yet delivered from the power of the evil that surrounds it. It is different from life seeking after what is good yet failing, and life trying to avoid what is bad, yet somehow drawn into it again and again.
Commentators keep this moment separate from Acts 2.
The Lord's own words also show that He did not regard the action in John 20 as anticipating the special blessing of Pentecost in any way. (See Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5.)... What the disciples received in this way was the Holy Spirit as the power of life, corresponding to what we find in Romans 8:1-11. They still had to wait until the day of Pentecost to receive the indwelling Spirit — as power, as the anointing, as the pledge, the seal and the Spirit of adoption.
Why then use the Spirit's name at all? Hole gives the reason.
His own life as the risen Man is in the energy of the Holy Spirit.
The gift is not private. It goes with peace, and with being sent.
He says again, "Peace be with you." He sends them out into the world clothed and filled with that peace, their feet shod with it. He sends them just as the Father had sent Him. He gives them the Holy Spirit for this purpose. In His power they were to carry the forgiveness of sins to a world bowed down under the yoke of sin.
Some limit this gift and the commission with it to the apostles. Kelly answers by asking who the Lord was speaking to.
To whom did the Lord speak that day? Not to the apostles only, nor even to all of them, but to the disciples... The moment we take the word as it is written we see clearly that what He said applies to all.
- Breath. As God breathed into Adam in Genesis 2:7, so the last Adam breathes into His own — the first act of a new creation.
- Life. Not life for the first time, but life "more abundantly" — the same life, now held in the condition of the risen Christ.
- Spirit. Here the Spirit comes as the power of that life, not yet as the indwelling Spirit given at Pentecost.
- Peace. Peace frames the breath. They go out filled with it, carrying forgiveness to a world under the yoke of sin.
- All. He spoke to the disciples, not to the apostles only. What He gave that evening applies to all of them.
whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever [sins] ye retain, they are retained.
On the evening of His resurrection, Jesus stands among His gathered followers and hands them authority over the forgiving of sins. Who received this, and can people decide where a soul stands with God forever?
Older translations read "remit" and "retain" sins. The writers quoted below use those words.
The room was not full of apostles only. One writer weighs the claim that this gift was for apostles alone:
But someone will say, "That was apostolic." Let us allow that for the moment. The fact remains that it was men who acted like this. No doubt they acted for God, but still men remitted sins. But if we look at the chapter we see that there is no ground for saying it was apostolic. It says the disciples were assembled, not apostles. And John 21:2 shows that "disciples" in these last chapters of John does not mean only apostles. It calls Nathanael one of the disciples, and we know he was not an apostle.
Christ gave them His Spirit for a purpose: to act for Him once He was gone.
He was sharing His Spirit with the company, so that they could act for Him on earth after He had left it. This gave them power to receive, or to refuse, anyone who came to them claiming to be a believer. When such people were received into the company, their sins were forgiven. Their past history, their acts, their ways before conversion were not held against them. They were forgiven. So the believers at Damascus received Paul, who had once persecuted the Church.
Commentators call this "administrative" forgiveness. One writer explains what he means by that word:
They were the administrators of it in the world — first in preaching the gospel, if you like, but afterwards in the proper administrative sense... And yet, if such a person is a believer, he has eternal life and forgiveness the whole time. That is what I mean by administrative. It is not the forgiveness in which the soul is justified. It is forgiveness given now, in the ways and government of God.
One writer shows how this works out in practice:
It is a picture of the assembly that was about to be formed at Pentecost — and this is the assembly's function. They have authority from God to retain or to remit sins. This is not at all a question of eternal forgiveness; it is administration, or discipline. For instance, when the assembly receives a soul from the world, what is this but remitting sins? Take the opposite case. If a person is refused fellowship, or is put away after being received, that is the retaining of sins.
One writer points to how the first Christians actually did this:
The apostles never undertook to forgive sins in an official way. This passage does not mean that. It speaks of the discipline of an assembly of disciples, acting by the Holy Spirit, in the name and on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, when the assembly at Corinth put the evil-doer out from among them, it was retaining of sins. And when they received him back, on the ground of his repentance, it was a remitting of sins.
One writer marks out where this power is used, and where it stops:
What is called administrative forgiveness is a power the Lord entrusted to the Assembly to use on earth. It may be needed when people are received into fellowship at the Lord's Table, or when someone who was put away in discipline is restored. But in neither case would administrative forgiveness be right until God had first granted forgiveness to that person. In neither case is it a substitute for God's forgiveness. This passage in John (20:23) is the only authority from the Lord for receiving people to the Table. Matthew 18:17-18 is His own authority for binding and loosing in the exercise of discipline.
The verse has suffered from both overreach and neglect, and one writer names both before drawing out its first and simplest use.
Rome, and some churches like her, have built monstrous claims on it. They say that forgiveness of sins for eternity is in the hands of the so-called Church — really the clergy. On the other hand, Protestants have shrunk from its plain and simple teaching. They have neglected its use completely... It is not a question of our remitting them for eternity. God alone can do that. It is this: we are in the scene where Christ is not. Knowing what He has accomplished, the evangelist is to go out and proclaim the good news of forgiveness to people. Every Christian should be an evangelist like this at heart.
Commentators differ on emphasis. Some stress the assembly's action in receiving and disciplining. Others begin with the preaching of forgiveness to the world.
- Shared — Christ first gives His Spirit, so the company can act for Him once He is gone.
- Given — He speaks to disciples gathered together, not to apostles as officials.
- Administrative — not the forgiveness that justifies a soul, but forgiveness in God's present government and ways.
- Practised — receiving someone from the world remits sins; putting a person away, as at Corinth, retains them.
- Bounded — it never creates God's forgiveness and never replaces it. It belongs to no clergy: every Christian can carry the news of forgiveness to others.