I am not going to enter upon controversy. The words which close our
Lord's great charge here have been much misunderstood by being
restricted. It is eminently necessary to remember here that they were
spoken to the whole community of Christian souls. The harm that has
been done by their restriction to the so-called priestly function of
absolution has been, not only the monstrous claims which have been
thereon founded, but quite as much the obscuration of the large effects
that follow from the Christian discharge by all believers of the office
of representing Jesus Christ.
We must interpret these words in harmony with the two preceding points,
the Christian mission and the Christian equipment. So interpreted, they
lead us to a very plain thought which I may put thus. This same Apostle
tells us in his letter that 'Jesus Christ was manifested to take away
sin.' His work in this world, which we are to continue, was 'to put
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.' We continue that work when,--as
we have all, if Christians, the right to do--we lift up our voices with
triumphant confidence, and call upon our brethren to 'behold the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world!' The proclamation has a
twofold effect, according as it is received or rejected; to him who
receives it his sins melt away, and the preacher of forgiveness through
Christ has the right to say to his brother, 'Thy sins are forgiven
because thou believest on Him.' The rejecter or the neglecter binds his
sin upon himself by his rejection or neglect. The same message is, as
the Apostle puts it, 'a savour of life unto life, or of death unto
death.' These words are the best commentary on this part of my text.
The same heat, as the old Fathers used to say, 'softens wax and hardens
clay.' The message of the word will either couch a blind eye, and let
in the light, or draw another film of obscuration over the visual orb.
And so, Christian men and women have to feel that to them is entrusted
a solemn message, that they walk in the world charged with a mighty
power, that by the preaching of the Word, and by their own utterance of
the forgiving mercy of the Lord Jesus, they may 'remit' or 'retain' not
only the punishment of sin, but sin itself. How tender, how diligent,
how reverent, how--not bowed down, but--erect under the weight of our
obligations, we should be, if we realised that solemn thought!