Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                   Chapter Twenty

                                                                                                                                               Verses 19-23

That same day at evening, Jesus appeared to His disciples except for Thomas who was not there. Jesus gave them His peace because they were in a state of fear and worry. When Jesus showed them His wounded hands and side to prove to them that He was their risen Savior, they became filled with joy and peace that only the Holy Spirit can give. Philippians 4:7.

Jesus then instructed His disciples to carry on God's work in the world just as He had done. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ Himself who empowers every believer in His Church to show to the world the same love and compassion that He had shown in His earthly ministry. The only difference happens to be that the Church cannot be perfect as Jesus is. But the project of the Church is to preach God's forgiveness of sins upon repentance and faith whether of those in the Church or out of the Church. Ephesians 2:22; John 14:18.

Jesus then breathed on His disciples and told them, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." One wonders why Jesus would give His Holy Spirit to His believers who already had the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, God gave His Spirit to His prophets. II Kings 2:9. When Jesus saved the woman at the well, He told her He would give her "living water" by which He had to have meant His Holy Spirit. John 4:10. The only possible answer must be that God gives an ever higher consciousness and a deeper understanding of what it means to be saved by grace at different levels of the faith of individual believers. The Old Testament prophets had the Holy Spirit and salvation by grace even though they all had but a vague understanding of who the Messiah would be and what He would do. Jesus gave the woman at the well His Spirit even though she only believed that He was the Messiah her Savior, but she did not know exactly what that meant. John 4:28-29. Jesus gave His Holy Spirit to His believers after His resurrection to cause them to understand that He had accomplished the salvation of believers saved by grace through His suffering, death, burial, and resurrection. I Corinthians 15:1-4. At Pentecost, Christ gave His Church a higher level of the power of the Holy Spirit to teach them that they could be bold in the power of God to carry out His mission of preaching the gospel to the world. Acts 2:1-4. The teaching of the Bible (KJB) clearly indicates that God holds the Sovereign Power to save by His grace anyone He so chooses to save whether they are good or bad and no matter the level of their understanding of what His grace means. Romans 9:14-24.

Jesus' next commandment to His Church did not pertain to any power of the Church to forgive sins. Only God can forgive sins. Jesus' commandment pertained to discipline in His Church. Jesus meant that if any believer repents of an open sin, then the Church should forgive him even as God forgives him. Ephesians 4:30-32. But if anyone who professes to be a believer should refuse to repent of some known sin, then the Church has the right to put that person out of the Church as being an unbeliever. Matthew 18:15-18; I Corinthians 5:1-13. Satan often sends false believers into God's churches just to cause this type of trouble. But God gives His churches the right to purge false believers in order to keep themselves as clear from sin as possible.