the same language, imparting the gift of the Holy Spirit to his gathered disciples, and authorizing them to forgive sins; “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”2
Thus it is clear that one meaning of binding and loosing has to do with the remission of sins. The church is authorized to speak on God’s behalf, like an ambassador or an attorney empowered to sign a document in the name of someone else.
Our churches of the free church tradition have often taken great and careful concern for the holy living of their members. This was the case for the early Anabaptists, for the Puritans, and for John Wesley. In this history, however, it is not clear whether evangelical Christians always succeeded in making it plain that what they were doing when they expressed concern for the sin and the obedience of members was, in fact, reflecting the gospel by being instruments of forgiveness.
In the instructions of Jesus found in Matt 18:15, it is abundantly clear that the purpose is not to punish but to forgive: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” The normal outcome of this procedure of reconciliatory approach is that “you have regained that one.” The purpose is not to penalize, nor is it to teach a lesson to others that they might learn the seriousness of sin, nor is it to give an outlet to the resentment and the anger of the one sinned against. The need of the offender is to be restored, and this is the way to do it. Exactly the same procedure is referred to in Galatians 6:2—“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ”—and in Jam 5:19–20—“My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”
The point of this instruction on the part of our Lord was not simply that his disciples would need ways of resolving social problems. It is rather that, if the church is to preach a gospel of forgiveness at all, this must be made real in specific times and places in the relations between particular persons. Forgiveness must be made flesh among people where it is needed.
We need this biblical teaching especially when we seek to build the church in those parts of the world that have been strongly under the impress of Roman Catholic practices. We need this teaching as a safeguard against purely anti-Catholic reflexes that lead secular humanity and some Protestants in the direction of spiritual solitude. What is wrong with the traditional Roman Catholic practice of penance and absolution, as it is routinely understood and practiced in popular forms, is not that a person forgives another person’s sins in the name of God—this is a fundamental assignment given to the church by the New Testament and, normally, should be exercised first of all by one individual according to Jesus’ own words.
The errors in the current Catholic practice concern not whether but how this word of forgiveness is spoken. Jesus indicates that it is the responsibility of every person: “If another member of the church sins against you, go . . .” This is a universal responsibility carried by every Christian for every other believer with whom one is acquainted. It is neither a ministerial specialization nor a sacramental privilege.
Secondly, what is questionable in the Roman Catholic practice is the prescribed relationship of the absolution to a process of penitential performances in such a way that the offender may think that it is the penitential performance which earns forgiveness. Further, everything that makes the Catholic penitential practice legally consistent, objective, and impersonal takes it away from the context of a living community. This is in contrast to the New Testament church where forgiveness was affirmed between believers as a social relationship and not simply as a divine transaction.
In the post-Catholic parts of the world, we need especially to safeguard the biblical understanding of forgiveness against its interpretation as a purely spiritual and solitary occurrence in the mind of God and in the mind of the sinner, mediated only through the words of preaching. When a person really knows that he or she needs to be forgiven, that forgiveness needs to be spoken by a fellow believer.
Although Martin Luther had no intention of radically doing away with the practice of aural confession, the effect of the Reformation was to make the practice unpopular. Martin Bucer in the sixteenth century and pietism in the seventeenth attempted to restore something of this element of personal humility, confession, and assurance. In a similar way, Methodism came into being when John Wesley created a way for the individual to experience, in the conversation of a small group, what it means to be admonished and forgiven. Today, in the Western Protestant part of the world, there are some who suggest that a large part of the popularity of psychoanalysis (which moves far beyond serving as therapy for sick spirits and becomes almost a substitute religion) is partly explained by the fact that the psychoanalyst hears confessions and imparts a kind of secular forgiveness by his very acceptance of a continuing relationship with the client.
But, it is not only the Catholic and Protestant mass churches which have failed to make this forgiveness real in the life of the congregation. The free churches, for their part, have been tempted to transform this process of reconciliation into a tool of punishment. Instead of speaking of forgiveness, we have come to speak of church discipline. It has been conceived of as a way to make the sinner suffer, to make the sinner conscious of having hurt the church, to give release to the resentment of the church, to demonstrate to others within the church the seriousness of the offense. Likewise, this procedure has come to center especially upon open and public kinds of offense rather than being an instrument for the discernment of the sins of the mind and the spirit as well. Thus, what was meant as a joyous reestablishment of the fellowship has too often become a rigid expression of the power of church leaders.
What still stands before us is a promise rather than an achievement of the free churches. Every revival movement has begun by reestablishing, through repentance, a possibility of communication among estranged brethren that had been broken off by the pride and the search for power of those within the church. This is our call as free churches. The free church is not simply an assembly of individuals with a common experience of personal forgiveness, brought about between individuals and God in the realm of the Spirit. It is not simply a practical instrument, a kind of working committee to get certain kinds of work carried out in order to evangelize the world. The church is also, in the world, that new people through whom God makes visible, in the most concrete form, that forgiveness is a social reality.
The Church Is a Community of Discernment
The other modern way of stating the meaning of the phrase “to bind and loose” arises clearly out of the usage of the rabbinic teachers of the time. To these scribes and teachers were brought problems of moral decision: “Is it permitted to . . . ?” The teacher who then spoke to permit or to forbid was binding if he stated a clear obligation, especially a negative one; he was loosing if he left the matter open or permitted the action which the pupil had proposed. Thus, the authorization given to the church deals not only with the offender but also with the authority of the standards by which an offense is to be recognized.
The two functions of moral discernment and forgiveness are closely interrelated. It is only because there is some clear understanding of what the standards are that sin can be recognized; it is only in continued wrestling with particular offenses and asking why they should be considered as offenses that the church keeps its understandings of what is right and wrong alive and practical.
The first clear lesson of Jesus’ instruction is that the discernment of right and wrong cannot be separated from the situation in which we deal with our brothers and sisters and their need. We do not promulgate ethical generalities outside the context of their application. We do not identify as vices or as virtues whole categories of behavior without sharing the struggle and the tension of applying them to the situation of the believer who must determine how to behave when one really meets the choice. This is the easiest way to ensure that the church will not continue to proclaim standards that are no longer capable of application. The standards must constantly be tested by whether it is possible to convince a believer that he or she has sinned. In the process of conversation with the believer, if the church has been