Could Peter forgive sins? The Lord says so. Could the apostles forgive sins? The Lord says so. Can the Church, through its called ministers, forgive sins? The Lord says so. Yes, we may press the question still further and ask, Can every Christian forgive sins? What the Church, as the collective body of Christians, can do, that each Christian can do as an individual. Yes, every Christian can forgive sins. How is that to be understood? Peter, as Peter, as a man, could not forgive sins of himself and by his own authority. No man can forgive sins--that is a divine prerogative. But Christ gave to Peter the charge, the commission, to do so. The power, then, was not in Peter, but in the charge, the commission. When the Governor of our State issues a pardon and sends a messenger to deliver it, it is rightly and properly said that the messenger brings pardon to the prisoner. The power, of course, is not of the messenger, but of the Governor, as vested in the message of pardon. Equally so the Gospel is the message of pardon to sinful men. The ministers of Christ, as the messengers of the Churches, proclaim that message. The power of the pardon does not depend upon them, their general piety or impiety; the power of the pardon rests upon Him that gave it, the great Governor of the Church. And yet, can it not be justly, truthfully, and properly said in their case, as in the case mentioned, that the messengers bring pardon to the prisoners, that they forgive sins? So our Lord spoke, so our Catechism speaks, and so we may speak. Not the power of absolute forgiveness does the text confer upon the Church, but that of declarative forgiveness. But this declaration of forgiveness, it must be held, is real forgiveness. When the Church forgives sins, they are forgiven. The words of Christ say that as distinctly as words can say it. "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." The pardon brought by the messenger is a real pardon, as certain and valid as if the Governor had brought it himself. And so, declares our Catechism, when in the confessional service the minister pronounces the forgiveness of sins, you are to receive it as from God Himself and in no wise to doubt, but firmly to believe that by it your sins are forgiven before God in heaven. This is the teaching of God's Word in regard to the loosing power of the office of the keys. A comforting teaching it is. We Christians, it is true, have the assurance of forgiveness already in our baptism, in the general preaching of the Gospel, and in the Lord's Supper; but that does not make absolution superfluous. Battling, as we have daily to do, against flesh and blood, disturbed as we are by many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, how uplifting the words of absolution addressed to you directly, individually: "My son, my daughter, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee!"