As Jesus equips His disciples for ministry, He gives them authority to both remit and retain sins, implying God Himself will align with their choices. (Jn 20:23)
Some take this to mean the Twelve Apostles could decide whom God would forgive and whom He wouldn’t, effectively determining who would enter Heaven and who would go to Hell. Some evidently leverage this to teach the Roman Catholic Church controls our eternal destiny through sacramental confession, contradicting what God Himself says about salvation: we’re saved by believing on Christ (Jn 3:16), not by confessing our sins. This eternal relationship is between each individual person and God (18); Church leaders have nothing to do with it.
Others take it to mean the Twelve Apostles were simply messengers of the Gospel, showing people how to be forgiven, declaring forgiveness when people believed on Christ. (1Th 1:4-5) Yet the wording doesn’t permit this: it says the disciples themselves could either remit or retain the sins of individuals as they saw fit. It’s not the same thing at all.
Neither of the above interpretations does full justice to the context, and it isn’t easy to find any other intelligible take on it. Even so, there must be a better way. (Mt 7:7)
Note carefully that this authority to remit and retain sins is the very first working principle Christ teaches His disciples after giving them the Holy Spirit. (Jn 20:22) In filling them with the Spirit, Christ is forming them into an assembly of born again, spirit-filled brothers in what we might consider to be the first local church, comprised of apostles as well as other disciples who were present. (Ac 1:21-22)
This authority to remit and retain sins is evidently given to the local church as a whole, not merely to the apostles, and it is central to the function and calling of the church: each local brotherhood is responsible for the purity of their local church. (Mt 18:17)
In such a context, the brothers are in fact now responsible to discern what kinds and levels of sins to patiently bear with (remit, or let go of) (Ga 6:1-3), cover up or overlook (1Pe 4:8) within the local assembly, and what degrees of sin to call out, judge and discipline (retain, or hold on to). (1Co 5:11-13)
Paul, an Apostle himself, reinforces this concept of brotherly authority in the context of church discipline (Ro 16:17); the brothers are to decide when someone is committed to sin and exclude them from fellowship (1Co 5:6-7), treating them as though they are unbelievers. (Mt 18:17)
Further, those whom the brothers forgive and receive back into fellowship after having disciplined them, Paul also forgives, indicating God’s alignment with them. (2Co 2:10-11)
The brothers have this spiritual authority to facilitate unity and purity within the local body (Ro 15:14); they’re responsible to manage this in all of the complexities and challenges they face together. They are effectively vested with the keys of God’s kingdom (Mt 16:19), manifested in the local church, deciding who is welcome and who isn’t. And as they seek the truth and align in the Spirit, God Himself works in and through them to glorify Himself (1Co 5:4-5), backing them up as needed. (Mt 18:18)
This kind of spiritual authority is, as we have noted, evidently not such that any sinful mortal may decide whether another soul is ultimately eternally forgiven before God, but God’s way of managing corporate purity and health within each local body of believers. (He 12:15)
Here is a presentation from a Roman Catholic friend arguing from John 20:23 and other scriptures for the RCC’s doctrine of penance and confession to a priest. Reading it may help one understand the basic claims and think through how to answer them. For a more complete understanding of the RCC’s teaching here we would refer to the official RCC catechism.
In reply, the references to confession in Torah do not explicitly require confession to a priest, only that the sinner confesses their sin. Evidently, this could be to anyone, or privately only to God Himself.
Confession of sin is mentioned in contexts like Le 5:5 and Nu 5:7 as a step in addressing sin, with priests involved in the subsequent atonement rituals (e.g., offering sacrifices), but this process could never take away sins. (He 10:11) The high priest’s role in confessing communal sins on Yom Kippur (Le 16:21) is the closest example to a requirement of public confession of sin in Torah, but it involves the priest confessing on behalf of the people, not receiving individual confessions.
The scriptural examples cited related to laying on of hands also do not necessarily support the claim that apostolic authority to forgive and retain sins was passed on in this way: Moses was not giving Joshua the authority to forgive sins (since Moses had no such authority himself) but to act as general of the army; the apostles were commissioning deacons for public service in the congregation, not passing on their authority to others. I see no indication in scripture that authority is ever passed on in this manner. Authority is earned in the eyes of the brothers by the fruits of one’s life and ministry, not passed down through ritual. (Mt 7:15-20; He 13:7, 17)
Quotes provided from early church leaders also do not necessarily support this claim but may be understood as an appeal to the biblical instruction for brothers to submit to one another (Ep 5:21), and in particular to the elder men of the congregation (1Pe 5:5 – There’s no command to obey bishops, only elders – some of whom are bishops), and in this way to live in one accord and unity.
It seems to me that claiming anyone other than Christ Himself has authority to declare anyone else’s sins eternally forgiven by God, on God’s behalf, other than under the presumption that the sinner has been eternally and completely justified by faith in Christ (Ac 13:39, Ro 5:1, 1Co 6:11), and based only on Christ’s unmerited atonement for his sin (2Co 5:21), is unsupported in Scripture. Such a claim essentially defines an entirely new religion that is foreign to scripture and violates basic biblical teaching on how God deals with our sin.