Clough John Lesson 67

Resurrection and Appearances to Disciples – John 20:18-23

Turn to Luke 24 as some background on the passage before us tonight. We are studying the last two chapters of the Gospel of John, chapters 20-21, the resurrection of the Word; we said last time that the significance of the resurrection is not just that a body rose from the dead, that was expected. The Pharisees believed in resurrection of bodies from the dead. What was special about the resurrection of Christ was the time that the body rose from the dead. The rising of dead bodies to life again wasn’t supposed to happen until the end of history. It was never supposed to happen in the middle of history. And so when Jesus Christ rose from the dead in the middle of history instead of rising from the dead at the end of history, it showed people everywhere that history had ended as far as He personally was concerned, that history is already over completely in the person of Christ and that therefore we have assurance that all the other pieces of history will come to a victorious conclusion also. If one piece, the most center of all the pieces, if that piece has successfully won out then surely all the other pieces will.

Someone handed in a feedback card asking about the resurrection of the body from the dead, questioning the statement that I made that God cannot heal a sin cursed mortal body. They said but what do you do about the transition from the mortal body to the resurrection. Ah, but the transition is not a healing of the mortal body, it’s a transformation of the mortal body. It’s not a healing; the mortal body, after it’s been transformed is no longer mortal, you’ve had a change of state. As liquid water freezes and turns to the solid state of ice, it is no longer liquid, it’s solid. And my point was that God couldn’t heal the liquid as liquid; He can only solve the problem by shifting the state. So therefore we have the shift from the mortal to the immortal body, both for the damned and for the saved.

Now throughout John there have been various series of evidences listed, all of these to express the long-range hope; to show first of all Christ did rise from the dead. The little linen cloth and tonight in the passage that we will study the doors are shut, all these are details to focus attention on the reality of Christ’s resurrection and therefore the end of history in Him. It’s as though we already know what the end of the film is going to be before we go to the film and therefore we can be assured that no matter how hairy things look halfway through the film we know everything’s going to come out right in the end because Christ has already reached the end. That’s the true significance of the resurrection and that is the basis for the Christian hope; hope being the long-range application of the faith technique.

Now on that first day of the week when Mary encountered the Lord Jesus Christ, we studied that, showing how Christ dealt with this woman, on that same day in Luke 24:13 we have the famous incident on the Emmaus road, an incident which we studied in the book of Acts, in the introduction. This happened on that day and it happened before the event that we’re going to study in John 10. Two of the disciples, in verse 13, “were going that same day to a village called Emmaus, [which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.] [14] And as they were talking together [of all these things which had happened,] [15] It came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoning, that Jesus Himself drew near, and was with going with them. [16] But their eyes were blinded that they did not see who He was,” and He played with them a little bit, until as they’ve admitted in verses 21-22, “But we were trusting that it had been He who should have delivered Israel; [and besides all this, today is] the third day…. [22] And even certain women made us astonished who were early at the sepulcher this morning, [23] When they found not His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels [who said that He was alive,]” the implicit statement not being said that we don’t trust what the women say. [24] “And certain of those who were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even as the woman had said; but Him they saw not.” Still not believing in a resurrection, only believing in an empty tomb.

And then Luke 24:25-27, the most famous Bible class of all history, “Then He said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [26] Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? [27] And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself.” That was the most fantastic Bible class of all time. Jesus Christ Himself interpreted the key passages of the Old Testament to explain Himself, His being, His work and His mission. And it’s those passages that He taught those men that were later used on the Day of Pentecost and in the great sermons in the book of Acts. That’s why Psalm 110 occurs so often; that’s why Psalm 2 occurs so often, that’s why Psalm 16 occurs so often; the quotations out of the Old Testament are quotations that Christ taught the disciples to make.

And the subjective result of true Bible teaching of this order is found in a few other verses; verse 32, “And they said one to another,” after Christ had disappeared, “Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us along the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” That’s the subjective response of the regenerated heart when great truths are seen. It’s not that this means that this happens all the time but it certainly happens when all of a sudden you’ve studied Scripture and studied Scripture and then suddenly some night, some day, some evening when you’ve meditated and thought about it, it all clicks together and there’s an internal excitement of the heart. That internal excitement is exactly what was going on here; it is a true moving of the Holy Spirit in the real sense of the moving of the Spirit. All this had happened that first Sunday.

Now we turn to John 20:19, for the follow-up event. Mary has seen Jesus, she’s talked with them; they’ve checked the empty tomb claim and it’s been borne out; the disciples on the Emmaus Road have spotted Him, have talked with Him, and they come back to Jerusalem. Now in verse 19, apparently the last momentous showing of Christ on that first Sunday, this time in the evening. “Then the same day at evening,” please notice that in verse 1 the emphasis is on the first day of the week; in verse 19, emphasis on the first day of the week; in verse 26 when Jesus shows up again exactly in the same room, this time to Thomas, it’s on the first day of the week. And also notice in 1 Corinthians 16:2 emphasis on the first day of the week. This is why we worship on Sundays.

There was a shift from the Sabbath on the Saturday to Sunday and the shift was the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and therefore the early Christians, though they were Jews and did celebrate Sabbath, they worshiped as Christians on Sunday morning; every Sunday they had a sunrise service because Sunday was the day of the week that Christ rose. It also goes back to the seven days of creation. And that’s why people who do not accept literal days in Genesis get in trouble, because if you take those literal days, the first day and the seventh day have special significance in creation week for it was on the seventh day that God had finished all the work and He rested. And therefore it as the Jew’s day to rest on the same seventh day. God didn’t rest for thousands of years, it’s a literal 24 hour day God rested; it becomes the archetype of the Jewish Sabbath. And so just as God rested on the literal Sabbath so the Jews rested on the literal Sabbath. All the work is finished. The Sabbath rest in Judaism pictured God’s complete work, the end of history, the confidence that history would come out okay.

