Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. Acts 13:38
If you happened to be a Roman Catholic and you wanted to be forgiven of a particular sin, or of all of your sins in general, your religion would provide a convenient means of doing so. That particular organization provides for its members seeking forgiveness to seek an audience with a priest, usually in a booth known as a confessional. Here the person would ask the priest for forgiveness and identify the sin, if possible. According to the Catholic doctrine, the priest is empowered to declare the sin forgiven. Despite the great convenience of this system, what assurance does the sinner have that his sins are actually forgiven? None, according to the Scriptures! That is not a problem for the Catholics, who get their authority from their traditions and from the pope, which they regard on an equal level as the Scriptures. But who are you going to believe, the pope or the Bible? Absolutely nothing in the Bible endorses anyone other than God conveying the forgiveness of sins. But our text relates how men can preach it.
The apostle Paul would surely have more authority than any priest of today. And yet when he went to Antioch in Pisidia, he did not set up a confessional to begin conferring forgiveness of sins on the folks there. No, he preached forgiveness. He presented the message of forgiveness. That message was not one of paying a pennance to a priest but one of repentance and acceptance of the forgiveness that the Lord Jesus purchased on the cross. There is no tradition involved, nor any edict from any pope. There is only the Word of God, the unchanging and eternal message of forgiveness conveyed in the Gospel message. The folks in Antioch had an opportunity to hear and receive forgiveness of sins. And sinners today can hear the same message and receive the same forgiveness.
As the Gospel preachers frequently remind us, man’s biggest problem is sin; in fact, sin is the sum of all of our problems. We need to have that problem dealt with if we are to enjoy peace with God, to be delivered from the punishment that our sins deserve, and be assured of an eternal home in Heaven. Because we are unable to deal with our sins or even to stop adding to the total of them, we need forgiveness. We receive forgiveness when we believe the preaching of forgiveness. As Christians, we also need daily forgiveness from the sins that interfere with our fellowship with our Lord. The confession of those sins – to the Lord and not to any priest – will grant to us the forgiveness that we need (1 John 1:9).
We are forgiven of our sins. We believe the Word of God. -Jim MacIntosh