It is GOD who forgives sins, and once forgiven, He ceases to remember
them.
Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy
transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."
It is God
only who forgives sins.
Jeremiah 31:34, "...for I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
Ezechiel 18:22, "I will
not remember all his iniquities that he has done."
Romans 3:26, "GOD in
His patience remitting former sins..."
Hebrews 8:12, "Because I will be
merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no
more."
GOD forgave sins through a human
nature.
Matthew 9:2-7,
"...And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, "Take courage son;
your sins are forgiven you...For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven
you, or to say, Arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has
power on earth to forgive sins", then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up
your pallet and go to your house.""
GOD uses His priests
as His instruments of
reconciliation. The New Covenant priesthood is prefigured or 'typed' in many
places in the Old Testament. Here are several examples from the Old Testament of
reconciliation and atonement being performed by a priest: The priest
has been given the ministry of reconciliation. He
mediates GOD's forgiveness to the sinner. The priest is merely an instrument of
GOD. As an analogy, think of GOD as the Supreme Healer, the Master Surgeon. He
will remove the cancer of sin from the soul, while using one of His priests as
the scalpel.
Leviticus 4:20,
"...Thus the priest shall make atonement for them,
and they will be forgiven."
Leviticus 4:26, "Thus the
priest shall make atonement for the prince's sin, and it will be
forgiven."
Leviticus 4:32,
"Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he
will be forgiven."
Leviticus
4:35, "Thus the priest shall make atonement for the
man's sin, and it will be forgiven."
Leviticus 5:5-6, "...then whoever is guilty in
any of these cases shall confess the sin he has incurred, and as his sin
offering for his sin he has committed he shall bring to the Lord a female animal
from the flock, a ewe lamb or a she-goat. The priest shall
then make atonement for his sin."
See also Leviticus 5:10,13,16,18, 12:8, 14:18-20,31,
15:15,30, 19:22.
Leviticus 6:7, "And the
priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord; and it shall be forgiven
him for any thing of all that he has done in trespassing
therein."
Leviticus 7:7,
"Because the sin offering and the guilt offering are alike, both having the same
ritual, the guilt offering likewise belongs to the
priest who makes atonement with it."
Leviticus 16:32, "This
atonement is to be made by the priest who has been anointed and ordained to the
priesthood in succession to his
father."
Leviticus 19:20-22, "If a man lies carnally with a woman
. . . they shall not be put to death . . . but he shall bring a guilt offering
for himself to the Lord, to the door of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt
offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him
. . . before the Lord for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven
him."
Numbers 6:11, "The priest shall offer up
the one as a sin offering and the other as a holocaust, thus making atonement
for him for the sin he has committed by reason of the dead
person."
Numbers 15:25,
"And the priest shall make an atonement for all the
congregation of the children of Israel, and it shall be forgiven
them..."
Numbers 15:28,
"And the priest shall make atonement before the Lord
for him who sinned inadvertently; when atonement has been made for him, he will
be forgiven."
The prophets in the
Old Testament spoke in GOD's Name, in the first person. Here are
examples...
Deuteronomy 18:18-19, "I will raise up for them a prophet
like you from among their kinsmen, and will put My words into his mouth; he
shall tell them all that I commanded him. If any man will not listen to My words which he speaks in My
name, I Myself will make him answer
for it."
Ezekiel 3:4, "And He said to me: Son of man, go to the house of
Israel, and you shall speak My words to
them."
David the
King conversed directly with GOD:
2Samuel 2:1, "And after these things
David consulted the Lord, saying: Shall I go up into one of the cities of Juda?
And the Lord said to him: Go up. And David said: Whither shall I go up? And he
answered him: Into Hebron."
Yet David still had to confess to Nathan and
hear from him that he had been forgiven.
2Samuel 12:13, "And David said to
Nathan: I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David: The Lord also
hath taken away thy sin: thou shalt not die."
This GOD given ministry is
shown very plainly in Holy Scripture:
Matthew 16:19, when Jesus gave the
power and authority to Peter, "And I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you
shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven."
Matthew 18:18, Jesus gave this power to all of the Apostles,
"Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth
shall be loosed also in heaven."
John 20:21-23, "He therefore said to
them again, 'Peace be to you! As
the Father has sent Me, I also send you'. When He had said this, He breathed upon them, and said
to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained'."
Matthew
10:40, "He who receives you receives Me; and he who receives Me, receives Him who sent
Me."
Luke 22:29-30, "And I appoint to you a kingdom, even as My Father has
appointed to Me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in My kingdom; and you shall sit upon
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
2Corinthians 5:17-20,
"Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed
away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ
reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, GOD making his appeal through
us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God."
Clearly, the Apostles were given the authority to remit sins, or
to bind them, in the person of Christ. How are they to accomplish this if they
do not know what sins to remit or to bind? The sinner is required to confess his
sins as shown.
1John 1:8-10, " If we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If
we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in
us."
The
Apostles obviously would not live forever, and sin will always be with us,
so they passed the authority on to others.
2Corinthians 2:10,
"Whom you pardon anything,
I also pardon. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I have
done for your sakes, IN THE PERSON OF
CHRIST."
The priest says in the confessional, "I absolve you of your sins." The priest
is acting in Personna
Christi, in the person of Christ.
Since the priest is acting in the person of Christ, then it is Christ to whom
you confess your sins. It is Christ alone who remits them. Jesus Christ uses the
priest as His voice and His hands.
As mentioned earlier, the prophets of
the Old Testament spoke in GOD's name. They spoke IN
THE PERSON OF GOD. The priests of the New Covenant
speak IN THE PERSON OF
CHRIST.
GOD never
changes.
Matthew 9:5-8, "For which is easier to say, "Your sins are
forgiven you, or to say arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of
Man has power to forgive sins" - then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up
your pallet and go to your house". And he arose, and went away to his house. But
when the crowds saw it, they were struck with fear, AND GLORIFIED GOD WHO HAD GIVEN SUCH POWER TO
MEN."
The New Testament lies
hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is revealed in the
New.
Christ, the High
Priest of the New Covenant, ordained the apostles to continue His priestly
mission. James 5:14-16, (14) "Is any among you sick?
Let him bring in the presbyters (priests) of the church, and let them pray over
him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; (15)and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the
Lord will raise him up; and if he be in sins, they will be forgiven him. (16) Confess, therefore, your sins to one another, and pray
for one another, that you may be saved. For the unceasing prayer of a just man
is of great avail."
St. James taught us that we must go to the
"presbyters", and not to just anyone, to receive the "anointing", and the
remission of sins. First, he told us to go to the presbyters, or priests, in
verse 14. Verse 16
continues with the word "therefore", so that word is a conjunction that connects
verse 16 back to verses 14
and 15. It is the priests to whom St. James told us
to confess our sins.
Do not forget towear your glasses!