But now the Christians move into the first day and in the Genesis text what happened on the first day? God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” And so Christians worship on the first day of the week because all the way from creation it was then that the light dawned; when the light of the new age began, Christians worship on the first day because it is the first of the last days, the first of the new heavens and the new earth, and so emphasis on the first day of the week.

Now it says in the details, and again watch the Apostle John because he’s trying to prove something and he lets us in on these little details. He says, “… being the first day of the week, when the doors had been shut,” perfect tense, “had been shut where the disciples were assembling,” imperfect tense, continually, “where the disciples were assembling because of the fear of the Jews,” now over and over again we have said that John states something that can be taken three or four different ways and here is another one of those statements. The doors are shut, the believers are hiding… from what? Fear of the world system. And so it’s a literal event that happened in a literal room with a literal number of men who literally shut the door and who literally were afraid of the Jews outside the city of Jerusalem. That much is correct, but more than that is correct.

This becomes a picture of believers who would exist behind closed doors perpetually afraid of the world persecution unless Christ did for these 19 centuries what He did for these Jews at this point in history. There’s a correspondence between this local action in the room, and all of what we would be like if Christ had not created the Church the way He has. If He had just allowed individual believes to exist in the 19 centuries since He’s left and had not congealed us into one united body on earth, if He had not done that we would still be perpetually fearful and hiding behind closed doors. But God created the Church and the story of that creation is given in chapter 20. So therefore the doors were shut, the people are afraid; the prophecy of the upper room discourse has come true.

And then Jesus comes and He stands in the middle of the place where the disciples are afraid an says “Shalom” which is the Jewish word, “how are you,” peace, hello. […came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”] Now that picture of Jesus Christ coming as the resurrected Christ in the middle of the disciples is a picture of the entire Church Age. Turn to Revelation 1. Revelation chapters 1-3 gives an inspection; it shows you how Jesus Christ conducts a general inspection of local churches throughout history. In Revelation 10:1 the Apostle John says, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” apparently worshiping on the first day of the week, he “heard a tremendous voice,” when it says “as of a trumpet,” it means just a shrill piercing voice, [11] “Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,” those of you who have been in family training program ought to be immediately aware of what has just happened with that phrase. And then the instructions come to the Apostle, “What you see, write in a book, and send it to the [seven] churches…. [12] And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And being turned, I saw [instead] seven golden candlesticks,” or really lampstands. [13] And in the middle of the seven candlesticks, one like the Son of man,” now it goes on to describe what the candles are in verse 20, “The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which you saw are the seven churches.” So verse 20 tells us very clearly what the candle-sticks are, they are local churches. But when we look in verse 13 who do we see walking in the middle of the local churches on the face of the earth? The resurrected Christ, that’s who. And so just as the resurrected Christ appears in the room, on the face of this earth, quietly and silently and mysteriously, so Jesus Christ the God-man walks the face of the earth, watching His local churches and tending His flock. Jesus Christ does, apparently, leave the throne room to visit local churches on earth, unknown to local churches but He is here and He visits occasionally.

Let’s turn to back to John and look what He does; He gives them the greeting, Shalom, My peace. This is the greeting prophesied in John 14:27 where He said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” We said when we exegeted verse 27 that the point He’s making there is that the world cannot give sovereignly; the world, apart from God’s grace doesn’t have immutability; it therefore does not have eternal stability. There can be no permanent giving. So when Christ says “I give you My peace, but not as the world gives,” it draws emphasis to the fact that as God, he can sovereignly bestow a quality upon the Church and the Church will never lose the quality. In spite of even the volition of men the Church will never lose that quality because God has sovereignly given it to the Church and this is why He can say “the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.” And then it says in John 14:28, “You have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If you loved Me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father; for My Father is greater than I.” He’s talking about His position at the Father’s right hand; He’s talking about the great things that He has given to the Church for which they ought to be thankful and which in turn produce the Shalom or the peace.

What are some of the things in context. In verse 28 in context it means that He’s going to assume command of the universe, no longer as just God, but as God-man, and that means that tonight the universe if run by the God-man. The universe is not run by Satan; Satan has an area and a domain but don’t ever worship Satan; don’t watch too many Exorcists and Omen’s because all those films tend to leave you with the impression that Satan has the last word. Christians believe not Satan but Christ has the last word. Now Jesus Christ promised other things in this context; in verse 26 He promised that the Holy Spirit would be given to them, and that the giving of the Holy Spirit would form the foundations of peace. He also says that the Holy Spirit “shall teach you all things,” and that’s reference to the New Testament canon, so at least three things are given. First, the reign of Christ as the God-man over the universe, verse 28; second, the giving of the Holy Spirit, verse 26, and third, the giving of the New Testament canon taught by the Holy Spirit, verse 26.

All of these represent the peace that Christ gives. The peace that Christ gives is the peace that has an objective reference. For example, let’s go back to the days of Noah; illustration of this peace. God designed the ark; God did not have the benefit of naval architecture, He did not have the benefit of much civil and mechanical engineering techniques, but since God is omniscient and he has never learned anything, He did not have to learn anything and therefore He designed the perfect vessel for Noah. There was no need to modify this vessel in any way. The vessel objectively would give perfect peace in the middle of judgment…perfect peace! And had Noah and his sons not made the vessel exactly according to the blueprint, the vessel would not have been perfect. It was perfect only because of that. As Dr. Crawford showed the film, if you got a chance to see the particular piece of wood that was received at the mountains of Ararat, you noticed pitch on that particular piece of wood went all the way through the knots and into the core of the wood, and no pitch today is known to do that. So the particular pitch that Noah pitched the ark with was a particular kind. It had tremendous penetration abilities and as you saw, you see it also had great cementation qualities of hardening up the pieces of wood.

