As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you ( John 20:19–23)

The apostles (20:19–23)


    [19] On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” [20] When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. [21] Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” [22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. [23] If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
(John 20:19-23 ESV)

The resurrection has personal implications, but that does not exhaust its significance. Jesus’ vision is not of a multitude of inspired individuals each acting independently out of his or her personal encounter with the risen One. The fruit of his exaltation [John, Page 297] is a community, bound together by their common participation in the Spirit, sent forth to gather his ‘other sheep’ from every corner of the world. Accordingly, in the final two chapters of the gospel, which are concerned with expounding the post-resurrection ministry of Jesus, the appearances which have individual significance (to Mary, 20:10–18; Thomas, 20:24–29; and Peter, 21:15–17) are balanced by those which have reference to the wider mission of the community.16 An encounter with the living Christ is where faith is born; the church of the living Christ is where faith grows and matures. A mature Christian experience will develop from loving Christ in and of himself in an immediate one-to-one relationship, to loving him (no less personally or deeply) in the fellowship of his own.
    The setting is Jerusalem on the evening of Easter day in a room which may well have been where the last supper was held just three days before (cf. Acts 1:13; 12:12). While John may have ‘believed’ (8), and Mary may have testified to her meeting with the risen Jesus (18), the reality of the resurrection has still to emerge among the disciple group with any degree of conviction; hence the locked doors and the continuing fear for their skins (19). Suddenly the Easter glory breaks upon them—Jesus is there visibly in their midst!
    He stills their inevitable anxiety and confusion with a familiar word of greeting, ‘Shalom’, Peace be with you! (19). Shalom, the familiar Hebrew greeting, is a considerably richer notion than mere absence of stress, which tends to be our understanding of ‘peace’ today. In its Old Testament context, shalom basically means ‘well-being’ in its fullest sense. It gathers up all the blessings of the kingdom of God; shalom is life at its best under the gracious hand of God. Jesus’ use of it on that Easter evening therefore represented the first truly authentic bestowal of shalom in the history of the world! Precisely because he has brought the kingdom of God into realization by his death and rising, now and only now is shalom a realizable blessing. Thus his “Shalom!” on Easter evening is the complement of his “It is finished!” on the cross, for the peace of reconciliation and life from God is now imparted. “Shalom!” accordingly is supremely the Easter greeting. Not surprisingly it is included, along with “grace”, in the greeting of every epistle of Paul in the NT.’17
    Jesus further reassures the disciples that it is truly himself they are encountering, no ghost or phantom: he showed them his hands and side. How important for our needy, hurting generation, that Jesus is recognized by his scars! The effect is predictable, but no [John, Page 298] less moving: The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord (20). ‘Joy is the basic mood of Easter.’18

    Jesus, however, has come not merely to assure them of his conquest of death and the triumph of his kingdom. He has come also to instruct and prepare them for what lies ahead. The mission about which he had taught them in the upper room is now imminent and he sets them apart for it in a solemn moment of commissioning. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you (21). Echoing words uttered in his prayer before his passion (17:18), it is the form in which the ‘Great Commission’ appears in this gospel.

