Meditations
for Seeking the Life in Christ
The Gospel of John
October 10, 2024
The Disciples Received New Life in Christ
Then he breathed on them and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
John 20:22
When Jesus appeared to his
disciples on the evening of the first day of the week, he gave them the
responsibility for taking his message of God’s New Creation to the entire
world. When Jesus breathes on them, it invokes memories of Genesis 2:7 where
God “breathed the breath of life into the
man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” Now the disciples have
received New Life in Christ.
Because you cannot give responsibility without also delegating authority, Jesus gives his disciples the authority to forgive sins. This delegation of authority immediately follows the imparting of the Holy Spirit. It is not by their own power or wisdom that the disciples will forgive sins. It will be by and through the power of the Holy Spirit. If they are to be granted power to forgive, then they also have the power to not forgive. This is not the power to establish rules about what’s sinful and what is not, as the Pharisees had done with their legislation of Sabbath rules. God’s establishment of His New Creation came by and through the crucifixion of Jesus. It is by the blood of Jesus that sin and death have been defeated.
John has more to say about sin in his three epistles, but for now we do not ever want to lose sight of God’s promise to us through John: “If we confess our sins, (God) who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 NRSV).
My Takeaway: The authority Jesus granted to his disciples, and through them to the church, is for the church to help us not delude ourselves about the issue of sin and thus slip into a state of cheap grace:
“Cheap grace is the grace we
bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without
requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without
confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross,
grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship)
Sē’lah
My book on
prayer,
First Think, Then
Pray
is now available
on Amazon Kindle.
(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence.
Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. The meditations are
published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/
and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may
subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.
Copyright © 2024 by Alex M. Knight
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House
Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream,
Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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