So Noah and his family could walk aboard this ark and they would survive regardless of whether they had to take Bromo Seltzer, regardless of how many ulcers they had in the process, or whether they were perfectly relaxed in the process. The peace was an objective peace. It was given to them independently of their emotions, independently of their feelings. They could choose to be upset but perfectly safe, or they could choose to be relaxed and perfectly safe. The choice wasn’t whether they were going to be safe; the choice was over whether they were going to enjoy the safety or the ark or not enjoy it. So now the peace that is given here by Jesus Christ is a peace that has an objective basis. It does not hinge on your emotions; it does not hinge on something you can or cannot do; it is completely existent independently of you and you can chose to reject it, you can chose to be upset, you can chose to not have peace, that’s your choice, but as far as the objective state before God you have perfect peace; it’s because of what Christ has done.

Now Christ has that on His mind when He comes into the room in John 20:19; that’s why He says to them, “Peace now be unto you.” So that means that something is going to happen to these disciples at this point. The objective peace is going to be given to them; not the subjective peace, He’s not just saying oh guys, I wish you’d relax and trust the Word. Now that’s a nice thing but that’s not what’s meant here. “Peace be unto you” means something even more powerful than that. It means that He is now at this point going to show what He’s going to do in history to bring the peace into existence like Noah’s ark was physically brought into existence by Noah and his son working on it.

So John 20:20, “And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. [21] Then said Jesus to them again,” notice John repeats and we surely know enough of John to know that this apostle never repeats unless he really has something in store for us. So Jesus said “again, Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. [22] And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. [23] Whosoever’s sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” A very complicated passage and difficult to interpret but this is an adumbration or picture of Pentecost that is coming up and He is demonstrating, just like He did with the footwashing in the upper room discourse, actually physically doing it, He is physically breathing on them to show them what is about to transpire on the day of Pentecost when a new thing is created, the Church; a new, entirely new age.

But before He gets to the giving of the Spirit He must prove a point and the point is in verse 20, He shows them His hands and His side. This is a set of evidences necessary for them to know that He’s not a spirit; necessary for them to know it’s a new age and therefore the existence of the Church hinges on the physical resurrection of Christ. Now please notice this argument in the text. Next time you hear some liberal clergyman tell you that the resurrection of Jesus could have been a spiritual thing, could have been anything, it doesn’t have to be physical, please notice in this context the breathing out of the Spirit comes after he has shown His literal physical resurrection. The existence of the Church could not have happened apart from Christ’s literal rising from the grave in a transformed body. Don’t let anyone sell you, when you go to Bahiullah and he tells you that Christ’s physical resurrection is not physical, it was really spiritual, or when you come to the liberal who says the same thing that the Orientals are saying, regardless of who’s saying it, they’re wrong. There is a physical resurrection of Christ! Without it kiss the whole thing off; throw out your New Testament and quit trying to be a Christian. That’s the option, don’t be some fence-sitting halfwit. Either be a nice healthy agnostic atheist type or be a fundamental Christian but don’t be one of these middle-term fairies that floats from one side of the fence to the other.

Now let me show you how important the resurrection is. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15; this is one of the key passages in the New Testament that authenticates the existence of the Church; please notice the logic of Paul in this passage. Remember this passage to haul out and use the next time some halfwit walks up and makes an inane statement. Look at what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 15:13, he says, “If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen; [14] And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching is false [also in vain],” he is willing to cancel the entire apostolic message if Christ did not physically rise from the dead. And then he goes on to say, verse 17, if the physical resurrection hasn’t occurred, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is also phony [in vain],” so it does matter whether Christ rose from the dead, because “ye are yet in your sins.” And verse 18, those “who are fallen asleep in Christ,” that is dead Christians, “are perished,” there’s no hope for them. So kiss it off if there’s physical resurrection, forget it. There either is a physical resurrection and salvation or nothing. That’s the choice.

But then he goes on and adds this: he says, verse 22, “For as in Adam all die,” that’s the imputed sin, “as in Adam all die,” positionally, “even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” notice all will be made alive, both the damned and the elect; the damned so they can enjoy the lake of fire forever. [23] “But every man in his own order,” please notice there is a sequence to the resurrection in Christ, just as in Adam, originally there was only one Adam and one Eve, and then there were sons and daughters and then there were the races that developed out of Noah and his sons, so you have the great plethora of people that we know as the human race, with all the subdivisions and so on, the cultural groups and the so-called racial groups and so on, all of these have come out of Adam in their order, and so also here, the same with Christ; Christ at first is the only one resurrected, and then just as out of Adam came groups of the human race, so out of Christ will come different resurrections. [23] “But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His Second Return [coming].” Verse 24, “Then comes the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. [25] For He must reign, till he put all enemies under His feet. [26] The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” physical death. And Christ will continue to reign in the war of history until the angelic conflict is terminated by the destruction of death. Verse 27, “For He has put all things under His feet….” Verse 28, “And when all things shall be subdued unto Christ, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”

Now you’ve got the second Adam, Christ, fulfilling the creation mandate to subdue the earth. We, by ourselves, as depraved beings, cannot fulfill the creation mandate to subdue the earth. We can only fulfill that in Christ now because only in Christ do we have a mandate that works, the power to operate according to that mandate. And part of subduing the earth is to subdue the earth under the feet. Now this is where angels are tied to the physical existence, they’re not some Greek thing that’s totally immaterial. Angels show up in the Bible in physical forms and so therefore when it says subdue the ground under the feet it includes the angelic powers of the ground under your feet. Where did Satan come from? He didn’t come from above in a bird; he came an animal from below, showing that the satanic forces and powers and demons originally were in the ground and therefore they were literally under man’s feet and man was to walk on them and to subdue them. But man didn’t do that, so now the angelic powers of evil are in the air above us, and so we must have somebody above the air to walk on them. And who’s above in the air? The Lord Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand.

