Holding Someone’s Sin Against Them

John 20:19-21


With the Palm Sunday through Easter week, I didn’t have time to blog. This week’s text is again subject to my comments.

The sentence that grabs me is the one saying, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” Stop there. The Greek word is actually translated as “to send away” or “to let go” or even “to disregard.”


Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples. This is the same Spirit who brings love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control as its fruits. And then he gives them his disciples the authority to disregard the sins of others as they determine is appropriate.

This is similar to his statement in Matthew where he gives the disciples the keys to the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind (meaning “forbid”) on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose (meaning “permit”) on earth will be loosed in heaven. Jesus gave his disciples the authority to make new determinations or interpretations of what the Scriptures mean. (I’ll give credit and deflect tomatoes to be thrown at Rob Bell for this – in Velvet Elvis, p. 49).

“If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” It sounds like this one is the reverse of the former. As long as the goal or end result of holding onto someone’s sin brings the fruit of the Spirit, then to hold onto them is good. When does that happen?

When does holding onto a sin someone has committed against me ever bring me peace or joy? When I see someone commit a sin against another person, or even against God, when does it ever bring me peace to hold their sin against them. Don’t they suffer enough by the consequences of their own actions?

I’m supposed to work at building relationships with others, not building walls of judgment because of the sin I think they commit. I suppose the disciples could have gotten mad at Thomas for not believing them when they told him they had seen Jesus. “What do you mean you don’t believe us? Are you calling us ‘liars’?” We can find all kinds of reasons to take offense if we don’t have the Spirit guiding us.

I think the Holy Spirit is a key piece here. What fruit of the Spirit does the disregarding of sin or the holding onto sin bring to me or to the other person as a result? But there may be an even more important point…

Peace, PWM