If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven them.

  If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven them.

 

John 20:21-23 『Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven them; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained."』

Those who have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit are called saints. In other words, they are born again of water and the Holy Spirit. Water baptism symbolizes death to sin and death to the world. Therefore, just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, he raises saints with the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

It is important to know exactly whether the saint has received the authority to forgive sins from Christ or is a person who teaches the principles and doctrines of forgiving sins.

Mark 2:9-12 "Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take up your mat, and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," Jesus said to the paralytic, 'I tell you, get up, take up your mat, and go to your home.' Immediately he got up, took up his mat, and went out before them all. And they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'" A certain scribe heard Jesus' words and said that they were blasphemy. He was saying that only God can forgive sins, so what authority did a human, Jesus, have to forgive sins?

In Matthew 28:18-20, the Bible says, "And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" The Bible says that God has given all authority in heaven and on earth to Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:24 says, "But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

However, Jesus gave this authority to the twelve disciples. Matthew 10:1 "Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every sickness." Casting out demons and healing the sick is forgiving sins and bringing the kingdom of God to come.

Luke 10:9-10 "Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 'Say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'" Jesus grants authority to the seventy men so that the kingdom of God may come. Casting out demons is the work of changing sinners into righteous people. In order to change from sinners to righteous people, we must repent and become dead to sin. The sacrificial offering plays that role, and we can say that it is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Before Jesus died on the cross, he gave authority to his disciples, and after his resurrection, he breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples and gave them the authority to forgive sins. Jesus himself did these things to his disciples.

What about the saints today? The saints are those who have a temple established in their hearts. The old temple collapsed and a new temple was established in heaven, and the kingdom of God came. In the past, the temple of Israel had a sanctuary and a most holy place, and the most holy place contained the ark of the covenant, which contained two stone tablets, Aaron's rod that budded, and manna, as the book of Hebrews tells us. Hebrews 9:4 says, "A golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant." These three symbolize the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Christ is present in the new temple. After His resurrection, Jesus Christ promised His disciples that He would come soon.

John 14:1-3 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

When the temple in the heart is established, it becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” The presence of the Holy Spirit of God is the presence of God and the presence of Christ. Church people today may think that the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit exist separately, but the theory of the Trinity is that God is one. To humans, it may seem that they work as three persons, but the important thing is that God is one. Therefore, in the temple of God in the heart, the Father, Christ, and the Spirit of the saints work as one through the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the resurrected Christ ascends to heaven and returns to the hearts of the saints, the saints become the temple and the kingdom of God.

This is a fact that only those who possess faith from heaven can realize. Those who do not believe this only believe in words that they are the temple, but the power of God does not work. Faith is too difficult to explain in words. Because it is not a faith that one believes in, but a faith that comes from heaven. In Galatians 3:23-24, it says, "Before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept until the faith that would be revealed was revealed. So the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith."

In today's church community, those who perform the baptism ceremony are those who graduated from theological seminaries and were ordained as pastors. The baptism ceremony is an act of declaring that one has died to sin. It is not an act of declaring that one has become a citizen of the kingdom of God. If one is declared dead to sin, the sinner is freed from sin. This is because the dead have no right of prosecution. Therefore, God gives new life because they are free from sin. There are two problems today. People are baptizing without knowing the meaning of the baptism ceremony, and since only those who graduated from theological seminaries and were ordained as pastors perform baptism, it is a strange logic that only pastors are granted the power that Jesus' disciples receive. How many fake pastors are there today? The truth of the Bible is being distorted.

The power that Jesus Christ gives to his disciples is not given to graduates of theological seminaries, but to saints who are born again of water and the Holy Spirit. However, those who call themselves saints do not participate in the ceremony of forgiveness of sins. Even though the kingdom of God (heaven) comes into the hearts of saints, if they do not even know what the kingdom of God (heaven) is, they are not saints.

Baptism for the forgiveness of sins is not in the ritual, but in the Word. When a believer repents of being a sinner, realizes the meaning of the death and resurrection of the cross, and believes that he dies in union with Jesus Christ and is resurrected in union with Him, this becomes baptism (water baptism and the baptism of the Holy Spirit). Baptism is not in the ritual, but is circumcision of the heart. Circumcision means that the flesh has died. Baptism, the circumcision of the heart, is a delegation of the authority to declare death to sin in the name of Jesus. If a believer believes that he has received the authority to declare death to sin from Christ, he should exercise that authority in the name of Jesus Christ when preaching the gospel to those who repent. Death to sin leads directly to forgiveness of sin.