So Jesus Christ reigning from God’s throne subdues the angelic powers; He does so by means of the Church and therefore this resurrection that begins in verse 23, Christ starts it and then finally it winds up at the end, this sequence of resurrections that happen in history are part and parcel of the ongoing victory program of the subduing of the universe under the feet of Jesus Christ. We, in this era, from Pentecost to the rapture, we have a part in that ongoing sequence of events. And through the Church the world will be subdued in a certain particular way. How? Christ explains in the passage coming up back in John 20.

Christ said to them again, [21] “My Peace be unto you,” having proven now He is physically risen, it is a bona fide resurrection; He is now qualified to lead in this great battle, “as My Father has sent Me, I send you.” Now how did the Father send the Son? He sent Him supernaturally, we could say that. We could say the Father sent the Son, though, in the best way sovereignly. It was perfectly certain that Jesus Christ would never sin, the doctrine of impeccability. Jesus Christ was certain of victory and so when He says “as My Father sent Me, I send you,” means that the Church is guaranteed victory in history. All right, then it says, [22] “He breathed on them, and said [unto them], Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Now what is the breathing of verse 22? The breathing of verse 22 is a picture of what is going to happen on the day of Pentecost when Christ gets to the Father’s right hand and sends the Spirit. Now people think actually something happened in verse 22 and there’s a lot of interpreters that do this, but the interpreters that have studied the Gospel of John in context and know how John describes things, know that this is typical of the style of John. You can go back in the upper room and what did Christ do? He washed the feet of the disciples. And then some people take the ludicrous position that washing feet is a sacrament and some local bodies of churches down through history have actually practiced the washing of feet as a sacrament; but that’s not what Christ is doing. He is picturing a spiritual truth by means of a dramatic physical role-playing situation. And so it’s the same thing here; it’s a role playing physical presentation of something that will happen when He sets up the Church. So He says you’re going to receive the Holy Spirit, receive that Spirit when He comes you receive Him. Notice He breathes, which shows you that there is preserved in Scripture the careful symbolism of wind and breath and spirit.

But now He makes this peculiar statement in John 20:23; after having shown that He’s resurrected, that He is going to rule as the resurrected Son of man at the Father’s right hand, that there are going to be a sequence of resurrections, there’s going to be this flow in history, the Church has been sent as He has been sent, the Holy Spirit has been given to the Church now of all things, he makes this statement: “Whosoever’s sins you all,” plural, all Christians “remit, they have been remitted; and whosoever’s sins ye are retaining, they have been retained.” The verbs to “retain” and “remit” are perfect tense which means something in the past that continues, a very sobering statement. He says if you remit them, aorist tense, at a point in time, then they have been remitted. And then the second part of verse 23 says if you retain, present tense, if you continue to retain them, they have already been retained. So at the least we can say in verse 23 is that some action the Church does on the face of the earth is linked in one to one correspondence with the action of God Himself in heaven, in particular, in some way “ye,” which is the plural, you all, not just the apostles please notice, this is not just the apostles, disciples are being there in verse 19, not just apostles. Thomas isn’t there so not all the apostles are there. The “ye” in verse 23 refers to every Christian, believers, the church as a whole. “Whoever’s sins the church as a whole remits, they have been remitted or forgiven. So the Church actually does something at a point in time on the face of the earth to remit sins and that shows that those sins have been remitted in heaven.

Similarly, he says the Church will do some action on the face of the earth by which men’s sins will be retained and that shows that their sins have been retained in heaven. Now obviously you don’t have to think too far to become quite alarmed over what this may mean that the Church is responsible for. So we must therefore go to four different views of the Church that have occurred down through history. There are a lot more but these are four major views of the Church and to each one of these views we’ll show how the view of the Church determines the interpretation of verse 23. Verse 23 cannot be interpreted by itself; verse 23 has to be interpreted in what we all in doctrine, ecclesiology, that is the doctrine of the Church; it has got to be linked to that doctrine.

Let’s go to the first view of the Church which is the Roman Catholic view; let’s see what Rome says the Church is. I’m doing this, not because we’re hesitant on what the interpretation is but I’ve found in teaching that it’s a valuable device to show you the opposites to give you the truth; you get some sort of a parameter in your mind of if it isn’t this, it’s this and this just sharpens your perception of what the truth is by showing you some erroneous views.

In John 20:23 we’re going to assume that we have the Roman Catholic view of the church, which is as follows: the Catholic position is that there is an invisible and visible element but not church; in other words, you will never find a Catholic theologian speaking of the invisible church. You will find him speaking of invisible elements of the church but never the invisible church; there ain’t no such thing in Roman Catholic theology as an invisible Church. The church is the Roman Catholic Church. Now in recent days, since Vatican II of 1962 the Catholic theology is so confused I don’t think the Catholics know what they believe any longer, but back before those days there was a defined set of dogmas and here’s one of the great Catholic theologians, Eugene Meyers, who writes this about their dogma. I cite this man, I’ll cite another man to show you what they say, not what I say, these are their people.

(Quote) “The Church is the body of Christ and the Holy Ghost is the soul of that body, for the Holy Ghost does in the Church all that the soul does in the body. Therefore, if we wish to live of the Holy Ghost, if we wish to remain united with Him we must persevere in the Catholic faith, for just as a member amputated from the body is no longer vivified by the soul, so he who has ceased to belong to the Catholic Church receives no more the life of the Holy Spirit. The Catholic Church is alone the body of Christ, consequently those who are outside the Catholic Church do not have the Spirit of God.” That is classic Roman Catholic dogma; the Church is the body of Christ, the visible organization is the body of Christ.

