Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
Receive the Holy Spirit
John 20:19-23
19 When therefore it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were locked where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the middle and said to them, “Peace be to you.” · WEB
He comes through a locked door, shows them his wounds, and sends them out the way he was sent.
When therefore it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were locked where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the middle John 20:19.
The detail about the doors is given twice John 20:26, so the writer means it. And the reason is stated without embarrassment: they are frightened men in a locked room, and one of them had seen the cloths and believed that morning.
"Peace be to you."
The ordinary greeting, and the first word to men who deserted him. No reproach is recorded anywhere in this chapter — not to them, not to Peter, and not to Thomas.
It is also the word he had left with them on the last night: peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you John 14:27. The promise is kept in the form of a hello.
He showed them his hands and his side John 20:20.
The body is the body that was crucified. This Gospel is careful about that here and with Thomas — the wounds are not healed over, and the risen Christ is identified by them.
The disciples therefore were glad when they saw the Lord. The sorrow turned into joy exactly as promised, and nobody took it from them John 16:22.
"Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" John 20:21.
The greeting is repeated and then the commission, and the comparison is the weight of it. As the Father has sent me — on the same terms, with the same authority behind it, and to the same kind of reception. It is the prayer of chapter seventeen being executed John 17:18.
What should not be missed is who is being sent. These are the men who ran, locked in a room, less than seventy-two hours later.
When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit!" John 20:22.
The verb is used once in the Greek Old Testament in this way — when God breathed into the man of dust and he became a living soul Genesis 2:7. The writer who opened his book with in the beginning is describing a new making, in a garden's city, on the first day of a week.
How this stands beside Pentecost has been read two ways: as an anticipation and pledge of what came fifty days later, or as a distinct giving for the commission just spoken. Nothing here settles it, and the two are not in competition — the promised Counselor comes when he comes John 16:7, and what is described in this room is the risen Christ breathing on the men he is sending.
"If you forgive anyone's sins, they have been forgiven them. If you retain anyone's sins, they have been retained" John 20:23.
The sentence is large and its tenses are the control on it. What is announced on earth is stated as already settled — the perfect tense — which means the disciples are not conferring pardon but declaring it.
That is exactly what the second volume shows them doing. Peter at Pentecost tells a crowd their sins can be forgiven and on what terms Acts 2:38; nowhere does an apostle absolve anyone on his own authority. The commission is to carry a message that has real effect, and the effect belongs to the one who sent them.
held with reason What this mark means