[21] Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
    Several of the fundamentals of the church’s mission in every generation are expressed here.
    1.  The importance of mission. The key to the statement is the parallel it draws between the sending of Jesus into the world by the Father and the sending of the apostolic community into the world by the risen Son. If the parallel holds good, then mission must have the same importance for the community as it had for Jesus. In the latter case, as we have seen, the significance could not be greater. In the Gospel of John, Jesus defines himself as the ‘sent one’;19 and correspondingly the Father is defined as ‘the Sender’.20 Thus the Godhead is defined in terms of mission. Mission reaches back into the eternal relations of the Trinity in the dynamic inter-relationship of Sender and Sent.
    The challenge is evident. As Jesus is defined by the mission of the Father, so the church is defined by its mission to the world.
    The same conclusion is arrived at by another route when we recognize that if God is in this sense a missionary God, the summons to be like him assumes a precise focus. The degree to which individuals and churches are committed to mission, both locally and throughout the world, will be a measure of how God-like (or how godly) they are.
    2.  This commission of Jesus helps us understand the character of mission. The tenses of the two verbs in the sentence are different. The second verb is present: I am sending you; but the first is a perfect, which implies a past action continuing in the present: the Father has sent me. What Jesus has in mind therefore is not a double mission, first Jesus’ mission and then afterwards our mission. Rather it is one single action, the great movement of the missionary heart of God sending forth his Son into the world, [John, Page 299] initially through the incarnation, subsequently through his church. The one mission of God has two phases: the first, that of the Son in his incarnate life; the second, that of the Son in his risen life through his people.21 ‘The apostles were commissioned to carry on Christ’s work, and not to begin a new one.’22 He is in our midst as we go forth for him to the world!
    This understanding of the missionary task carries implications. It touches the issue of authority in our service. Because Jesus’ mission continues through ours, our mission partakes of his divine authority. We can compare the classical form of the commission: ‘all authority … has been given to me. Therefore go … and I am with you’ (Mt. 28:18–20). The presence of the exalted Lord is the authorization of our mission. This is what ‘apostle’ means—one whom Jesus sends and accompanies. In this sense the church in every age is an apostolic community and every Christian witness, sent and authorized by the risen and reigning one, belongs to the apostolate of the Lord. Behind this Christian reality lies a Jewish model, the s¥aœlˆîahΩ or messenger. In Hebrew culture the s¥aœlˆîahΩ embodied the dignity and authority of the one in whose name he had come: ‘one who is sent is as the one who sends him.’23 To slight a s¥aœlˆîahΩ was therefore to slight his master; correspondingly, to respect the s¥aœlˆîahΩ by obeying the message he brought was to respect his master. As the ‘sent ones’ of Jesus we speak with his authority.
    In practice, the exercise of that authority is bound up with our mirroring the mission of Jesus at another point, viz. obedience. Jesus exercised the authority of his Father because he was utterly obedient to the will of his Father (cf. comment on 8:12f.). ‘The transaction [of the s¥aœlˆîahΩ] could not be properly concluded without a resolute subordination of the will of the representative to that of the one who commissioned him.’24 Our wielding his authority is related to our accepting a similar subordination. Here is the paradox of Christian ministry: we find freedom insofar as we permit his enslavement of us; we bring life to others to the degree to which we give up our own; we have authority and power in the measure to which we are willing to become helpless. Positively, however, this opens up unimaginable possibilities, as verse 23 indicates.
    This statement, about loosing and retaining sins, has been appealed to in terms of the authorization of a magisterial office in the church with the direct authority to forgive or retain sins. That implication appears unjustified when the context is taken seriously. The ‘loosing’ and ‘binding’ are the effect of the preaching of the [John, Page 300] gospel in the world, when we go forth in the name and with the authority of the risen Lord. As when he was on earth, so now, the coming of the light of God’s Word draws some to the light for salvation and confirms some in the darkness for damnation (3:19–21; 9:39). ‘There is no doubt from the context that the reference is to forgiving sins, or withholding forgiveness. But though this sounds stern and harsh, it is simply the result of the preaching of the gospel, which either brings people to repent as they hear of the ready and costly forgiveness of God, or leaves them unresponsive to the offer of forgiveness which is the gospel, and so they are left in their sins.’25
    3.  One other aspect of the character of mission is to the point; the cost of it. For the risen one who sends us is identified not by his kingly glory, but by the marks of his cross and passion (20). To be sent by such a Master in his mission must have had the most sobering effect on the apostles. As the Father has sent me had meant for Jesus costly self-sacrifice to the point of the hell of Calvary; it could not henceforth mean less in principle for them. ‘Whoever serves me must follow me’ (12:26).
    4.  Finally, lest these terms of the mission be thought too overwhelming, Jesus also points to the resources of mission. The first has already been stressed; Jesus himself. He will continue to be the leader of the disciple community. As before, so now, they will go out under his leadership and with the inspiration of his living presence. In particular we note, as we did above, the recurrence of this commission formula in the consecration prayer of Jesus (17:18). Here is our all-embracing and all-sufficient resource, that our mission is undergirded by the praying presence of Jesus!
    The other major resource is shared in verse 22: With that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’
    Considerable debate has swirled around the interpretation of this statement. In particular, how does it relate to the coming of the Spirit some fifty days later as described in Acts 2? The notion that this is actually John’s account of Pentecost, and in his mind replaces the subsequent coming of the Spirit (a view much in favour with critical scholarship), requires a qualifying of John’s historical reliability which is unwarranted. Accepting the historicity of both Acts and John, and hence the apparent double gifting of the Spirit, some interpret in terms of a relative difference between the two enduements of the Spirit. Thus Calvin distinguishes between ‘sprinkling’ with the Spirit (here), and ‘saturation’ with the Spirit at Pentecost.26 Westcott sees the power of new life imparted in [John, Page 301] John and the power for ministry in Acts.27 Bruce inverts Westcott’s distinction.28
    It seems preferable to recognize that the true coming of the outpoured Spirit took place at Pentecost. Apart from other considerations it would appear that it was only after the Acts 2 experience that any marked change came over the behaviour of the apostles and the kingdom’s arrival became apparent.
    The ‘expiration’ of the Spirit described here in John can then be viewed as symbolic, and hence essentially didactic. Jesus here is teaching the apostles who the Spirit is. Lest a ‘symbolic’ interpretation be thought to reduce this incident to an insignificant affair, let it be noted that until they understood who the Spirit was they were in no position to receive his outpouring. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost was in a deep sense dependent upon this action on the evening of Easter. Who is the Spirit? He is the life-breath of the exalted Jesus! Jesus the risen one breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. ‘The Holy Spirit is Christ himself in the power of his resurrection … the outstretched arm of the Exalted One.’29
    This understanding of the relationship between Jesus and the Spirit is precisely the one expressed by Peter at Pentecost. When the bewildered crowds demand to know the meaning of the phenomena, Peter’s answer is: ‘this Jesus … Exalted to the right hand of God, he has … poured out what you now see and hear’ (Acts 2:33). No purer expression of this Johannine incident and its meaning is conceivable.
    Thus Christianity at its outset was saved from the danger of becoming a religion focused essentially on supernatural phenomena, ‘signs and wonders’ as such. Instead, from its earliest moments, it was the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, the glorified Servant and Messiah of God, exalted at God’s right hand, and hence the ruler of the universe. He manifested his rule when he so willed by ‘signs and wonders’, but also and more generally, by all the other works of his people in the world. The Spirit is the ‘Spirit of Jesus’. Thus the phenomena of Acts are understood, as are the signs in John, as semeia, ‘signs’ of the person and reign of Jesus the exalted Son and Servant, the Word made flesh. The key to that crucial identification is this moment on Easter evening. But if this perspective is valid, what a resource this represents for the apostolic task! Nothing less than the power which brought Jesus through death and resurrection to the right hand of the Father is the power which is made available to the church in its mission (so Paul in Eph. 1:18ff.).