Carl Adam, another of the Catholic theologians, (quote), “The Catholic Church feels and knows herself as the Church of Christ in the emphatic exclusivist sense, as the visible revelation in space and time of the redemptive powers which proceed from Christ her head, as the body of Christ, as the one means of salvation. To admit even the possibility that the final ecumenical union of Christendom could take place other than in the Roman Catholic Church and through the Roman Catholic Church would be a betrayal of her most precious knowledge, that she alone is Christ’s own Church,” (end quote). By the way, that’s a warning to all liberal ecumenicalists who think that they can dandy around with Rome and come out with some sort of half-Protestant, half-Rome; no you don’t, not if you deal with Roman Catholics who know what they’re doing.

So in this view if the visible Roman Catholic Church is the body of Christ, the John 20:23 means this; it means that the Pope and the Catholic priesthood have the right not just to pronounce the forgiveness of sins, they have the right to prevent you from entering the kingdom, and they have the right to join you to the kingdom. The Catholic organization itself stands at the door of the kingdom and it can open and shut it and damn your soul or bless your soul. It is the organization of Christ on earth. That follows in verse 23 if you take the Roman Catholic view of the Church.

A second view of the Church is the liberal, the neo-orthodox Protestant view. This could be anything because liberal Protestantism has lost its way seriously, it no longer holds to Scripture and when you abandon Scriptures as your control, then anybody’s opinion, sort of like in the philosophy classes, instead studying Descartes or something they’ll just put Descartes out there, now what do you think Descartes says; of course no one ever opens the book so it’s 60 minutes of discussion about what somebody thinks Descartes said, but no reference to what Descartes really did say, just what somebody thought he said, the sharing and pooling of ignorance, like a lot of Christian Bible study, what do you think Matthew means? What do you think Mark means? Of course Mark is never seriously studied; well, I think Mark means this; well I think Mark means that. And that’s how the so-called Christian Bible studies go on, the blind leading the blind and they both fall into the ditch. Arius fell in the cesspool and so are they if they keep on that way.

So the liberal view of the Church is a very confused view because everybody has his own opinion; that’s the liberal Protestant position, that’s the neo-orthodox position, there is no control in what the Church is so you have the great single word used by the liberal clergyman today, the magic word is “community.” Community of what? Well, the Methodists are debating whether the homosexuals are a part of the community, and maybe in San Francisco they’re debating whether the prostitutes are part of the community, so it depends where you go. Either you go to Dallas, San Francisco or some place, you’ll get into different community but the question is which community? Which community is it, how do you define the community. Liberal Protestantism can’t tell you. In some cases as in Germany in the 1930’s it was if you joined the Nazi party you were in the community. That’s real great, it just depends on the time and point in history where you area. So liberal Protestantism doesn’t know what it believes. All it knows is that you’d better not be part of a splinter group of an independent fundamental church because they sure aren’t the community. It’s most interesting, all of a sudden anybody, including homos and prostitutes can be in the community except the fundamentalists; they definitely can’t be.

So let’s look at the fallacy of liberal Protestantism, liberalism. They argue, some community, undefined, now this community has some continuity with history, the great denominations, they insist that there is continuity, that they stand in the continuity of historic Christianity. And they do so because my father was a member of the First XYZ Church and my grandfather was a member of the First XYZ Church, the Apostle Paul was a member of the First SYZ Church and so we have continuity. Now it doesn’t matter what the first XYZ Church teaches today, they may teach exactly opposite to what Paul taught but that doesn’t matter because you all were sometime a member of the same club. So like the football team, you could have atheists on the football team or Christians on the football team, it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you play football. And that’s the liberal position of the Church, it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you have community, whatever that is. So there’s a historic continuity of community; that’s the most you can say for liberal Protestantism. But since liberal Protestantism doesn’t have any idea of sin they’re not too concerned with verses like John 20:23. The only sin that they’re concerned with is that you not oppose socialism. That’s the unpardonable sin because if you do that you’re an irresponsible individualist, some sort of bigot, or someone else, so one mustn’t get into the way of the kingdom of socialism on earth. But verse 23 is just simply bypassed by the liberal Protestant position on the Church.

The third view of the Church, the neo-evangelical groups represented, such as Christianity Today, Campus Crusade for Christ, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and so on. The neo-evangelical view of the Church. The argument here is that the neo-evangelical view of the Church is that we maintain the historic continuity, first XYZ, by constantly maintaining a believing remnant inside it. We don’t say that everyone is born again but we just say that the born again people ought to save the sinking ship and stay inside it. Here’s E. J. Carnell, who says (quote): “Unfaithful ministers do not,” repeat, “do not render the Church apostate.” (end quote) This is the position of the new evangelicals. Another position, Harold John Ackengay [sp?], “Evangelicals should infiltrate and strengthen the things that remain and possibly resume control of such denominations,” (end quote). The plan is infiltration and capturing a local remnant inside the major denominations. That has been the neo-evangelical position in the Church; this is why they work the way they do in their evangelism and their evangelistic programs; it flows out of their view of the Church.

Now what would their interpretation be of John 20:23? We’re not saying that all of them would accept it this way but generally there would be a correlation of interpretation of verse 23 with this view of the Church, and it’d go something like this, that verse 23 refers to the proclamation of the gospel, that when a person witnesses, then whoever sins remit they’re remitted, that means forgiven, that means that when you witness and the person responds to Christ, you say your sins are forgiven because you’ve responded to Christ. It is a pronouncement in other words, in verse 23, not a causation; it is an announcement of what has happened on earth but not a literal causing of the sins to be forgiven, and not a literal retaining of the sins that are forgiven because the Church, by definition is made up of believers and unbelievers, and you just hope that statistically you win out.

