 Question that's asked is, please explain John 20, 23. Seems to be a bit confusing at first glance. It is confusing. Let's go to it and see. He says in verse 23 of John chapter 20, Jesus speaking to his disciples, he says, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Is that to say that they have the power, like God does, like Christ does, to forgive sins. Remember, they thought that Jesus was being blasphemous when he says that your sins are forgiven. They says, who can forgive sins but God? And so now it seems as though at first glance that maybe Jesus is conferring this power upon them to forgive sins as well as to withhold forgiveness. Is that what's happening? Well, no, let's go and look at the passage a little bit further. By the way, this is also something that the Catholic Church has used to say since this power was given to the apostles and the Pope kind of has that same power. They have the right, the Vatican or the Pope has the right to forgive. And so, but that's not what's happening here. Let's go to it. He says, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. And if you withhold forgiveness, they will be withheld. Now, this issue is this word right here. This is the Greek word, afeonti. This word here is in the perfect, the middle perfect. And then we look at this other word for it is withheld or forgiven. It is ke kra tenei, which is also in the perfect. This word is from the word krapteo. This is kind of to take possession or but because it's in the perfect tense, same thing with the word forgiven. It's not saying that they have done it. It says if you forgive, then it will have already been forgiven. In other words, they're being given the power to basically say what heaven has already done. They're not pronouncing forgiveness on someone or withholding forgiveness. They don't have that power. Rather, what they have is the ability again, naturally, because look what Jesus says before them. They don't have this power just shed at this time, as a matter of fact, because look at what Jesus just said before them. In verse 22 he says, and when he had said this, he had just said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. So he's not saying at this moment, at this very moment, receive the Holy Spirit. They are going to because Jesus tells them later that when you receive the Holy Spirit, you shall receive power. You should be my witnesses. Well, why would he tell them that they're going to receive the Holy Spirit if they've already received the Holy Spirit? So he's speaking, kind of forward-looking, and then when they have this power in them, and I would say this applies only to the apostles, that they will have the ability to say what heaven has already declared. They're not declaring something, and then heaven is bound to move by that. We see the same thing showing up in Matthew chapter 16. Let's go there, 16 verse 19. He says, I will give you the keys of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. The same tense of the verbs are used there. He says, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound. And the word here for bound in the Greek is dedomenon, which is, if you look down at the bottom left-hand corner, it is the perfect tense, the perfect middle participle. So they will have been bound or being bound. Same thing over here with the word loosed. It is the Greek word lelemnenon, which is also the perfect tense, which means it has been loosed. And so these people, whatever they bind, will have already been bound, and whatever they lose will have already been loosed. They don't have the power to bind or to lose on their own, but they are simply declaring. And in this case, it would have to be by revelation. They are declaring, it's been revealed to them what heaven has bound, what heaven has loosed, what heaven has forgiven, and what heaven has not forgiven. In other words, what God has done. They're not making God do anything. God is the only one that has the power to forgive. God is the one that's going to bind. God is the one that does the loosing. Now, interestingly enough, people might also use this same passage to say that they can bind something, a demon or the devil or what have you. What note, you cannot, again, we've covered this before, but nowhere in scriptures do we see the devil bound except for when heaven binds him, when God has an angel to bind Satan. Until that point in time, we won't see it happening. So people ought to also stop saying that I bind you, devil. You keep binding him. Someone has the power to override your binding. Someone keeps loosening him or maybe your ability to bind isn't that great, because Peter tells us that the same devil that you want to keep binding is walking around like a roaring lion, lion seeking whom he may devour. So they have the ability, they've been given the insight, the ability, the revelation to declare or to declare what has been declared better than what has been loosed, what has been bound, what has been forgiven, what will not be forgiven. And so that's really all the meaning of John 2023 is it's not giving them the power to do so, nor has it given any other man the power to do so. So I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please be sure to drop a comment or send an email and we'll try to answer the questions as best we can as fast as we can. Amen.