Now the fundamentalist view of the Church, which is different from the neo-evangelicals. The fundamentalist view of the Church, held by Dallas Seminary, Bob Jones University, many of the Bible Churches, the Bible Presbyterian movement, the Orthodox Presbyterian movement, the Bible Baptist movement, and many of the Conservative Baptist movements, these are the fundamentalists in this regard. They follow the words of J. Gresham Machen who said this: “What is the trouble with the visible Church? What is the reason for its weakness? There are perhaps many causes of weakness but one cause is perfectly plain. The Church of today has been unfaithful to her Lord by admitting great companies of non-Christian personnel, not only into her membership but into her teaching agency. If the liberal party, therefore, gains control of any organization, evangelical Christians ought to be prepared to withdraw immediately, no matter what the cost.” That’s the fundamentalist position; whenever the regenerate group loses control they are to separate themselves from apostate organizations and not be a part of it and not infiltrate it, and therefore the fundamentalist in their evangelism do not cooperate with churches that have been won over to the liberal side of the fence; there just isn’t any cooperation and cooperative evangelism because the fundamentals have one view of the Church, and the neo-evangelicals have another view of the Church, and that’s why there’s distress and the strain it operates.

So fundamentalists have distinguished two elements, the invisible church and the visible church. The invisible church, or the body of Christ, is made up of every born again Christian. That is, it’s called invisible not because the people are invisible but it’s called invisible because you can’t tell exactly where the boundaries are. For example, a pastor teaches in his congregation, he has 100 people in his congregation, he can’t really be sure every one of those 100 people are born again. There might be 10-15 people in even a heavy Bible teaching church that go through the motions and fool everybody but never have been born again. So the pastor, not having omniscience, can’t tell that; all that he can do is constantly teach the Word, teach the Word, teach the Word, teach the Word. That’s the only thing he can do; there’s no X-ray machine that can tell the difference. So the invisible body is that group of people that God alone knows who are genuinely born again.

Now what about the visible body? That is the local churches, whatever they may be and wherever they may be, local churches plus other Christian groups. Now in our day there’s an extreme, as we always find in theology, it’s one person taking one side and one person going to the other, there are a lot of fundamentalists who bank so heavy on the invisible Church that local church membership means nothing to them. Well, I’m in the body; it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m a member of this church or that church. That’s an extreme and it’s a heretical version of the true doctrine of the Church. It does matter whether you are associated with a local assembly or not; there is no room in Scripture for a real person who is a real Christian who has been truly regenerated to be floating just out in space some place. It’s remarkable to watch some of the pastors of fundamental churches get together once in a while in Lubbock and it’s interesting that somebody will say, hey, did so and so leave your church recently? Yeah, they left my church four months ago, I wonder where they are now. And there’s people we’ve tracked about 5 or 6 churches in a row and today they’re not in any local church. They apparently know so much more than 6 or 7 pastors; there’s not one church of the 400 in the city of Lubbock that can satisfy them; amazing people that have such lofty standards that Bible teaching can’t fit those standards. Now if that’s really the case, and not one of the 400 churches can satisfy the person, their biblical obligation is to start another church then, and let’s see what they’re made of, see if they can stand the close inner company of a functioning local church and usually they can’t so they don’t want anything to do with it; that’s why you have lone rangers in all these little club meetings around town. So they’re the ones who have extreme emphasis on the invisible Church.

Now obviously the pendulum doesn’t stop there, it swings over to the other side and you have fundamentalists who so emphasize the visible church that you’ve got one church around here that thinks it is the bride of Christ on the face of the earth. Now that’s because they have totally ignored the fact that you cannot tell the true born again group but if you have been baptized and are a member of their congregation, that’s it, free ticket all the way. Now that’s an extreme version. The truth lies between here and that is that the visible church is important; the visible church is important because that is where your spirituality is seen; Hebrews 10:25 says you are to habitually assemble yourselves together, and in context that’s not a little club meeting, that’s a local church functioning and so since that is a mandate of Scripture and if a lone ranger habitually disobeys Hebrews 20:25 they can’t be Christians because they’d be out of fellowship so much they’d get disciplined by God. So association with a local church is a major issue of importance. Now, on the converse we always have to recognize that in every Christian group you will have unregenerate professing people; statistically you’re always going to get this, simply because we’re not omniscient, we don’t know. We try to filter it out as best you can but at the end you always have an imperfect filter.

Now with the fundamentalist view of the Church what is the interpretation of John 20:23? We’ve seen if the Catholic view is right verse 23 means the hierarchy of the Church has the power to affect you spiritually; they can come between you spiritually. We’ve seen the liberal Protestant view, they don’t know what they believe and so therefore it’s useless to ask them what verse 23 means. We talked to the neo-evangelical and he says well the Church is made up of believers and unbelievers and all we’re interested in is the godly remnant and so therefore we’re going to hang verse 23 on the idea of its proclaiming something; we proclaim the forgiveness of sin. But that’s not what verse 23 says. No matter how hard you read verse 23 there’s not a word in there about proclaiming anything. It’s talking about actually causing the forgiveness of sins and actually retaining. In this sense the Roman Catholic Church is correct, the body of Christ itself does stand between the unregenerate man and Jesus Christ and here’s how. We’re now talking not about a local church, but the invisible body of Christ. The only problem with the Catholic position on the thing is that they’ve made their organization equal to that; that’s not what we’re doing. That is not an organization, it’s an organism; it can’t be identified with any one organization, but the Catholic theologian is absolutely correct when he says that the body of Christ does stand between men and God, and I’ll show it to you and prove it to you now on the basis of a series of verse references.

Turn to Matthew 10:11-15, this is the sobering position that born again believers are thrust into. The principle is shown back in the days when Christ sent out the apostles throughout all these areas of Israel. He says, as he commissions them, “And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide till ye go from there. [12] And when you come into an house, salute [greet] it. [13] And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. [14] And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. [15] Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” These men are proclaiming the Word of God and when the Word of God is rejected the men have the right to pronounce judgment upon those people in the name of Christ. They have turned against Christ’s message, mediated to them as apostles.

Matthew 10:40, here is the principle stated in a very clear verse, no problem with it, just as clear as can be, “He that receives you receives Me, and he that receives Me receives him that sent Me. [41] He that receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. [42] And whoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no way lose his reward.” Obviously Christ is teaching that the men who are proclaiming His Word are in some way identified with Him, it is as though Christ Himself were there, in their stead, and therefore the village’s reaction to the message of Christ mediated to them through the men is the village’s reaction to Christ Himself.

Turn for further amplification in the Gospel of Matthew, the principle occurs early in the proclamation of the kingdom but it carries over in the Church Age, which I’ll also prove in a moment. Matthew 16:18, again the Catholic Church is right in one respect, in saying that the body of Christ mediates salvation to humanity; it’s wrong in identifying the body of Christ with itself. Notice verses 15-17 first, “He said unto them, But who say you that I am? [16] Simon Peter answered and said, You art the Christ, the Son of the living God. [17] And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but My Father, who is in heaven.” And so He’s commending Peter of the basis of the revelation that Peter has gained, the belief that Peter has seized. Peter has accepted the message and now as a result of verse 17, then He says, “I say also unto thee, You art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” In other words, what is it about Peter that is meritorious? Not Peter, it was Peter just did in verse 17; he confesses Jesus as the Christ, he responded to the Word of God and because Peter responded to the Word of God, therefore Jesus said that will be the boundary of My church; those who respond to My message and recognize Me for who I am, and it’s on that basis and that basis alone I build My church. Verse 19, “Then I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” so therefore the somber authority that how men respond to Peter and the apostles is how they respond to Jesus Christ.

Turn to Matthew 18:18, lest we think that that just refers to evangelism. In verses 15-18 we have internal church discipline, we have the keys of the kingdom mentioned again, verse 15 is talking about settling difficulties in the sight of the congregation. “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone;” notice, privacy, you don’t blab it all over the place, “if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother,” you keep it quiet, you keep it confined only to those people immediately involved. You don’t run and ask somebody for advice on it or something; that just spreads dirty linen all over the place. The principle of verse 15 is conserve the dirty linen to just those people immediately involved. Verse 16, “But if he will not hear you, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” And now you have to bring others as impartial outside observers; this is talking about a church trial. Verse 17, “And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church,” that doesn’t mean everybody in the church, it’s talking about the rulership of the church, and if he neglects to hear the church,” that’s when the board of the church rebukes someone who has not responded to step one in verse 15, or step two in verse 16, it becomes a matter for the church, “but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an unbeliever [heathen man and a tax collector].” You can consider him an unbeliever, Christ says, if a man has rejected the admonition of one believer, if he’s rejected the admonition of several believers, and if he has gone so far to reject the admonition of the entire board of believers, Christ says you assume that he’s unregenerate. And then He adds in verse 18, “Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” equating the functioning of the board of a church with the functioning of Christ in heaven Himself. And so again we have the very sobering principle that persons response to the body of Christ is identical to their response to Jesus Christ, because who is it that indwells the body of Christ but Christ; it’s a corollary if you think it through, it’s a corollary of the indwelling Christ.

Now to show you this isn’t just for the kingdom age of the gospel but was followed through, turn to Acts 13:51 where we now are in the Church Age yet the same thing applies. The apostles are on a missionary journey, they go into a community and this community fails to respond to their verbal message; it fails to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ clearly presented and what do the apostles do? In verse 51, “But they shook off the durst from their feet against them,” doing exactly what Jesus Christ did and told them to do. You preach the Word of God and people reject, write them off.

Now we’ll moderate this in a moment with some advice but I want to show you the principle. Identification with Christ is so profound on the part of the body of Christ that people’s response to that body is their response to Christ; there’s no difference. There’s no argument ever allowed in Scripture that says well, if Christ Himself taught me the gospel, then I’d believe but I’m not going to buy it from secondary sources, Christians. Huh-un, the secondary sources, the Christians, have the spiritual authority of Christ, period.

Now let’s go to some more passages in John himself; 1 John; again the Catholic theologian is very close to being correct, the body of Christ does stand between men and heaven, it’s just that it’s not their organization. It’s that amorphous group of believers in history. 1 John 1:1-3, notice the reference that John says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. [2] For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and we bear witness, and we show it unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was shown to us.” So verses 1-2 are saying that I, the apostle John, am proclaiming a message proclaimed to me by Christ, I passed it on and proclaimed to you. Verse 3, “That which we have seen and heard,” notice content, not experience, content, “That which we have seen and heard we declare unto you,” you can’t declare feelings, you’ve got to declare content, “we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us,” notice in the wording in verse 3, it’s a blockbuster if you’ve never noticed it before, “that you may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father,” now don’t tell me that the apostles don’t stand between you and Christ, they still do.

You can’t come to Christ unless you do come to the Father and here’s why. Jesus Christ is in heaven and He has mediated the apostles and prophets to be the foundation of the one universal church. Those apostles and prophets proclaim the Word of God and it’s your response to their teaching that decides whether you’re responding to Christ. See, you can’t respond to Christ because Christ isn’t here. He’s in heaven, so the only criteria of salvation is your response to Christ’s appointed representatives, and salvation is measured by whether you respond to His measured representatives. The apostles and prophets proclaim the New Testament canon and you have to have fellowship with the apostles before you can be saved.

Now let me explain this statement; the reason this statement is true, and you can say well, I didn’t have any fellowship with John and I was saved, oh yes you did, because if you were saved you had to believe the message that John taught. And therefore at the point you became a Christian you were face to face with the apostle’s message; that’s exactly what he said. What does he say, he’s not shaking your hand in verse 3, he’s declaring a verbal message in verse 3, so you cannot be saved apart from encountering the message of the apostles. The apostles and fathers do stand between every member of the human race and salvation in Christ. No one can be saved apart from meeting Christ through the apostles and that means through the writings of the apostles and the message of the apostles.

That’s why, those of you who have been in liturgical churches and you’ve recited the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed, what is one of those famous lines? I believe in the holy catholic and apostolic church. You do? Have you ever thought what “holy catholic apostolic church means? The word catholic, holy is your position and the word apostolic is exactly what is spoken of here. I believe in the holy catholic and apostolic church; I believe salvation exists nowhere else than the holy catholic and apostolic church; there is no salvation outside of the body of Christ and I can only be saved as I come into communion of that body of Christ and the message of that body of Christ. Therefore in verse 3 the pronoun “us” is used; you first must come to the apostles before you can be saved; that means again you obviously don’t shake John’s hand, you don’t say John, your halo is cocked, that’s not what you’re doing. You’re coming face to face with what John taught, what Matthew taught, what Luke taught, and having come face to face with what these men taught you have believed and have become saved. That’s what John is saying.

And that’s why in verse 4 he immediately follows it up by saying, “These things we write unto you, that your joy may be full.” Now this is saying that the Church stands between men and salvation. In 1 John 2:19 this is one of the key verses to understand the apostles thinking on the subject, this is how seriously he takes the identification of your response to the body with your response to Christ. “They,” he’s talking about unregenerate antichrists, “They went out from us,” it means that they were at one time socially meeting with the body of Christ, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,” notice, “if they had been of us,” what’s that? If they were genuinely saved people, if they were genuinely regenerated people, “if they had been of us they would no doubt,” or it’s the emphasis in the Greek, “they certainly would have continued with us.”

Now just look at that and read it over again and watch for your preconceived notions. Just let the text speak to you there; if they had really been born again they would have continued with us. That means the body of Christ universal, not necessarily one local church or not, but the body of Christ with the text, the Scriptures, of the body of Christ. Up here is the apostles who are doing the generation, the New Testament canon. What he is saying, translated into maybe another illustration to see it, is that any person who defects from the teachings of the New Testament probably is not saved. That’s how serious this verse is. If they were of us, if they were one with the body, they had the indwelling Spirit, that indwelling Spirit would have kept them faithful to the Word. “But they went out, that it might be very clear that they were never of us at all.” So you have a purging process in the body of Christ; the demand again in Scripture to go back to our concluding verse in John 20:23, it’s not talking merely in verse 23 about pronouncing forgiveness of sin; it’s far more serious than that.

“Whosoever sins you all remit,” that means the body of Christ literally comes in contact with say, this person, comes in contact with maybe a piece of literature written by a member of the body of Christ, a portion of Scripture distributed by the Gideon’s or somebody else, some individual Christian witness to them, they come into contact with that. Their sins are forgiven at the time they submit to the message of the body and that is identical to their forgiveness of sins in heaven. And if they are people who…”whosoever’s sins ye retain,” that means you refuse to recognize them as Christians because of they obviously are rejecting the authority of Scripture, they’re rejecting the message of Scripture, there’s no harmony there, Jesus says take it from Me, they’re not born again.

Now John has iterated this statement at least twice before in a very famous chapter and we’ll conclude by turning to John 3, a very familiar chapter, but have you ever noticed these two verses. In John 3:18, “He that believe on Jesus Christ is not condemned; but he that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” I’m sure you’ve read that verse and I think most normal people just read it and it’s very obvious there’s no in between in verse 18, you either believe or you don’t and whether you believe or whether you don’t shows you whether you have been condemned and it’s in the perfect tense, identical to the tense forms of verse 23. It says in the Greek, “he that is believing on Him is not condemned; but he that is believing not has been condemned already,” precisely the syntax used in John 20:23. Different vocabulary, same syntax, same verbal construction.

Now John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Now John the Apostle has the audacity to say that he knows a principle, and he’s not omniscient so he can’t perfectly apply the principle, but he knows the principle, that if you do not believe in Jesus Christ then you are not saved and God’s damnation rests upon you. Now what does this have to do with verse 23. It’s very simple, all you have to do is take these two verses and ask one further question; well John, how is a guy going to believe on Christ? Answer the question, how is the guy going to believe on Christ, and the only answer you could possibly give is because he hears the message that somehow comes to him from Christians. And so therefore verses 18 and 36 actually applied to any real life practical situation is he that responds to the message of the body of Christ is not condemned, but he that believeth not the message of the body of Christ has been damned already, because he has not believed it. That is the close identification of the body of Christ with Jesus Christ.

Now obviously, an individual Christian can be screwed up in his doctrine and God isn’t going to hold an unbeliever responsible for getting fouled up by some fouled up Christian in turn; this is talking about the Church as a whole, all these are plurals in John 20:23, it’s talking about the position; He who receives you all, Jesus says, has received Me, and he that doesn’t, who refuses to buy what you’re teaching, you can write him off, they are damned people.

Now in practical application of this, what does this mean? Does this mean that you can walk up to a person and say just because they reject you at that point in time that therefore they are damned permanently and forever. Not at all, but what you can say is that if you have been as clear as you can be in your gospel presentation and you have taught the Word, and you’ve really communicated and the person understands, and they have said no, I don’t buy it, you can pretty well conclude at that point they’re not a Christian, and if they continue acting that way toward other Christians, they’re never going to be a Christian. You see how sobering it is to be a witnesser for Christ? That is part of the subduing of the earth, that Christ is talking about in this day and age. The Church has been given a very unsavory task, if we can put it that way; the task is the Church is a divider of men; that’s the one job that Jesus talks about the very last thing before He ascends to heaven. He does not talk about the Church influencing government with divine viewpoint, though that’s a corollary and that’s a fringe benefit; He does not talk about Christians producing a great Christian culture, though that may be nice to do. The one thing He emphasizes is that the Church is a message of life and death to the human race, and those who respond to it positively are living, and those who reject it are dead; that’s the only thing that Christ uses to describe the Church and therefore we can conclude that that is the perfect supreme test to present men with the Word of God, that’s the supreme test. Application to the Word in various areas of life yes, but that’s always secondary, far secondary to the evangelistic thrust of the Word of God and trusting the claims of the Word of God.